Enigmatic Variations No. 949 – Square By Square by Piccadilly

After a few weeks of seasonal/festive-themed EVs, we are back to business with a ‘normal’ EV – but no less enyoyable for that! A fiendish looking preamble – with ALL answers entered ‘cyclically’ and an encoded perimeter, with the code based on two unlued entries. It looked like we were going to be back to business with a bump – but, with a bit of head-down application and, I felt, some relatively gentle clueing, this soon fell into place, and turned out to be my quickest EV solve in a long while – although I still haven’t worked out the relevance/connection of the title…

It made sense to look at the shortest entries first, as there would be fewer permutations to check – and so it turned out…3D had only one letter in common with 11A, so that determined the cyclic start of each of these two – and then 2D and 4D soon followed. Similarly the four-letter 15A quickly determined the entry of 6/7/8D and the first unclued entry, ‘TOM SAWYER’ shone out at me – leading to ‘MARK TWAIN’ in the other.

The coding sequence, incorporating Twain’s real name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is then:

Code sequence:
M A R K T W I N S U E L G H O C B D F J P Q V X Y Z
T O M S A W Y E R B C D F G H I J K L N P Q U V X Z

Coded phrases:
P U D D N H E A D W I L S O N
P B K K E G C O K W Y D R H E

F O L L O W I N G T H E E Q U A T O R
L H D D H W Y E F A G C C Q B O A H M

R O U G H I N G I T
M H B F G Y E F Y A

Whilst a totally different treatment, the thematic elements of Twain/Clemens and Sawyer, Pudd’nhead Wilson etc. ocurred in a relatively recent EV (912 – Sounding by Loda) – as well as a recent Grauniad Genius by Araucaria, and probably a recent Inquisitor or two(?) – so this helped trigger the pattern recognition – at least for me. Given the recent 100th anniversary of his death, at which milestone he gave permission for his autobiography to be published, I guess it is no surprise that there has been renewed interest, and some good thematic material to work with.

I have to say I found the clueing rather gentle, with a preponderance of anagrams – in fact nine out of eighteen down clues – 1, 6, 7, 12, 17, 19, 20, 21 and 22 – were all full or partial anagrams! However, there is nothing wrong with gentleness, per se – not all EVs can be complete stinkers – and maybe Piccadilly felt the complications of the cycling and encoding were enough to contend with, without messing with our heads with some sadistic clueing as well?!

All in all, a very enjoyable EV, and maybe now the great man himself might quip: ‘the cruciverbal use of my work/passing has now been a teensy bit exaggerated…let’s wait another 100 crosswords or so…’