The editor refers to the “IQ debutant Jago“, but, assuming there’s only one setter that goes by that name, he’s produced well over 20 puzzles in the last 40 years for The Listener alone. (The last one I attempted was on Boxing Day, 2009, which involved folding the completed grid into the classic ‘bird with flapping wings’.) Anyway, on with this carte blanche …
“The grid should be appropriately filled by correctly locating the solutions to the normal, correctly numbered clues. Numbers are not essential in the completed grid, which displays 180° symmetry, but their inclusion may assist solvers in arriving at the solution.”
I felt I’d made a good start on this one, cold-solving about half the clues but nowhere near being able to enter anything in the grid. Then I simply ran into a wall, and after a very late start on the puzzle I gave up for the day and went to bed.
Still not much progress when I got back to it the following afternoon, then 3 or 4 more clues yielded and I started thinking about filling in the grid. First breakthrough came when I saw that entering 8a TAMED in row 2 to intersect with 9d MARKETPLACE in column 3 looked promising. This enabled me to enter quite a few of my answers and solve another bunch of clues. In turn, that gave me enough to conclude that 1a/6d was A SPLIT PERSONALITY (second breakthrough – but slightly wrong because I was assuming that 1a had to start in column 1), which tied in with the title, and I immediately thought of the timely referendum on Scottish independence as an appropriate theme – blind alley.
The 7-letter answer ENTERED at 18d was causing me problems: I didn’t have its symmetric counterpart. Finally solving 1d as SAVANNA resolved this, with 1a simply being SPLIT starting in column 2 (and the ‘2 words’ referred not just to 1a but to 1a/6d together). So there was definitely something very fishy going on … what was happening in the top left corner?
Anyway, the rest of the clues were sorted out and the answers entered, plus the bars that I knew about, to leave the grid on the right. Still needed to sort out the unclued 12a & 19d (_ARS & B_O_K_) and figure out what to do with the peppering of empty cells. I added the clue numbers as suggested (shown outside in the relevant rows & columns) but they didn’t “assist [this] solver in arriving at the solution.” Once more, I left it there for the day.
Woke up before Monday’s alarm went … _ARS & B_O_K_, _ARS & B_O_K_, _ARS & B_O_K_, what could they be? Light-bulb moment! BARS & BLOCKS (obvs): use BLOCKS to fill the empty cells and insert BARS to make the grid consistent with the clue numbering. Job done! (Phew.)
This puzzle clearly can’t make up its mind whether it’s a barred crossword or a blocked one, which evoked memories of Ferret‘s 20/20 from Jan-12. Nevertheless, rather good stuff from Jago – thanks, I did enjoy this one. (Grateful that there was no origami involved.)
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| No. | Answer | Wordplay |
| 1 | SPLIT | Unclued |
| 8 | TAMED | TAD (a little bit) around ME |
| 10 | SEVERE | SEVER (cut) + E(ar) |
| 11 | SLASH | S(mall) LASH (one on edge of eyelid) |
| 12 | BARS | Unclued |
| 13 | GREASED | AS in GREED (avarice) |
| 14 | INKED | WINKED (shut one eye) − W(ith) |
| 15 | IDAHO | homophone: I’D A HOE (I owned a sort of garden tool) |
| 16 | KNEE | K(ing) NEE (born) |
| 17 | TUNER | homophone: TUNA (fish) |
| 19 | BATES | [BEAST]* |
| 22 | TANA | double definition |
| 23 | PEERS | double definition |
| 24 | TILTH | TILT (tent) + H(ospital) |
| 25 | ORLEANS | OR LEAN (thin) + S(tuff) |
| 26 | DIET | DIE (finish) + (burn)T |
| 27 | TEARY | TEAR (rent) + (bo)Y |
| 28 | KICKER | double definition |
| 29 | BUYER | [E(meralds) + RUBY]* |
| 30 | LOPED | LOP (cut off) + ED(am) |
| Down | ||
| No. | Answer | Wordplay |
| 1 | SAVANNA | SAV(e) (rescue) ANNA (former coin of India, etc., “ready for an old Asian”) |
| 2 | LESSEE | LES (the, Fr) SEE (notice) |
| 3 | IDLED | I’D LED (been out in front) |
| 4 | TRAGIC | T(ime) + CIGAR< (Havana, perhaps) |
| 5 | REHEAT | [(t)HEATRE]* |
| 6 | PERSONALITY | Unclued |
| 7 | DEODAR | DO< (fix) in DEAR (very expensive) |
| 9 | MARKETPLACE | [METAL-PACKER]* |
| 18 | ENTERED | TREE (e.g. answer to 7) with final E moved + END (finale) |
| 19 | BLOCKS | Unclued |
| 20 | SEATED | [TEASED]* |
| 21 | ASSAIL | AS (like) + SAIL (ship) |
| 22 | TIDY UP | TID (ter in die, three times a day) + YUP (yes) |
| 24 | TURBO | double definition |
|
|
||
Well done H___G____. As I’ve said before, I normally run away from cartes blanches but I dedided to have a go at this one. I cold solved quite a few (including TAMED, BUYER and LOPED) and convinced myself that LOPED had to finish in the bottom-right square (since 1a and 1d had to start in the top-left square.) I fitted MARKETPLACE in with that but then couldn’t find a slot for DEODAR. At that point, I’m ashamed to say, I did run away.
