I think that as a ‘normal’ prize puzzle with the full enumeration on the ‘megaclue’, it would PROBABLY have been a bit more get-able…

As something that had hung around in your imagination for years, it was probably more fitting as a monthly Genius – and the timescales involved certainly make me feel better about taking 16 days to get to the end of it!

To ‘Norman L in France’ at #3 – I suspect the Genius entry ‘hat’ has a lot fewer names to choose from than the average weekly prize entry – and those were a long time ago before I became a blogger…so hopefully no suspicious circumstances, just a bit of luck. And remember – ‘you’ve got to be in it to win it’…

I wrote the Marx clue years ago; I was going to enter it in Paul’s weekly clue-writing competition but the site folded before I got to use it. The clue came about when I was reading the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, looking for potential inspiration. I thought this line was interesting and I noticed that the letters of MARX are contained in the quote. I tried to make the clue semi-& lit recognising that ‘countenance’ can mean ‘face’ and ‘beauty’, ‘Marx’ and ‘evokes’ are all in there. The clue sat on my hard drive until I got my lucky break at the Guardian and I decided to put it into a puzzle. After a bit of effort, the only way I could force it into a grid was to write it clockwise around the perimeter and then continue it into one of the entries. The original crossword was not written as a Genius puzzle and had the clue for the quote with the full enumeration in the preamble; the other clues were normal, that is, they contained no misprints. Naively, I figured it could be used as a possible Prize puzzle.

Hugh got back several months later and said he would have a think how to turn it into a Genius puzzle. I decided to have a go myself so I introduced some misprints into the existing clues. I changed eight words in the puzzle almost without thinking. I then thought it would be good if these misprints spelt something out. When I wrote down the ‘correct’ letters that I’d changed, I was surprised that they nearly spelt out ALL CORRECT; I needed another C and some other letter, which I can’t recall. Amazingly, I recalled that Pink Floyd did a Soundtrack album for a film called More and so I changed the Pink Floyd clue to contain More instead of Core and I was nearly there.

When I look at the puzzle now I think it’s decent but my biggest concern is that the misprints are there purely to make the puzzle harder. Ideally, the misprints should have spelt out something to do with the quote, or Marx, but that was beyond me. Having said that, I do quite like some of the clues. The ENNOBLING one was trying to evoke the image of John Lennon when he made his quote at the Royal Variety Performance about “those in the cheap seats, clap: those in the dear seats rattle your jewellery”, or something.

Anyway, enough waffle from me. Thanks again folks

Tramp

I can’t add to the praise except to repeat …

Tramp, you lovely boy, you’ve done it again!

A very frustrating Genius puzzle for me! After a lot of struggle, I got all the clues except the quotation and mostly worked out the wordplay, enough to get ALL CORRECT.

But I missed the Groucho quotation, despite thinking that it was probably him and not Karl and after counting the letters in the megaclue and discovering it couldn’t be an anagram. I also guessed that the words would be split up.

Kicking myself

I rarely get very far with a Genius puzzle but, so far, I’ve managed to finish all of Tramp’s – eventually.

I saw the quotation fairly early on, but, although bits of it were appearing tantalisingly in the perimeter, I couldn’t fit it in, because somehow I’d stupidly failed to see that 22dn was included in the special instructions.

It was hard work, of course, but such a lot of fun: the clues, as always from Tramp, were brilliantly clever and witty – perhaps especially those involving the misprints – and I couldn’t begin to list favourites. Stunning stuff all round – I enjoyed it immensely, so huge thanks, as ever, to Tramp.

I would say that the true SmutMeister is Cyclops, from Private Eye – and 2D is a truly Cyclops-ian clue in every sense.

If Paul is Finbarr Saunders (from Viz, with his double-entendres, snicker-snicker, fnarr-fnarr) then Cyclops is a full-on live performance from Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown!…