Quite a lot going here, and a grade 4 workout. Five works by x to be discovered …
 
Original letters in down misprinted definitions {novel} spell out the first. Replacing x‘s initials with other letters (leaving real words) leads to the next two – to be highlighted. A continuous line drawn through a symbol in the grid cryptically indicates the fourth; and the unclued entries are loosely defined by the fifth. Phew!

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The rubric reads: In several cases the answers to across and down clues clash as to the presence or absence of a letter – lengths in brackets refer to the number of spaces in the grid. Solvers should choose one of two overall options for the final grid (even the theme can’t be in two places at once); either way every entry (allowing for spaces) is a real word or a proper noun. Most clues contain a word not needed for solving; initial and final letters of these words form a pair – in clue order, one letter in each pair contributes to something that isn’t a question, while the other identifies the theme. (No, you won’t need 1 across; trust me…)

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A relatively straightforward offering by Samuel, whose last puzzle in this series was on Christmas Eve 2011.

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This puzzle had quite a long preamble, as follows: ‘Initially the filled grid will contain seven consecutive empty cells.  One letter must be removed from the answers to 20 clues and the residue used to form a word or proper nouns for grid entry, in seven cases without rearrangement.  The removed letters provide an instruction.  All entries in the final grid are real words or names or phrases, including a well-known brand name.  Those experiencing difficulty may be rescued by 21 down’.

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Augeas’s second Inquisitor puzzle, so an appropriate title? And forgive me if I’m brief – on a week’s break for Easter, just outside Hay-on-Wye.
 
Four items have something in common, three of them being the unclued entries in the top, middle, and bottom rows; the remaining item is an anagram of (some of) the letters in shaded cells, the rest providing what is needed to complete the grid appropriately. All fairly clear, except for the slightly mysterious last part. (The final bit of the rubric was slightly garbled, but the paraphrase above is what was meant.)

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There’s a misprint in the definition in all clues. In clue order, they spell out a two part instruction, which will help us to identify a “running joke.” Once the grid’s complete, we have to transform the rows into background noise, in a suitably repetitious manner. Finally, we’ll find several instances of one particular letter already in place.

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Reasonable start this week, but a tricky finish.

We were asked to identify a “joiner” from “components” deduced from the unclued entries, and from misprinted letters in 15 clues.

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The preamble for this puzzle appeared mind-bogglingly complex on first read through.  It went as follows:

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Answers to 16 clues have one letter removed (wherever it occurs) before entry; wordplay refers to the entry. The three unclued entries are of a kind with what these missing letters suggest. Ten cells are to be highlighted in the final grid.
 
If I were to stretch John H’s easy-to-hard ranking from 1-3 to a less coarse 1-5, I’d grade this a 2.

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The preamble tells us that there are misprints in the definitions in some clues but doesn’t tell us how many. The corrected letters give a cryptic link to a location.

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This gave us a good workout and a dialogue between Ba and me (Hi) eventually sorted everything out with one minor exception in 20A.

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The preamble stated that ‘Solvers must fill the central cell and highlight it together with 12 others, so identifying a character whose first action provides the theme.  Each perimeter entry is a pair of words thematically related to solutions to the relevant clues, which are not to be entered.  The answers to the remaining clues must be thematically modified before entry: numbers in parentheses refer to grid entries’

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Four clues have a misprint, and the rest have a redundant word. A jumble of the corrections to the misprints form a word that is thematically associated with eight unclued entries, and the initial letters of the redundant words spell five more thematic associations. The entries in the first and last columns are also relevant.
 
I must say, I found this remarkably easy. I solved about half the across clues on the first pass, then all bar three of the down clues. This allowed me to discover the theme, and fill in all the unclued entries. On the second pass through the clues, I finished off the across answers, and the remaining down ones. It was all over very quickly.

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Phew what a workout! I just hope Schadenfreude derived a lot of “freude” from everyone’s’ “schade!” However, I got there in the end.

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We had to find a writer (1,4) and a work by him, with the first line in the top and bottom spaces and a mournful cry elsewhere in the diagram.

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The preamble stated "the grid exhibits 90 degrees symmetry.  Clues are in conventional order.  One letter must be omitted from each answer before entry in the grid; definitions and letter-counts refer to the full answers, wordplay to the grid entry.  Additionally, what you see in the final grid is what you get from the omitted letters."

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Down answers are ‘affected’ before entry; Across clues are ‘affected’ before solving.
 
Either I got lucky, or this was easy (or both).

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We have to find two quotes (from the same source) around the perimeter and then, cryptically, three down clues will combine to deliver the first. The allusion has to be completed by filling the one blank cell. I searched and searched but couldn’t find a barred-off cell anywhere. Every clue contains an extra word and the first letters of these spell out part of a third related quote. To help us complete the perimeter, Nutmeg has given us the phrase: MOTTO: I HIRE TEAHOUSE.

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A nice seasonal puzzle with some tricky cluing. I started at the top left (unusually) which turned out to be very helpful, as the most important theme word was at 1A. DA?E? led readily to DAMES. So we were looking for two types of Dame, and the rubric indicated pretty clearly that they would be real ones and pantomime ones.

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The preamble stated "in every clue, the wordplay leads to the answer together with an extra letter not to be entered in the grid.  In clue order these give the first line of a work, minus one key word.  The work’s second line suggests the entry method for six answers; it’s final line, a timely message, completes the unclued part of the perimeter."

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Three unclued entries, some clashes, “thematically placed”. Clashes resolve to give an appropriate word reading down the grid. “Three similar words” (similar to what? each other?) “again thematically placed”, forming relevant shapes (16 cells in all) …
 
Slightly mystified by the rubric, but sure that it’ll become clear as we progress.

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Inquisitor 1207

An unusually shaped grid this time. Also, it turns out, some of the bars and borders were missing from the published grid, which is a shame. On inspection, the grid is actually 13×13 with 8 squares missing. A quick email to our editor and I had a proper copy of the grid:

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I found this one – let’s not beat about the bush – very difficult. Without my laptop and Chambers on-line I would never have finished it! I have to say that the whole thing was scrupulously clued, fair and an excellent puzzle from Kruger, just hard.

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The preamble told us that "solvers must fill in the central cell and highlight the poet and the poem in the completed grid (14 squares in total, in a logical order).  The perimeter consists of the poem’s opening, after the title, and 10 answers are to be relevantly mutilated before entry.  Almost half of the remaining clues contain an extra word, the first letter of which, in order, spelling out the the poem’s conclusion."

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The rubric states that extra letters in the wordplay of down clues identify an achievement, one feature of which is symbolically represented in the grid, together with the full name of its creator. All elements must be highlighted (46 cells in all).
 
(My first reading of the rubric led me to think that both “achievement” and “creator” would be given by the extra letters, not that the latter was to be found in the completed grid.)

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