Nimrod said in his commentary that this puzzle would divide IQ solvers and I guess he’s right.
I got Savanna, Tamed and Marketplace early, and could not see how to fit them into the grid for a long time. The idea that the top left corner would be blank seemed anathema to me. Once the I had the PDM of allowing blanks (or as it turned out BLOCKS) in the crossword, it fell out quite easily.
Very nice theme from Jago, with relatively easy clues, but a difficult jigsaw!
I managed to get through this in the end although I may have needed a nudge in the right direction. Probably did myself no help by solving 8ac as “timed” for altogether too long, which stopped me from spotting the crossing with Savanna. Oh, well, a nice offering from Jago.
I made the fatal mistake of assuming 9dn was MARKETPLACES. After all the world of commerce contains more than one market place. This meant that although I got about a dozen answers, I could not work out how they fitted together. In the end, I entered only three words in the grid, all in totally the wrong places.
If, as Nimrod suggests, this crossword divides solvers then I will definitely be in the ‘pro’ camp. I found the clues to be relatively straightforward however the grid fill almost made me give up.
In the end the clue numbers did assist this solver in arriving at the solution. Filling the grid systematically with the clue numbers in mind showed that ‘SPLIT’ ‘TAMED’, ‘MARKETPLACE’ and ‘PERSONALITY’ could not possibly fit where I wanted them to go and keep the grid numbering consistent in a standard way. Everything just fell into place after that (well, eventually …)
Thanks to Jago for the fun and HolyGhost for the blog.
Definitely another ‘pro’ here (with the exception of one cell). Some nice easy clues to get us going, which gave just enough to come logically to the conclusion that the top right square had to be blank and the rest began to fall into place from there. I found a spreadsheet helped immensely.
The only clue I couldn’t get for sure was 22A. I’d thought at first that the answer was TANK, a cop shop, but then found TANA is an elephant shrew. I couldn’t find any sign anywhere that TANA means a cop shop – is it in Chambers somewhere? (Time I invested in a copy, I think.) I did wonder for a while if the A and K clash was something to do with the split personality – maybe it was going to be AKA….
(That would be top *left*)
OPatrick @6: Chambers has “tana^1 a military or police station in India”.
And yes – invest in a copy. The app cost me less than £5 and updates come for free.
On first inspection I expected this to be really tough – not just a carte blanche but one with no grid & no word-lengths.
However, I managed to cold-solve all but a few clues – more than enough to start filling the grid, I thought. Having fallen for the false assumption that since there was a 1ac & a 1d the ‘normally numbered clues’ must start in the top left square I then spent a lot of time proving that it was impossible to fit my answers in the grid.
So, not just no grid, but a grid with holes in it. At this point I was thinking that this was more like doing a particularly convoluted Listener & expecting to go ‘wow’ at the denouement.
Trying square 2 for the start of 1ac/1d, the answers all slotted in easily & the few clues I was missing, & the unclued entries, became readily apparent. But I was left feeling “is that it?”, rather than “wow” when it turned out that all the holes were simply blocks.
I guess that in one sense it’s a compliment to the setter that my expectations were so high, but for me the end result was a bit of a let-down.
We were also convinced that 1ac/1d had to start in the top left corner. It was only when we solved a few more clues that we realised that things only worked if you moved it in one column.
We enjoyed this puzzle so count us in the ‘pro camp’ despite having somewhat silmilar feelings as shikasta@9 when we realised the theme.
Thanks to S&B.
Agree with all comments above … I thought that a carte blanche WITHOUT WORD LENGTHS, and with four unclued entries, was going to be yet another in the current tough IQ sequence, but soon managed to get some preliminary knitting going. (The previous week’s Listener had been an ASYMMETRICAL carte blanche from Chalicea.)
What held me up for quite a time, though, was thinking that “Very bad cut etc.” was VILE (V = very, IL(L)= bad cut, + E, with def. = very bad, as in “I’ve got a vile cold !” Once I got SEVERE it made the symmetry much easier to understand.
Did anybody else plump for VILE in the early stages ?
Definitely in the pro camp for this one, though …but only after getting there !
Murray – yup, I had VILE for a while, and then a possible EVIL when I found VILE didn’t work. Getting SEVERE was a big step forward.
At the time I enjoyed sorting this grid out, and was delighted to make it all work! (except bars)
The bars/blocks idea did not occur to me.
Now I know, I can’t help but feel that the time (3 hours approx.) I spent on this puzzle was wasted. Sorry, for me the bars/blocks split personality connection is just not good enough.
I’m very strongly in the anti camp
Coincidently, shortly before this puzzle appeared I’d wondered if there had been a carte blanche puzzle in which answer lengths were not given. What I found interesting about the puzzle was that a carte blanche with no answer lengths, unclued entries and gaps in the grid was doable within a reasonable amount of time. I think I’d say I’m in the pro camp, but I wouldn’t want a similar offering with significantly harder clues. This seemed well balanced.