Guardian Genius 128 – Boatman

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I had heard in advance that Boatman was to be the setter of this Genius, so I was a little apprehensive about it, as I often find even his regular puzzles quite hard. Things weren’t helped by it being published without the special instructions for a few days (once again the fact the Genius puzzles usually have such instructions seems to have taken the Guardian by surprise). However, even without them I managed to solve quite a few clues, and it became obvious that RINGs of various kinds were being added to answers and subtracted from clues, as suggested by 9a: RINGS THE CHANGES (and maybe also 24a: CIRCUIT TRAINING).

In fact, deciding which clue is of exactly which type seems to have taken me longer than solving the puzzle itself, but I still have a couple of uncertainties, and I don’t I’ve got them right (for a start I’ve got one C2 too few and one C3 too many), but I’ve run out of time so will have to hand over to the wisdom of the commenters.

Each explanation below is preceded by a code in square brackets indicating type type: those where a “ring” is added to the answer are [A1] (in full), [A2] (symbolically), [A3] (synonym); those where the “ring” is “inserted spuriously in the clue” are [C1] (in full), [C2] (symbolically], [C3] (synonym), [C4] (part of a synonym); those where the “ring” is missing are [M1] (provides initial letter indicator) and [M2] (anagram]. In addition, I’ve used green for letters added to the answer in type A clues, red for letters removed from clues in type B, and brown for missing letters in type M. As usual, definitions are underlined.

 
Across
1. COBRAS They could be spitting – Egyptian king shows firm support for women (6)
[A2] The only way I can make this work is as C (meaning company, firm) + O + BRAS, though I assumed for a long time that the “firm” was CO, and I don’t knpw hopw the Egyptian king firs in
4. CLERIC One who takes orders from criminal! (6)
[M2] CIRCLE* (“criminal” indicating the anagram)
9. RINGS THE CHANGES Clue for Seth, who likes to do things differently (5,3,7)
[A1] RING + STHE CHANGES (a “clue for Seth”)
10. RIDING Put crudely, having sex is what drives us (6)
[A1] ID – “what drives us” in Freudian psychology – in RING
11. COVERING Inlet provides shelter (8)
[A1] Cove=inlet in RING
12. RING MAIN Sea power network (4,4)
[A1] RING + MAIN (sea)
14. ELATED Beyond content of garden, I let results develop (6)
[C1] (GARDEN I LET)* – RING
15. PAUNCH Drink made with distilled grain produces beer gut (6)
[C1] GRAIN* less RING in PUNCH
18. REASSESS Catchment areas so essential to calculate changing value (8)
[C2] Hidden in aREAS S[O]ESSential
21. SORCERER Cagliostro was a visionary member of church of Rome and the first to go in? (8)
[A2] O RC, R in (two locations in) SEER (visionary) – Alessandro Cagliostro was an occultist, hence “sorcerer”
22. SARTRE Fiddle string: rare device for writer (6)
[C1] (STRING RARE)* – RING
24. CIRCUIT TRAINING Exercising power – exercising it in speech after time (7,8)
[A3] CIRCUIT T + homophone of “reigning” (exercising power)
25. GRINGO Vamoose, Yankee! (6)
[A1] RING in GO (Vamoose!)
26. MEASLY Mean of Boatman to get round answer with cunning (6)
[C3] ME + A + SLY, omitting GET ROUND (or maybe just ROUND) from clue
Down
1. CRIMINI Jesus Christ: INRI written ironically below top of cross – 10 thousand implicated (7)
[C2] C + 10 less 0 gives 1000) + M in INRI*
2. BAGS I Boatman’s claim is barging around (4,1)
[C1] (IS BARGING)* less RING
3. ANTIGUA One island against another? Little time lost (7)
[C2] ANTI + GUAM less (MO minus O). I think this has to be a C2, even though the “symbol” O doesn’t appear in the clue
5. LE HAVRE The French take leader inside port (2,5)
[M1] R – i.e.RINGleader – in LE (“the French”) + HAVE (take)
6. RING ROADS They bypass one in the sticks (4,5)
[A1] RING + A in RODS
7. CLEANSE Enclose a cracked bath, perhaps (7)
[C2] (ENCLOSE A)* less O
8. BEACON Warning of drug cartel involved in food – it could be smoked (6)
[C3] E in BACON, with the redundant CARTEL removed from clue
13. GONOCOCCI Chanel put up under pig’s and baboon’s tails to cover 101 bacteria (9)
[A2] [pi]G +O+ [baboo]N + COCO< (Chanel) + CI (101)
16. ADORING Being in love – bother! (7)
[A1] ADO (bother) + RING
17. HERRING Fishwife gone out? (7)
[A1] First, fish/wife has to be split up; a wife, as (originally?) described by Arthur Daley, who has gone out is “HER INDOORS” less the “indoors” + RING
18. RARITY Find railway, taking in a trip avoiding outskirts to Hertfordshire town (6)
[C4] A [t]RI[p] + TRING less RING in RY. The synonym here is Tring, of which RING is a part, making this the C4 clue
19. ASSUAGE Call for lower pay for donkey work, say? (7)
[C3] Homophone of “ass wage”, with CALL (ring) removed from clue. Chambers give “to diminish” as one definition of ASSUAGE
20. STRINGY Gristly pork produced here (7)
[A1] RING in STY – where pork is “produced”
23. RINGS Ear or nose skewered, initially? (5)
[A1] RING + S[kewered]

