Comments on: Guardian Genius 87 by Lavatch

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 07:54:03 +0000

We worked out that there was a two-letter shift going on (and didn’t find the instructions ambiguous), but never found the theme. Having made the mistake of putting 1a in plain, rather than coded, we struggled for ages. Even when this was corrected, we only managed about half the crossword – I thought even the ‘plain’ clues were tough, then you were often unable to enter a solution without knowing whether it was ‘themed’ or not.
Can’t complain, though, one doesn’t expect the Genius to be easy!

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:34:47 +0000

Duncan, what a superb analysis: thank you!

I made the mistake of assuming that only the crossing letters were coded by the F is H rule and entered the other letters in the solution normally. I don’t think the need to encrypt the entire solution was made clear in the preamble and I emailed Hugh Stevenson to ask if both interpretations would be accepted. He did not reply and no mention of this is made in his newsletter.

e.g. 1a – SERGEANT MAJOR. I entered SGRIECNV MCJQR; only encrypting the crossing letters.

Like Andrew, I was befogged by MIST before I got 26, SMELT, giving me the theme. Unfortunately I entered UMGLV instead of UOGNV.

I had to use Google to check TSADDIKIM.

Overall it was not a taxing puzzle. I enjoyed SCARECROW at 9, but little else. In fact, I have enjoyed Duncan’s Blog more!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 23:20:19 +0000

Thanks Duncan. I had got nowhere with this earlier in the month, but decided to have a final go at it this evening before the deadline, and to my surprise managed to finish it off quite quickly. I was convinced for a long time that MIST (M is T) was the key to the code, but I should have read the instructions more carefully! It was nice misdirection that all the fish had other meanings. BEWILDER for "buffalo" in 17dn reminds me of the strange sentence that contains eight occurrences of "buffalo" and nothing else.