Enigmatic Variations No. 1267: Half by Steve

As John Cleese once warbled in a Monty Python sketch: ‘Fiddle-de-dum, fiddle-di-dee, Eric the half-a-bee’… Steve seems to be challenging us to solve or find HALF a something in this EV…Eric the half-an-EV?

The preamble states that:

“In 22 clues, the wordplay leads to the answer and an additional letter not to be entered into the grid; in clue order, these give a line from a thematic work. Six thematic answers are clued without definition and with wordplay to only HALF of the answer. Solvers must amend two letters in the grid to give HALF of an appropriate abbreviated form which completes a relevant name (11 letters, to be highlighted). Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended; some answers contain two words.”

In my first glance through the clues, 3A, 10D and 12D looked likely candidates not to have definitions, given they only consist of two words! And 10D looked like PAW, which had to fit in an enumeration of 6 – PAWING, PAWPAW, PAWNEE (a North American Native Indian tribe…possible theme?…)? 3A looked like the half word might be an anagram (‘bad’) of NURSE, so I spent a while trying to find a 10 letter word either beginning or ending with such an anagram…NIGHT NURSE, UNRESOLVED?

I then spent a while just working through the rest of the clues – and several crossing letters helped push me towards the PDM – 10D ended up with W in the 3rd and 6th positions, so PAWPAW was favourite. My nurse ended up with Bs, Ds and Ns all over the place, so BAD wasn’t an anagram indicator, it was part of BADEN-BADEN.

So, the half words are all part of repeating patterns – with SING-SING, BORA-BORA, DUM-DUM and WAGGA WAGGA making up the set – all symmetrically placed, and around the edge/central columns.

So far, so good – but there were still some extra letters and a name to find. Rule one of EV club – always check the diagonals…and down the NW to SE I found GERARDWKENLE, which didn’t ring-ring any bells, but GERARD looked like a starter for ten…

And the extra letters gradually brought it all together – SO GOOD THEY NAMED IT TWICE…(nicely spaced, with punctuating gaps in the right places!). So we are talking about NOO YOIK, NOO YOIK…but wasn’t that Frank Sinatra?…well yes, he was going to ‘make a brand new start of it’ there, but his song mostly referred NY in the singular, and something just on the edges of my age range and (long ago, 1978) teenage pop knowledge remembered another song, which includes the ‘so good’ line: ‘…New York, all the scandal and the vice, I love it! New York, New York, now isn’t it a pity…what they’re doing to New York…doing to New York…doing to New York Citeeeeee….’

I could remember most of the chorus – isn’t the human brain amazing…a song I have had no reason to think about in 30+ years is there on almost instant recall from a simple trigger! – but I had no recollection of who it was by. The smart money was on Gerard <someone>, and so it turned out – GERARD W KENLE becomes GERARD KENNY, if you ignore the W and change those last two characters to NY, half of the abbreviated subject of his song:

Interestingly, his Wikipedia page says he was born GERARD W KENNY, but the instructions specifically said to highlight only 11 letters, and his performing name seems to have dropped the ‘dubya’, even though Steve has helpfully made sure there is a W there as well!

All good (and nostalgic, for me) fun – and a relatively gentle (entry-level?) solve and denouement for an EV. I can’t say I have come across ‘Steve’ before, and can’t see any other puzzles on 15×15 in the recent past, so this may be a debut(?). It may simply be a guy called Steve, or there may be a more subtle backstory to the pseudonym. Either way, thanks – and welcome, if it is your debut.

(P.S. I had a niggling thought that I had seen something similar – in an EV or an IQ, in the last few years? But the only thing I could find in a brief search of the site was IQ 1423 by Wiglaf – in which the wordplay led to the half-word, but the definition was to the full word…and the end game was completely different, with no mention of New York!)