16 comments on “Guardian Genius 128 – Boatman”

  1. Thanks Andrew – this must have been a chore to blog, never mind to solve!

    Even with the special instructions, I spent a long time staring at this without entering anything – I read “..is inserted spuriously into the clue (four times in full….” as meaning the keyword would be found in the correct order 4 times in the clues, which indicated it would be ONE.

    Nevertheless, most of it fell into place eventually, not always understanding why.

    Re 1a, I wondered if ‘Egyptian King’ was rhyming slang for ‘ring’, which would make it a C3 ? Seems unlikely, I admit…

    re 1d – Crimini ?? I take it this is meant to be the sort of bowdlerised oath you find in Disney films ? We had CHIASMI, for no good reason, it seemed the only (genuine) word that fit. Hence I also got 10a wrong – the best guess was ASWING (weak link from ‘swingers’)

    I can’t say I enjoyed this – the ‘genius’ element here seemed to be in decoding the special instructions rather than solving the clues

  2. Thanks Andrew
    I solved this one without the benefit of the special instructions (in fact I’ve only just read them). I didn’t make any notes at the time so cannot check that I got all the additions/subtractions correct. However, I think I can help with your query re 1ac.

    I parsed it as CO+BRAS with the ‘they could be’ indicating types of COBRA. Spitting, Egyptian and king are all type of cobra as is the ringhals (or ring-necked).

    Sorry but I don’t have time at the moment to see how this fits in with the special instructions but I suspect it has something to do with ‘ring’ being missing from the clue.

  3. Perhaps forget my reference to the ringhals cobra, the jewellery item ‘cobra ring’ could be more likely.

  4. I also solved around 75% of this without the instructions, so naturally wonder if (for a greater challenge) they could have been simplified to a single vague sentence alluding to the types treatments?

    Anyway – good stuff as ever.

  5. Thanks Boatman; excellent puzzle that had me running round in circles 😉

    Thanks Andrew, the blog was an epic.

  6. Thanks Andrew
    Like you I have three that fit your C3 category, so unless the instructions were incorrect, I think one solution must refer to something else. I have to say I do not like the TRING referring to a part synonym. That is a bit obscure for me, I was looking for one word from a two-word synonym.
    Because there was warning in the blog for last month’s Genius that the special instructions were missing this time I waited until they were printed.
    I then made a bad early assumption taking the initial letters of 23 down to get EONS and thinking that the answer was therefore AEONS so something relating to an A was missing and the theme was about ‘TIME’. This was then not helped by me having 11A as COVERAGE, with the last three letters supporting my ‘TIME’ thesis. This is one of the few occasions when knowing the instructions messed me up for a couple of hours as I vainly looked for references to ‘Time’. I got COBRAS early on as well, but could not see any reference to anything in that, and still could not see the link with Ring, except until what is written by Gaufrid. I had never heard of that.
    I think me getting 12A started my doubts and got me onto the ‘Ring’ theme.
    I actually enjoyed this more than others appear to, but I wish some of the categories of A1, A2, A3 etc were less obscure.

    The missing instructions of the Genius, following on from the problems for most of the past several puzzles [double entry of letters in grid etc] makes me wonder exactly how difficult it can be to publish one such puzzle a month. Surely this does not take a degree in astro-physics!

