Comments on: Azed 1847 – Inquisitors and heretics

By: petebiddlecombe

petebiddlecombe — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:59:37 +0000

Al, you’re quite right about the Listener guidance, but I don’t think all other puzzles have to do the same. If you guessed the whole word with no work on the codesquare then the puzzle was rather wasted, but I suspect there were others like me who got some help with part of the codephrase and used this plus codesquare logic to work out the rest. That might encourage some people who would otherwise shy away from Playfairs to have a go.

By: Al Streatfield

Al Streatfield — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:12:57 +0000

I’m sorry if this posting sounds rather crazy.

I guessed the key-phrase to be “MONKEY TRAILS” and gave up on the puzzle.

In my opinion, Playfairs, which I love, should not give any clues as to what the key-word is. If you can guess this, then there is no reason to work out how to decode Playfair squares.

The Listener Notes to Setters agrees with me. It says: “Playfair submissions which give a clue as to the keyword won’t be accepted”, or words to that effect…

By: roland

roland — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 09:13:49 +0000

If that was one of the easier Playfairs, I live in dread of anything harder…..

By: linxit

linxit — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 10:11:14 +0000

I’m not sure where I went wrong with this one. I finished the grid, and with a bit of help from Bradford’s, got all the monkeys. Then used the exact same logical process to work out the positions of the first few letters, and guessed at MONKEY TRAILS fairly early. Then discounted it as something didn’t fit. After another couple of hours of trial and error I gave up. Damn!

By: DFM

DFM — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:39:10 +0000

Sorry Azed – I meant ‘elder-statesman’!

By: DFM

DFM — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:32:06 +0000

Azed and Araucaria have only been in the same room once (at Sandy Balfour’s launch – I think I tried to introduce them). Araucaria’s deafness and the level of background noise was such that any exchange of words was minimal. Azed also corresponded with Araucaria when he produced his book. Azed’s recent dedication and the comments in his book were made in the eirenical spirit that befits his elderly-statesman image, but don’t for one minute think that his own views on clues aren’t pretty uncompromising, and please don’t think that the two A’s are ever likely to travel a few hundred miles to have a few jokes down at the local. No palsy-walsy Times/Guardian ‘meets’ (horrible word) for them!

By: jetdoc

jetdoc — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:27:11 +0000

Playfairs being probably my least favourite type of puzzle, I put this one aside after solving the clues, and didn’t get round to the final step. I knew the code phrase had to be ’MONKEY something’; but ‘MONKEY TRAILS’? What an obscure phrase! It is not given in Chambers, which gives nothing between ‘monkey tricks’ and ‘monkey tails’.

Thanks for a wonderfully clear step-by-step guide to working out the Playfair. I’m glad I wasn’t blogging this one!