Mister Sting

Enigmatic Variations No 1175 – Here’s Looking at You, Kcit

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Here’s the preamble in full:

Clues are presented in the correct order.  The completed grid, which does not have one letter per square, displays mirror symmetry, and resembles the item given by the unclued entry (verifiable, though not the precise form used, in the Oxford Dictionary of English). Clue numbers and bars must not be entered. Those letters which are not one per square, when combined with those in the four shaded cells, can be rearranged to give a thematic word which must be written under the grid.  Chambers Dictionary (2014) is recommended, but does not contain one reasonably common foreign word; one entry is an abbreviation.

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Enigmatic Variations No.1171 – Who Am I? by Ifor

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The preamble to WHO AM I? is quite intimidating.  There are two verses to be identified.  The first explains changes to two groups of three clues each, a phrase to be highlighted, and the answer to the titular question, which is to be written under the grid.  The second is given by extra letters in wordplay in 29 clues, and it identifies the number of the single normal clue and the rationale for the removal of the letters.  Got that?

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Enigmatic Variations No.1167 – Warning by Samuel

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A somewhat unusual set-up: across clues are given in pairs, and the method of entry for four across rows is thematic (whatever that might turn out to mean), with no definition given.  Another row is unclued, and must be filled with ‘the reason for the WARNING’.  The down clues, meanwhile, are not idle – extra letters from their solutions give ‘the subject of the WARNING’.

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Enigmatic Variations No.1163 – Lucas by MynoT

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I have a soft spot for puzzles such as this that have clues presented in alphabetical order of their answers.  Goodness knows why, when I might end up staring at a blank grid!  Perhaps its just that the ‘sort and slot’ technique appeals to the same desire for order as jigsaws.

At any rate, ‘Lucas’ could be a number of things.  Isn’t George still flogging the dead horse of Star Wars?  Maybe it’s related to that.

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Enigmatic Variations No.1159 – Offerings by Samson

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I’m fond of these perimeter-quotation puzzles, although they can make things a little tricky if you can’t get a toe-hold in the centre of the puzzle.  However, it’s not clear how much if any of the quotation will survive the dramatic cull proposed in the preamble (we are to delete almost three quarters of the grid once it’s been filled in). 

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Enigmatic Variations No.1155 – Reductions by Oxymoron

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Oxymoron gives some hints about the possible construction of the puzzle here, by calling it REDUCTIONS, and telling us in the preamble of “a shortage of space” and “clashes”, and warning us that the number of cells given in grid entries may not be the number of letters in answers to clues.

All well and good.  That still leaves a lot of questions.

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