Enigmatic Variations No. 1750 – Protegees by Vismut

“Eight across clues have an extra word to be removed before solving; its position in the clue indexes which of its letters to select. When read in clue order these letters might be a description of someone and when unjumbled what they were interested in. A nickname occupies the top row of the grid and the names of the PROTEGEES it refers to run around the rest of the perimeter. The unclued entries should be completed with their study groups, one of which is hanging upside down. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”The extra words give a hint of “what they were interested in”. In clue order, the relevant letters of the extra words give IT’S MR. APE; unjumbled, they give PRIMATES (which the Pope is in two senses).

The top row is LEAKEY’S ANGELS. (Primatologist Louis Leakey actually called the three women he selected to study PRIMATES in their natural environments ‘The Trimates‘.) They were:

BIRUTÉ GALDIKA, who studied ORANGUTANS (hanging upside down);

JANE GOODALL, who studied CHIMPANZEES; and

DIAN FOSSEY, who studied GORILLAS.

Fossey was murdered in 1985. Goodall died last year. Galdika died just this March.

I’m sure that a lot of solvers will have filled in much of the grid in a great post-enlightenment flood, although the parsing for 24 across took me a moment.

Note that 10% of British men wrongly think they could beat a chimpanzee in a fight, and about 4% would become angels at the hands of a gorilla (the percentages are doubled in the USA). Apparently no one asked about orangutans.

Finally, thanks to Vismut!

As always, please let me know if anything isn’t clear.