Comments on: Guardian Genius 92 – Brummie

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:31:09 +0000

Hi Andrew, thanks for the blog. I twigged all of this except for OGPU, which I suppose might have fallen to some research on secret police outfits. FARTHINGALE required some research too.

I started off on the wrong foot, thinking the answers were to be modified, by the time I had noticed that all the word lengths were correct I re-read the instructions and “got” it, since I was having trouble making OVERWEIGHT = “fate”.

There is a typo in the parsing of 14 above; “A in (A FILM)*” should read “N in (A FILM)*”, by the way.

I really enjoyed this puzzle, I always like when there is “something else” that has to be done to solve them, so thanks for the hours of pleasure, Brummie!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:08:34 +0000

Ian – I agree it’s very subjective, and congratulations on being the first entry and giving Ian of N14 a run for his money.

As a counterexample to my assertion, I rattled off the latest Genius puzzle (by Paul) very quickly. At the “meet the setter” evening at the Guardian a couple of months ago, John Halpern said that the rough guidelines for the Genius were (as I remember) that it should be more than twice as hard as a daily, but not ten times as hard.

By: Ian W.

Ian W. — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:58:27 +0000

Actually, I’ve been thinking the Genius puzzles were getting easier, and this was one of the easiest I’ve seen in a long while. It is probably a matter of perception, though. When I first started doing them a couple of years ago, each one would happily occupy me for a few weeks. Then they started falling faster and faster, often under an hour. Desperate to find more difficult crosswords from before this apparent dumbing down, I went back to the earliest archived Geniuses for the first time but was able to do the entire first two years’ worth in idle moments over one weekend. So perceptions of getting easier or harder seem very susceptible to subjective factors. And if they seem impenetrable, don’t give up hope – keep slogging, and eventually what seemed impossible will seem easier and easier.

Ian W. (of SW3)

By: Jan

Jan — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:33:55 +0000

What a superb blog, Andrew – very clearly laid out out – thank you. These are the notes which I made on completion …

I really enjoy Brummie’s puzzles but I thought this one may defeat me when I read the instructions. However, it proved to be a cryptic delight once I got going, with enough straighforward clues to help with crossing letters.

I was slightly disappointed by the appearance of ‘ale’ in consecutive solutions and had to check that ALOE is a succulent.

It took a while to determine the missing letters in 5a and 13 and by the time I completed the puzzle (OFF AND ON being a reasonable bet) I had only identified 10 of the special clues and realised that I should have added NOO, ONO or OON, somewhere. I re-read the clues, carefully, four times, before I saw the obvious! I had been quite happy with the definition in 25 as ‘large ball’ (shaped as a rugby ball), with ‘large’ doing double duty.

28 caused a chuckle when read with the missing word and I wasn’t totally sure where the ID or DI for 20 should fit in the clue.

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:16:37 +0000

PS – I meant to say that I like how you’ve done the blog – it can’t have been easy!

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:14:36 +0000

Thanks for the blog – we’d put in a few (14a, 26a, 24d) without understanding how they worked.
Don’t know about getting harder, I’m always pleasantly surprised to finish a Genius at all, which we did for this, in under two weeks!
I think the main difficulty with this was working out which clues were straight and which ‘special’. Most of the actual clues weren’t particularly hard once the devilish accretions had been stripped away.
That Mr Edison’s a frequent visitor to crossword-land lately!

By: Robi

Robi — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:39:38 +0000

Thanks Brummie – nice idea!

Thanks Andrew for a good blog. Not sure how I managed this, but my tally of letters didn’t quite add up to the phrase; but it couldn’t be anything else.

I liked FARTHINGALE.