Guardian Genius 231 / Picaroon

19 comments on “Guardian Genius 231 / Picaroon”

1. Another well-executed original idea for a puzzle in the Genius series. The instructions were clear, but it took me a while to get accustomed to solving clues whose wordplay produced non-words.

   Of the Down clues I seemed to find those in the top half more tractable – except for CHIPPIES, which was one of my first in. The V of AVIATE prompted me to think of RAVEL as part of the satire going along the top, and GULLIVER’S TRAVELS came straight from that. (Evidently my way in was similar to yours, Duncan.) I also got LIME TREE, and seeing how METRE could be taken out of that enabled me to see also how MILE could go into GULLIMILERAVELS, matching its wordplay. VERST was new to me, but it soon turned up in the nearby clue for PALMA, which became VERSTA – and so on. The ordering of the thematic inserts from large to small helped a lot with the solving of the clues in the bottom half of the grid.

   Discovering new units of length was one of the delights of this puzzle. It was nice to see some old or unusual English neasures like ROD, PALM and LINK. The whole design and construction was admirable, and the clues were excellent.

   Thanks to Picaroon and duncanshiell.

2. Heavens, that was hard. Made my brain hurt. 😀

   I had to resort to using Google Sheets as I needed an online spreadsheet to help record my workings – broken wrist in plaster and couldn’t scribble on paper easily. I kept coming back to it over the month.

   I realised early on that measures of length were involved. MILE and INCH gave it away. However they were a very mixed bunch, and I’d very little idea how long many of them were, but it seemed likely they would be in length order. Much Googling went on. (Wrist in plaster so couldn’t handle the heavy Chambers – bring out the violins). Another factor that seemed to scramble my brain was that the defined answer wasn’t necessarily the same length as the one in the grid.

   But all in all that was pretty much the level of difficulty I like in a Genius, especially if I can get there in the end. Excellent.

   ICE FOOT, INCHASES, PRODRUG unfamiliar to me.

   Nice to see the unusual FLUGEL and OWLISH, and the forgotten BLANCO.

   Brilliant, many thanks Picaroon, and duncanshiell for confirming my parsings.

3. Thanks for the detailed blog Duncan. This was tougher than some recent Geniuses, but perfectly fair and tractable.
   GULLIVER’S TRAVELS was my first across solution and I assumed we were looking for parts of the body as it so clearly contained “liver”. I then guessed that the philosopher was most likely MILL and worked things out from there. Coincidentally (?) the same philosopher turned up later in the month in a weekday Guardian, also by Picaroon.

4. I started completing the Genius puzzles at the beginning of this year, and this was one of my favourites. I also work in Excel for these type of puzzles to keep track of what is coming from where and using colours to highlight is helpful.

   I do have a general question which is when entering the solutions into the online form, is it customary to enter the original solution, the grid entry or both? I assumed the grid entry as that proves that you have completed the puzzle correctly, but if anyone can clarify that would be much appreciated.
   Many thanks to Picaroon and duncanshiell for the detailed blog

5. Jay@4 your question about what to enter in the online form pops up regularly, and was answered in the blog for Genius 162 as follows:
   ” The solution to be entered in the solution form is the word or sequence of letters that is required for entry in the grid. It matters not if hyphens and spaces are included or left out. Nor does upper or lower case lettering matter.
   And you are right. A small selection of potential winners is randomly selected from the file where they are all stored and then the solutions are manually checked until the first correct one emerges. “
   I think this should be made clear in the preamble to the crosswords as it puzzles many people, including myself until I came across the above explanation.

6. @Crossbar, many thanks for your response, all clear now and I agree this should be in the preamble

7. Enjoyed this, though I agree with Crossbar that it was headache-inducing. It helped that it was given which clues were normal and which were not, also that the first across clue was quite easy (this was also our route in, though it took a while to muster the confidence to see if the unlikely VERST was indeed a word).
   Thanks for the meticulously-annotated blog!

8. Great fun and very satisfying to finish.

   Thanks dncanshiel for this comprehensive blog and Picaroon for being generous with some of the across definitions to give us a way into the trick of this puzzle. When TRAVELS was obviously going to fit with some of the down clue starting letters across the top I breathed a sigh of relief this would prove doable.

9. Thanks Picaroon and duncanshiell.
   Enjoyed this – hugely satisfying when everything fitted nicely.

10. I don’t remember having too much difficulty with this one apart from have to Google a few units of measurement to get them in the right order. Having spent my working life as an engineer working on US projects half of the time I was used to feet and inches (although I would call a mil a thou) along with pounds and slugs.

    For those attempting this months Genius, and not giving anything away, I believe the preamble is not worded the best and should read “wordplay in the other 8 across clues omits a letter” and not “wordplay in the other 8 across clues contains a superfluous letter”

11. @Tim C, I agree, there does seem to be a mistake in the preamble today, just as you describe.

12. Tim C, Jay,
    I think I can explain this. In at least one recent Genius, ‘wordplay’ has meant
    what the wordplay produces instead of the correct meaning of what is contained in the clue other than the definition of the answer. The preamble of the latest Genius is evidently using that same mistaken definition, whereby the relevant clues work as intended.

13. I should have added that I fully agree with Tim’s suggested correction.

14. Thank you Picaroon and Duncan. I forget now how I made my way into this but I vaguely remember thinking it might be units (metre triggered me and maybe mil, but like Tim C@10 I am more used to calling it a thou) and then for some reason rejecting that. I came back to it later in the day and things trickled into place. I do like that the Genius puzzles are usually easily clued and the challenging bit is where it should be – many more beginners could make inroads if they were encouraged to try I think.

    If, as Alan B @12 says, the Grauniad misdefines “wordplay” then I do not think the correct word is superfluous. The wordplay (in their terms) contains an extra letter not an unnecessary one. Quite the opposite in fact – it is perfectly necessary. A letter to be ignored is surely superfluous? So I cannot see any way to interpret the instructions fairly.

    It’s all in vain anyhow, given you cannot enter the single letter at the centre of the grid without generating an error…

15. Thezed@14 I’ve reported the issue with entering the centre letter. Let’s see if it gets sorted soon.

16. The online entry issue seems to have been fixed

17. Thanks Crossbar and Jay – successful entry now achieved, as Roger Moore may have put it…

18. Thank you Duncan for a comprehensive, colourful and most importantly clear blog (the first two definitely assist in achieving the third). I worried at first about having to cold-solve the down clues (always find that hard) but luckily spotted UNYARD and it seemed to go fairly steadily from there with some dictionary help for the lesser known terms (but relieved to see BLANCOED here as that was not in my online source). I seem to have encountered Picaroon fairly frequently of late and am sure this helped in making good progress – there was a Genius by him maybe a year ago that I barely got started on. Some nice clues to go with all the trickery too, thanks Picaroon.

19. PS thanks also Tim C and others above for the sensitive non-spoiler discussion of the flaws in the current Genius which should save me some (but not all) banging of head on table when I get round to it hopefully next week.

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