Comments on: AZED No. 2,064 ‘DNKA ILSL STORME’ CHRISTMAS COMPETITION PUZZLE

By: Wayne Corben

Wayne Corben — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:43:22 +0000

Really struggled with this, only finished today!

I found some assistance with the decoding here:

http://www.umich.edu/~umich/fm-34-40-2/ch7.pdf

which may be of help in the future.

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:46:57 +0000

I find the best approach to Playfair puzzles is to assume that the letter to be encoded and its coded equivalent are in the same row of the Playfair square. This assumption holds true unless the two letters to be encoded are in the same column, which is a relatively rare occurrence.

Having completed the other clues in Azed 2064, I could therefore posit that D, G, C, A and Y were in the same row. Same for F, E, S, T and U, and for I, O and N. I then wrote down the (six) letters that remained unaccounted for – which happened to include B and X. Plain sailing from there.

PS – I live in Melbourne, Australia. My mother sends me the Azed and Inquisitor crosswords from the UK each week. This blog is a fantastic way of comparing notes with fellow solvers (Australians aren’t big on cryptic crosswords!) So thanks to all concerned.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:00:52 +0000

I suppose I might feel different about it if I hadn’t cracked the Playfair code, but I should add my thanks for this thoroughly engrossing puzzle. I’ve always been impressed by Bletchley Park etc. and Alan Turing especially, and this gave me a little taste of being a codebreaker. It was interesting seeing The Trafites’ account of solving it. I think I went along a broadly similar path, probably in a vaguer way; but after a lot of trying to be logical about it and sketching partial grids the phrase seemed to appear quite suddenly in my mind and I just wrote out the whole Playfair square and found it worked! I’d been toying with Turkey and Cold already (Turkey just because it was Christmas really, Cold because there had to be a 2-word phrase to clue) but what solved it finally was either my unconscious or dumb luck. Not quite Bletchley, I admit…

By: John

John — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:44:26 +0000

In the past Azed has used Playfair in two different ways. In ordinary Playfair puzzles, the codeword (always a single word in Chambers) had to be deduced from the encoded entries. In several Christmas puzzles, a code phrase could be deduced from the clues (such as latent letters), and was then used to encode entries and sometimes decode the title. This is the first time as far as I know that he’s required solvers to deduce a non-Chambers phrase, so understandably it was a lot harder than than many of the past Playfairs and past Christmas puzzles.

By: Norman L in France

Norman L in France — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:58:43 +0000

RCW
I should have been a bit more detailed to avoid giving the impression I have ESP skills. As is probably the case for many solvers, the TURKEY guess came when the UTSE combination in the clued lights didn’t fit the diagonally opposite format and so had to be a line of letters, and that meant that STORME in the title gave TU as the first 2 letters of the 6-letter word in the title, hence turkey. BTW, I don’t think orangestick comes from anywhere in particular. It may just be the first PL code word he ever thought of. I also think this is the first time he’s used a phrase rather than a single word.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:43:06 +0000

Norman, you must be a lot more telepathic than I am.
“The PL code phrase must be deduced in order to complete the puzzle.It may be seen as a rough definition of the puzzle’s title, which is encoded like the other PL entries and in which, as in the code phrase, no letter recurs.”
And you guessed that meant “turkey”. You are a genius.
Part of the reason I have failed so miserably over many years is that he always gives ‘orangestick’as the example with no indication as to where it comes from.
Ah,well there is always a next time(he says, optimistically).

By: Norman L in France

Norman L in France — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:02:53 +0000

Joining the fray rather late (Happy New Year to all and thanks to the bloggers) this was the first time I’ve had so much trouble with a Playfair. I’ve normally been able to do them with pencil and paper but this time Scrabble tiles were brought out, to good use.
RCW et al
It’s true that this was thematic – and announced as such – which helped to guess that TURKEY was there somewhere, but AZED sets them at other times of the year without a theme. I don’t think the PL clues were that much easier than the rest, but I’m very glad I got them all, otherwise the decryption would have been impossible.

By: PS

PS — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:26:54 +0000

Much,
I suppose that if two readers understand a sentence in a different way then it must be ambiguous. I had no trouble with that but I had trouble with WN 21,22 which, now, I can see is a “obvious” typo. There is no problem with that except that I wondered for some time if there some very clever aspect that I was missing.

I have looked at PL crosswords before and there are some understandings but I got to know something of playfair codes which helped. This is, as I see it, me battling my mind against Azed. I did eventually win even if I did not understand all the word play. The battle strategy, I suggest, depends on how you play the game. I wanted to get into his mind. Having shown that UT and SE must be in a line I assumed that it UTSE as it is most likely to form a word, this would mean that the STORME of the title is an encoded form of a six letter word starting TU — TURKEY? — COLD TURKEY? Something stirred in my old brain as I tried to get into Azed’s mind; yes, from the &lit archive, comp no 1180 Xmas 1994. Code words Cold Turkey!! Now Azed wouldn’t do that would he? Yes, he has and I was well away. I didn’t submit a clue as I have for some over the past year only as the quality of mine have been low (but improving). He will be able to compare clues across 17years!
I feel must thank again Azed and the Trafites for a wonderful Xmas puzzle and blog. For many hours it diverted my mind from a family difficulty. This puzzle has the answers published in two weeks; would that this were a characteristic of family problems.
I hope that this rambling does not contravene the protocols of this website. This is the first Xmas since 1950 that I have not had a job; I really must get out more.

Allan

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:19:54 +0000

Much
You are not alone in misundersatnding the explanation. Although my misunderstanding was not specific to this puzzle. I have always assumed that the code word could be any one of the thousands contained in Chambers. After all the example uses ‘orange stick’ which appears with no explanation.
From the advice above I now gather that the code word is vaguely clued by the title, season etc.

By: MuchPuzzled

MuchPuzzled — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:59:29 +0000

Oh groan! I got all of this apart from 9d but could not sort the Playfair due to apparently misunderstanding the instructions. It states “In a Playfair word square the code phrase ( of three words in this puzzle )…” – which led me to believe that the three words would be answers from the puzzle itself or at the very least three words taken from the clues or the preamble!!! Grrrr!