Enigmatic Variations No. 1487: Difference by Chalicea

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Chalicea presents us with a poetic theme in DIFFERENCE. Poetry has never really been my thing, but I’ve now had two in a row, after EV 1483 – and this one is bound to be equally educational for me!…

The preamble states that:

“Fifteen words from the thematic poem, which explains what led to the DIFFERENCE, appear in the clues (in the order of their appearance in the poem) and need to be removed before solving. Read in clue order, the initial letters of the words flanking the removals give an instruction concerning 37 contiguous cells. Two articles are ignored. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended. ”

This was a slow, gradual (maybe even attritional?!) solve, trying to find those pesky extra words and their flanking initials. Once I (eventually) had the PDM as to the thematic poem and poet, I sort of gave up on trying to find the words and flankers, and concentrated on grid-filling. A false economy, as I then had to work through everything again to retrofit the ‘instruction’.

The PDM was more osmosis than light-bulb switching – I had the start of the phrase as maybe SH-AD-EP-OE, so SHADE POET or POEM?, and I somehow chanced upon ‘ROBERT FROST’ along the sixth row, and/or (THE) ROAD NOT TAKEN in the second column (can’t remember which I spotted first!).

I was vaguely aware of the poem, but had never read or studied it in detail. I had to now! It didn’t take long to find a copy online and, it being over 100 years old, I trust I am not breaking any copyright by presenting it below.

(THE) ONE LESS TRAVELED BY wasn’t too hard to find next, snaking down the right-hand side, with LESS in a nice straight line. And some painstaking cross-checking of extra words and clues eventually confirmed that all the material had to be shaded – SHADE POET, TITLE AND THE ROAD HE TOOK. (With hindsight, the first word of that and a simple bit of maths could have confirmed that to get 37 cells you had to shade them all!).

Finally, the closing line explains the puzzle’s title:

 

The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the DIFFERENCE.

 

And there you have it – a lovely treatment of a famous poem, cleverly worked into the grid, and an interesting device to use (flanked) words from the poem to provide the instruction. No mean feat, either, to work those flanking words in without making the clues too ‘clunky’ or contrived – there were the odd one or two that jumped out as likely candidates on reading through the clues, but not many.

There were some new/obscure (to me) words – BOBOL, SYNANTHY, TIGE – and that interesting phrase: ON THE WALLABY…I’ll have to try that out on may Aussie brother-in-law, next time I get over there!

Many thanks to Chalicea, for an educational mental workout. I hope all is clear below…

