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Puzzle #30 - November 2003. "At Sixes and Sevens"

Instructions: Guess the words defined by the cryptic clues (words vary in length from four to nine letters), then enter them in the grid one after another in the same order as their clues, starting in the upper left corner. Across words that don't end at the right margin continue on the next line below, and down words don't end at the bottom margin continue in the next column to the right. Nine across words won't fit unless one of their letters is removed. Those nine letters, taken in order, spell a word that indicates how down words are to be altered before they are entered in the grid. As ever, I am grateful to Kevin Wald for help with the clues. (If you are having trouble printing these puzzles, you can download an Adobe Acrobat version of the puzzle and grid). [Want to see some hints?]

Across

  1. Sure, get riled up and make a motion
  2. Gave food, gold, and a hat
  3. What's inside varies, changing with coherence initially
  4. Distress of butler confused about love . . .
  5. Except when not initially gloomy
  6. Labor of birth is reversed by quack
  7. Unexpected south-of-France hideaway
  8. License for a school
  9. Returning nourished, finish off guard
  10. Maverick nine getting up for lack of interest
  11. Arm of automobile plant
  12. Pattern of profit surrounding key
  13. Joy of rowdy sibs eating first of lollipops
  14. Cry of animal left in pound
  15. Color of numbers
  16. Villain has head of malevolent insect
  17. Rails chill in vessel
  18. Paste found in cream is oily
  19. Set off from school in time
  20. Wrong quote about right collar
  21. Fashion enclosure with diffidence

Down

  1. Cope with initially green and ripening fruit
  2. Maureen competes in cinema
  3. Make feasible processing of baleen
  4. Courts confining us in country
  5. District reign comes to grief about nothing
  6. Look askance at small sequence of five
  7. Hard, twisting road around unit ahead of us
  8. Before '49, imparted seed
  9. Steer uncertainly at end of belt-way
  10. Follow progeny, keeping up with 200
  11. Widely known part of a mouse
  12. Laundered money traps a petty officer
  13. Last of mud turning softer in thaw
  14. Shot in valley? Make a splash!
  15. Coiled in action; otherwise submissive
  16. Cried out in storage building
  17. Slow-starting and not readily apparent offender
  18. Exchange of words in urban terms
  19. Foiled by my diets failing

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