Comments on: Guardian Genius 66: Animals, by Araucaria

By: Philbo

Philbo — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:40:54 +0000

Wow! I thought I was pretty good at these. Took me about 2 months off and on, to get this one 2/3 done. Humbling!

By: John Dean

John Dean — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:48:17 +0000

jetdoc Says:
January 5th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Thanks, Duncan. It was a bit difficult typing in non-words.

- It must have been. Thanks for persevering. I was chuffed to complete the puzzle but glad to see some explanantions. Another typing correction you need is BRPIGRY at 1 ac.
I misled myself for a while with 1 d, having ‘U’ pretty certainly as the second letter I recollected that ‘laurel’ is a stage of the salmon’s life cycle and almost convinced myself that ‘laurels’ was the answer before I saw ‘bluecap’.

By: mhl

mhl — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:50:00 +0000

It took me a lot of down clues (and a lot of time) before figuring out what the four animals must be, but after that this one went fairly fast. In case anyone hadn’t seen the crossword editor’s latest newsletter, apparently Araucaria described this puzzle as being “of a sort that he himself would never dream of trying to solve”.

By: Tom Hutton

Tom Hutton — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:32:47 +0000

This was a cracking crossword. I don’t usually do hard ones but being Christmas and having obliging rellies to hand, we had a go. It was great fun but amazingly dificullt to get the hang of the method.

By: Duncan Shiell

Duncan Shiell — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:58:55 +0000

I’ve just been on The Guardian site to download January’s Genius and note that you have to click on the link in the right hand column ‘Genius Crossword for 5 January’ to get the right one – No 67.

If you click on the link in the left hand column ‘This month’s Genius crossword’ you get another offering of Genius 64 by Locum. No doubt it will get corrected.

By: jetdoc

jetdoc — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:43:39 +0000

Thanks, Duncan. It was a bit difficult typing in non-words.

By: Duncan Shiell

Duncan Shiell — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:37:32 +0000

Definitely a fun crossword – once, as you say, I got the hang of what was going on with the animals. I was aware of PIG and EWE fairly early on, CAT came next and finally ASS.

I think you may have a typo in the ‘entry’ for 10 across. I think it is DEEWEHLON

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:25:13 +0000

Thanks for the blog jetdoc, especially the explanation of 26ac, where I got the answer but had no idea why it was right…

Generally I found this one very hard going: it took me several sessions over the month, and I just managed to get it done before the deadline (interrupted somewhat by all the Christmas offerings).

24 dn – the Greta is a tributary of the River Tees.