Across
Clue No Solution / Entry Thematic word Flanking initials Clue (definition underlined, thematic word and flanking initials in bold/
Logic/Parsing
1 IRRIGATIONAL Concerned with watering, not judicious taking in backward US soldier (12) /
IRR_ATIONAL (not judicious) around (taking) IG (GI, US soldier, backward)
9 NOULES two S H Note louse wriggling in Spenser’s two high parts of heads (6) /
anag, i.e. wriggling, of N (note) + LOUSE
10 IN TOTO Entirely fashionable Wizard of Oz character (6, two words) /
IN (fashionable) + TOTO (Wizard of Oz character)
11 CANIDS sorry A D Preserve fish for foxes and sorry dogs (6) /
CAN (preserve) + IDS (fish, plural of id?)
12 GAELIC one E P Mercurially agile, originally Celtic tongue; Erse one possibly names it (6) /
anag, i.e. mercurially, of AGILE + C (original letter of Celtic)
13 ODEA Lay about theatres (4) /
ODE (lay, poem) + A (about)
15 RELY bent O E Railway outside bent east and left bank (4) /
R__Y (railway) around (outside) E (East) + L (left)
16 NONETTO other T T Composition of leaders of noted old northern English town’s other top orchestra (7) /
leading letters of ‘Noted Old Northern English Town’s Top Orchestra’
18 ROBE fair I T Bore in fair turmoil put on ceremonial gown (4) /
anag, i.e. in turmoil, of BORE
20 FROSTY Expressive of disdain of afro style before the French lopped from it (6) /
(A)FRO STY(LE) with A (Latin, ante, before) and LE (the, in French) lopped off either end)
22 STERES Measures young oxen we hear (6) /
homophone – STERES (units of measure) sounds like STEERS (young oxen)
25 SORN leaves L E Without invitation, guest in Leith leaves endless grief and ultimately pain (4) /
SOR(E) (grief, endlessly) + N (ultimate letter of paiN)
27 BE AT BAY Whip up horse and face one’s pursuers (7, three words) /
BE AT (whip up, beat, as in an egg, or some cream) + BAY (horse)
29 PACO Old man has care of domesticated mammal (4) /
PA (father, old man) + CO (care of)
31 OVEN black A N Completed almost black new furnace (4) /
OVE(R) (almost all of over, completed) + N (new)
33 SKYMAN Paratrooper’s a Scottish islander it’s said (6) /
homophone – a person from the island of Skye could be a SKYE-MAN; which could sound like SKYMAN (paratrooper)
34 UNBELT Remove band from Southern US states bar middle of Mississippi (6) /
(S)UNBELT (the Southern US states, the Sunbelt, minus S – middle letter of ‘missiSsippi’
35 PESETA Formerly tender foot felt bad from time to time (6) /
PES (Latin, the human foot) + ETA (occasional letters from ‘fElT bAd’
36 DOODAH first D T Diminutive first trinket retrospectively held no good now and then (6) /
HAD (held) + OOD (occasional letters from ‘nO gOoD’, all reversed, or retrospectively = DOODAH!
37 ON THE WALLABY another H E Where one hangs another etching, maybe, to atone, once, for travelling in bush with swag (12, three words) /
ON THE WALL (where one might hang an etching) + ABY (to atone, archaic, or once)
Down
Clue No Solution / Entry Thematic word Flanking initials Clue (definition underlined, thematic word and flanking initials in bold) /
Logic/Parsing
1 IN COURSE Regularly ordered coin user upset (8, two words) /
anag, i.e. upset, of COIN USER
2 RUNE Regret about Norse letter (4) /
RU_E (regret) around N (Norse)
3 ILIAN Cause downfall of one uprising Trojan (5) /
NAIL (cause the downfall of) + I (one) – all uprising = ILIAN
4 ASSOTT Infatuated ancient fool going too far (6) /
ASS (fool) + OTT (over the top, going too far)
5 TIGE Part of column, for example, it’s put up (4) /
EG (for example) + IT, all put up = TIGE
6 INAMORATO Male lover upset gypsy at opening of overtures (9) /
INAMOR (Romani, or gypsy, upset) + AT + O (first letter, or opening, of Overtures)
7 NO LESS Admiring expression when offspring turns up embracing the French (6, two words) /
NO_S (son, or offspring, turning up) around (embracing) LES (the, in French)
8 ATILT Involved in rumpy-pumpy, clutching lecturer – not quite upright (5) /
AT IT (involved in rumpy-pumpy!) around (clutching!) L (lecturer)
14 TEREBRATE Flat cap raised by chatterer with no restraints – bore! (9) /
TEREB (beret, flat cap, raised) + (P)RATE(R) (chatterer, with no outer letters, or restraints)
15 ROOS knowing R O Leaders of revolutionary knowing Ozzie outback services providing little marsupials (4) /
first letters, or leaders, of ‘Revolutionary Ozzie Outback Services’
16 NOT Negation of retrograde fashion (3) /
TON (fashion), retrograde (reversed)
17 SYNANTHY Gran taking over from ma, at first, and pa in sympathy for abnormal flower fusion (8) /
SY(M)(PA)THY with M (ma, at first) and PA removed, replaced by NAN (gran) = SYNANTHY
19 ERGO Thus man-eating monster’s overthrown (4) /
ERGO (thus) = OGRE (man-eating monster), overthrown
21 TRY this A D Attempt this, disregarding objections principally in rightwinger (3) /
T(O)RY (right-winger), disregarding O (first or principal letter of Objections)
23 ENCYST Enclose in small cavity part of currency store (6) /
hidden word in, i.e. part of, ‘currENCY STore’
24 GARUDA Irish police protecting classy Indonesian airline (6) /
GAR_DA (Irish police) around (protecting) U (classy, opposite of non-U!)
26 TAKEN Secured soldiers with range of knowledge (5) /
TA (Territorial Army, soldiers) + KEN (range of knowledge)
28 BOBOL somewhere H E Be, say, in Haiti somewhere, engaged in corruption; awful boob pursued by law primarily (5) /
BOBO (anag, i.e. awful, of BOOB) followed (pursued) by L (first, or primary, letter of Law)
30 GNAW one T O Distress caused by antique tooth one overturned (4) /
WANG (obsolete, or antique, for molar tooth) overturned = GNAW (distress)
32 VEDA all O K Deva surprisingly found in old all Kshatriya text, perhaps (4) /
anag, i.e. surprisingly, of DEVA

