Enigmatic Variations No.1482 – Map by Gaston

14 comments on “Enigmatic Variations No.1482 – Map by Gaston”

1. A very enjoyable race to the end. I’ve zero interest in horse racing but the Grand National is etched into the fabric of the country so had no problem picking up the theme. I did need the Internet for the names of the jumps though. And for some reason ‘elbow’ eluded me for longer than it should. Many thanks to Gaston for the romp and Mister Sting for the blog.

   I parsed 45A as Gu(inn)ess. A nice clue !

2. I nearly did a Devon Loch – had the grid full and all the jumps/Red Rum, but like Phil R it took me ages to see the ‘elbow’ staring me in the face, let alone the starting ‘tape’ and finishing ‘post’!
   Thanks to Gaston and Mister Sting…I couldn’t parse 45A GUESS either, and I had 40D BYES as BY (past) plus ES (opponents, in bridge), rather than a double defn.?

3. Thank you, Mister Sting, for providing the answers and explanations I’d missed, and MC Rapper for 40D.

   Please could somebody explain 42A? (Its first letter being my only entirely blank square in my grid, though some of the unblank ones only had letters very tentatively pencilled in.) I’ve now found the chemistry definition but don’t understand the gym one.

   And how does HA mean ‘this year’ in 35D?

   Finally, what indicated that the appropriate colouring was green for the fences? I wrongly presumed it would be a separate colour appropriate to each fence, but couldn’t see anything in the diagrams of the Grand National that I found.

4. It was a pleasure to work through a set of good clues with no gimmicks! (Mostly I enjoy the single-letter clue manipulations that are often designed into puzzles of this kind, but they are not necessary to make a good puzzle.)
   My knowledge of the theme of this puzzle is next to nothing, but when I saw BECHERS I recognised it as something connected with a racecourse. I also saw Valentine, but that meant nothing to me. Looking up Becher’s, I was led to the Grand National at Aintree, and I had no trouble finding all five features of the first kind, totalling 35 cells. I also found RED RUM, the ninth element. But ELBOW was the only other feature I could find until I re-read the Wiki article: POST should have been obvious to me anyway, but TAPE took some finding, and I had to confirm it was thematic.
   Many thanks to Gaston and Mister Sting.

5. Re #5, HA is a an abbreviation from Latin (hoc anno) meaning in this year

6. Smylers @3
   Regarding 42a, a kip or kipp is, according to Chambers, ‘(in gymnastics), a swinging movement that reverses the relative positions of body and legs.’ It is the 6th kip headword in that dictionary.
   It’s an unusual clue because it just uses a definition with no wordplay.

7. Thanks, both.

   Mister Sting has underlined 42A as a double definition, which looks right to me (I just didn’t know either of the definitions). And I now see that the online OED does have the gym definition, with ‘kipp’ as an alternative spelling — it just doesn’t show up when searching for ‘kipp’.

8. Smylers @7
   You’re right about the double definition (Kipp and kipp). I’d forgotten how I solved it and overlooked the gap in the bloggers underlining.

9. Smylers at #3 – I had a similar quandary about the ‘appropriate’ fence colouring (especially being colour-blind, or rather more colour-ignorant myself). I consulted my wife (who has done a bit of horse riding and cross-country eventing in her time) and she suggested green, and I commissioned my daughter to choose suitable shades of green and brown that would show up on the scanned version – which took a couple of goes. I guess I will be sharing out my book-token prize if I am lucky enough to be selected!

10. An impressive construction with a lot of thematic material to include, in fairly fixed positions, and a symmetric grid to boot. Having the Chair bypassed by the Elbow was neat and I was grateful for the addition of Red Rum as that was my way into the endgame. A nicely enjoyable solve. Thanks Gaston and Mister Sting.

11. can anyone explain why MAP is capitalised as such in the preamble? i assumed at first that it being called a ‘map’ was a red herring of sorts, and that it would instead be an acronym for something. was surprised when it turned out to be an actual map!

12. I also thought it was a pleasure to work through a set of good clues with no gimmicks. Good fun all round, thanks very much. My in was FOINAVEN, I remember the race, but I had forgotten that there was a fence named after the horse so that threw me (no pun intended).

    davey, I think it is just house style of the EV to have the title and setter’s name in capitals, and then the title repeated in capitals in the preamble.

13. Brilliant crossword and a familiar theme for me. As soon as I saw “Chair”, I had it. Aintree’s fences are uniquely green rather than the usual dark brown, so that was a nice touch, as was the great horse jumping Valentine’s Brook. It reminded me of some of the great clues of the 70s e.g. “Back Red Rum to make a killing (6)”.

    It was great that Gaston included so many features, but if he looks in here, I wondered why he did not include “Elbow” in that shape. I am sure he will have thought of it, but with so much to include, I suppose it could not be fitted in.

    Thanks Gaston and Mister Sting

14. John Nick @12 thank you! this was my first EV, so not familiar with their conventions

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