Enigmatic Variations No.1183 – Reinstate by Wiglaf

“A sentence (now obsolete) that could help memorise a well-known series of objects (in the correct order) appears in the perimeter starting in the top left hand corner.”

Any ideas?

I was fortunate enough to guess correctly that the “well-known series of objects” was the planets.  I’m not sure if there are any other series that would fit that description!

While that didn’t allow me to fill in the perimeter immediately, it did mean that I had only to work out which permutation Wiglaf had chosen of the various mnemonics.  It turns out to be:

MY – Mercury
VERY – Venus
ELEMENTARY – Earth
METHOD – Mars
JUST – Jupiter
SHOWS – Saturn
US – Uranus
NINE – Neptune
PLANETS – Pluto

From there, it’s possible to make an educated assumption as to what the ‘instructions on how to REINSTATE one of these objects’ (spelled out by extra letters in the wordplay) will be.  What we have to do is:

HIGHLIGHT A DEMOTED PLANET

Following that instruction, we find PLUTO in the SE corner.

Lovely!

Some people seem to like puzzles that leave them banging their head against a wall.  If that’s you, perhaps this won’t have been your favourite puzzle.  As for me, I was grateful for the smooth and enjoyable grid-fill and the pleasant subject matter (I’ve always been stunned and absorbed by the various facts about the cosmos).

Please come again, Wiglaf!

Notation

(xxx) = definition
[xxx] = (anagram/homophone/container/etc.) indicator
XXX* = anagram
< = reversal
SHIFT = extra letter

Please post a comment if the explanations are not clear.