Enigmatic Variations

Hi all. This time around we have an engaging EV from the editor himself. I found the clues a little tougher to crack than others recently, but enjoyed the nice satisfying endgame which all came together neatly.

The preamble reads:

Answers to six clues must be replaced by alternatives of a thematic kind, as suggested by a major clerical task undertaken by the recipient of a COMMUNICATION. All other clues contain an extra letter which must be removed before solving; in clue order, the extra letters give the COMMUNICATION and sender. Finally, solvers must expel one letter from each row into the barred-off region of the grid, thereby showing the recipient and the effect of the COMMUNICATION on him; ignoring gaps, real words are left in the completed grid. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.

I must have been solving lots of misprinted clues lately, because several times I had to remind myself that (most) clues have an extra letter rather than a changed one. I managed to get a good foothold in the left had side of the grid and identify from the clashes the entries which needed to be changed. With enough checkers, ANGST and ERSATZ suggested themselves as synonyms of the original answers. While I had noticed that both these words were from the German, I was still silly enough to try rather hard to parse AUTOBAHN at 1a, before calling myself (in English) a doughnut, because of course this was the entry post translation.

The right hand side put up stiffer resistance. It didn’t help that I had been lulled into a false sense of security, assuming that all the German translations would be familiar. Writing this, I have just checked and found that ECHT is actually in Chambers, but for both that and FÄNGER JAEGER I needed a translator – in the second case, Phi in the first comment below. Online translation had supplied me with fänger, but jaeger is clearly much better. Repeating the search now, I see that I would have seen jäger but rejected it as not fitting the grid, not thinking of the alternative JAEGER. In any event I should have had more faith and hunted for the hunter in Chambers. Thanks to Phi.

The letters expelled from the clues didn’t make much sense for a long time, but it’s strange how often that happens, especially when names are involved. Eventually, with a couple of pesky answers still to get, I turned to my search engine of choice and started typing decet roma … autosuggest immediately supplied the rest, and all became clear. We have:

DECET ROMANUM PONTIFICEM, a papal bull issued by POPE LEO X

… and I have just noticed that the clues without expelled letters are in exactly the right places to give the spaces between the spelled out words. A lovely touch.

When MARTIN LUTHER refused to recant his views at the Diet of Worms, he was excommunicated – represented here by expelling him from the main grid to form a new schism.

The replacement of answers with German alternatives refers to Luther’s translation of the Bible into the German vernacular. His source texts were Hebrew and Greek, but I’m thankful that ours were English instead, and that we didn’t have to translate the entire thing!

Many thanks, proXimal – may you never be eXcommunicated from the Church of Crosswords!