    It reminds me of when I used to fly years ago from Manchester to Edinburgh on the last flight on a Sunday night [1980s]. Every week the pilot [of the world’s “favourite” airline] would say as we landed. “Sorry we have a delay as the airport is looking for a set of steps for us to disembark”. BA ground control every week seemed to ‘forget’ that this aircraft needed steps or the airport management seemed to deliberate hide it from them. Either way it was like clockwork every week waiting 15 minutes for the steps to appear. I once asked the pilot on boarding if he would think of radioing ground control ahead of time to request the steps. Unfortunately as it was a different pilot every week they looked at me with bemusement telling me that ‘Everything would be fine’. It never was. Perhaps the people publishing the Genius used to work for Edinburgh airport?
    I’m just waiting to get my e-mail from the Guardian telling me that I have won for the second month running!

  7. Andrew, unless my grammar is suspect [where is Eileen when you need her?] I think the Boatman instructions are incorrect for what you call the M2 clue [4A]. He put “….once where a synonym would indirectly provide the letters for the anagram required”. Surely the missing word CIRCLE in that clue DIRECTLY, not Indirectly, provides the letters?

  8. Thanks Andrew – that was a tough one to blog. I also gave up on matching the clues to the instructions (didn’t get “Tring”, and I’m not convinced that “C” can stand for “firm” in 1ac).

    Gordon – I do have a degree in astrophysics – please don’t ask me to fix the website.

  9. Thanks Andrew for the complex blog, and thanks to Boatman for a clever, generally satisfying puzzle. There were many excellent clues, but I say “generally” because of a few (1ac, 3dn and 18dn) which, whilst gettable, seemed to stretch the rubric a bit far. And like others I couldn’t quite tot up the categories correctly. Nevertheless a very enjoyable challenge.

  10. Hi DuncT

    Sorry to try to drag you in!
    I also have a degree in Physics [Elementary Particle in my case], but I often wished I had done AstroPhysics. Things in space are a bit easier to see than elementary particles!

    Re: My complaint at #7, I actually meant logic not grammar. I’m still waiting though for Eileen or someone else to confirm or rebut what I stated.

  11. Hi all – I was a little too busy to check in (and, if necessary, put your minds at ease) on Sunday, so congratulations on working your way through all of this, especially to those of you who managed to crack the theme before the preamble made its way online!

    Gordon – if you’re still following – my concern with CLERIC was that the theme was the word “ring”, not its synonyms, so the notional pre-manipulated clue would have been “One who takes orders from criminal ring” and that, of course, would have been an indirect anagram.

    Interesting that no-one has complained more loudly about the parsing of COBRAS. The clue in fact contained one last typo, which hints (cosmic-microwave-background-wise, as we seem to have an Astro theme this month) at the creation of the puzzle. The puzzle as original submitted was normal except for the dozen or so clues with missing RINGs, but Hugh felt that this was too tricky for even a Saturday prize and asked me if I could think of a way to toughen it up for the benefit of those of you who are so masochistic as to enjoy the Genius slot; the rest you can work out. The final version of the COBRAS clue should have been amended to “They could be spitting – Egyptian king shows constant support for women” which parses with no ambiguity, but the original version (with the “O” fully clued as part of CO for “firm”) was the one that was used.

  12. Hi Boatman
    Thanks for the explanation re: CLERICAL, which I accept.

    On a related matter, the Guardian annotated version of your puzzle suggests that clue 26A is not a ‘Synonym’ clue but a ‘Symbol’ clue. I really do not see that and agree with Andrew that you had three of these, as he identifies above, not two. Surely only the letter ‘o’ as a reference to ‘0’ should be taken as a ‘symbol’?

  14. A total botch-up by the Guardian from start to finish.
    As Gaufrid probably found to his advantage it was perhaps easier without the preamble.
    Full marks to Andrew for trying to categorise the answers and clues (most of us had long given up trying to do this).

  15. Well, now you’ve drawn attention to it, I’d be happy to explain 26 as either synonym or symbol. What I had in mind was “round” as a conventional indicator for “O” – hence ME + O + A + SLY, with the symbol “O” spurious, but of course ME + RING + A + SLY would work just as well. Credit to you for counting all the usages, in any case!

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