 

7 comments on “Enigmatic Variations No. 1487: Difference by Chalicea”

  1. I enjoyed this one a lot. I liked in particular the kind of clue manipulation chosen for fifteen of the clues, whereby they yielded more than one piece of information. I managed to work through the clues leaving only one not fully parsed, and then the clear message from the letters forced that last piece of information to come out.

    On completing the grid I saw ROBERT FROST across the middle and NOT TAKEN going down a column on the left, but nothing else. I never use a ‘wild’ Google search for revealing themes, and I duly looked up Robert Frost first in Chambers’ Biographical Dictionary, which does not mention The Road Not Taken, and then in the ODQ, which does. In fact the ODQ quotes the line indicating what road he took. I found the complete verse in the Poetry Foundation online (demonstrating incidentally that ‘traveled’ is misquoted as ‘travelled’ in the ODQ).

    Thanks to Chalicea for a fine puzzle and to mc_rapper67 for the blog.

  2. Thanks, Alan B – interesting stuff – especially the single/double-L dichotomy of US vs ‘proper’ English, and ODQ getting it wrong! I had to bite my tongue here, as the poem was written in the US – at least there were no colo(u)rs or flavo(u)rs in the poem!

    There is a ‘setter’s blog‘ over on the BD site, where Chalicea gives some background on the puzzle. She also muses as to whether the flanking letters device might have ‘…added too much difficulty…’. I didn’t go into this specifically in the blog, but I would suggest that this was on the harder end of the Chalicea spectrum!… But, judging by Alan B’s comment above, he for one approves of this novel device, as do I.

  3. mc_rapper67
    The ‘flanking letters’, far from adding to the difficulty, actually complement the surplus word in those clues. For example: given SHADEPOETTITLEAN??HE…, one can guess DT to fill the gap, and the clue to 36a DOODAH supplies those letters, the surplus word ‘first’ being sandwiched between ‘Diminutive’ and ‘trinket’. This may have been one of the two examples of the ‘reverse’ approach that I actually had to use (but I cannot now remember what they were).

  4. mc_rapper67, I loved your detailed blog, fine graphics, and generous reaction to the device that I was using for the first time. It was difficult to keep a sound surface reading in the clues where it appeared and I did wonder how solvers would react so thank you, as always, Alan B for your response and encouraging comments. Yes, the ODQ has let me down a couple of times in the past so I am wary of its spelling of US words – those ‘neighbors’ of ours do it their way that we have to honor.

  5. Sorry to be late commenting. I thought this was a fun solve. As others have said, the use of words flanking extra words was a novel touch which must have added to setting complexity. The thematic material was neatly woven into the grid. All very enjoyable – and particularly liked discovering “on the wallaby”.

  7. Chalicea at #4 – thanks for your kind words – solving/blogging your puzzles is always a pleasure, never a chore!

    Stick Insect and John Nick – thanks also for your comments – lateness isn’t an issue here – the EV has its own cadence, a little less rushed/urgent than the daily puzzles…

    Re. the flanking letters device – we all seem to agree it was a novel and interesting method, and useful for retro-fitting any stragglers – and as Stick Insect suggests, maybe it added more complexity to the setting process than it added to the difficulty for the solvers?!…

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