Guardian Genius No 151

by

A new setter, Soup, and a novel device in a puzzle which proved to be much easier than last month’s offering, but which unfortunately was beset with technical problems.

The novel device in this puzzle was that the across clues were identical pairs, but leading to answers of different lengths.  While admiring the skill involved, I felt that in some cases it led to some rather contrived wordplay.  The answers yielded readily enough, helped by a wealth of anagrams, except for 27 across, which caused some considerable head-scratching.  The other oddity about the puzzle was that the grid was not perfectly symmetrical – almost, but not quite.

I turn to the technical issues.  When I downloaded the pdf on the day the puzzle was published, it was labelled Genius 150 and bore no compiler’s name (something which has happened before).  I didn’t then appreciate that it mattered: see 17 down.  It was a little later that I discovered the absence of the clues for 18 and 26 down.  Later still, I discovered that the online form for submitting the answers included 28 down from last month’s puzzle in place of 23 down.  To be fair, all these matters were put right within a day or two but it must have made things difficult for those who like to get their submissions in early.

Welcome, Soup, and here’s hoping your next puzzle is presented as you intend it!

completed grid

 

Across
7 PRAYS
Hopes pairs solved: initially set about note, we’re told (5)

RAY (note – sounds like re, the second note of the sol-fa notation) in P S (initial letters of “Pairs Solved”).
8 ASPIRES
Hopes pairs solved: initially set about note, we’re told (7)

*PAIRS, E (note) S(olved).
10 RATTLE
Latter’s shocked and upset (6)

*LATTER.
11 STARTLE
Latter’s shocked and upset (7)

*LATTER’S.
12 INVESTMENT
Wrapped by underwear, I gain empty nut — that’s capital (10)

A charade of IN VEST ME, followed by N(u)T.
15 RIGA
Wrapped by underwear, I gain empty nut — that’s capital (4)

Hidden in “underwear, I gain”.  A different sort of capital – it’s in Latvia.
16 PRIDE
Frequently spurn; indeed, one glows, having this? (5)

Alternate letters in “sPuRn InDeEd”.
18 SUNNED
Frequently spurn: indeed, one glows, having this? (6)

Alternate letters in “SpUrN iNdEeD”.  To sun is an intransitive verb, so the grammar of the clue (“having sunned”) does work.
21 TRAP
Starts talks round a painful snare (4)

First letters of Talks Round A Painful.
22 ORIGINATES
Starts talks round a painful snare (10)

1 GIN in ORATES.
25 NEWNESS
Perhaps sees points set out for novelty (7)

N E W NE S S – all compass points.
26 SENSES
Perhaps sees points set out for novelty (6)

SE N SE S –  a different arrangement of compass points.
27 FILE OUT
Leave lodging somewhat sequentially — have life (4,3)

The anagram indicator is in the answer, not the clue!  I’m afraid I think that this clue is unsound.
28 EXIST
Leave lodging somewhat sequentially — have life? (5)

S(equentially) in EXIT.
Down
1 SPRAIN
Injure in spar? (6)

*(IN SPAR).
2 CASTLE
Rook’s stronghold (6)

Double definition.
3 ISLE
Perhaps Lewis released initially wicked criminal? (4)

*LE(w)IS.  Lewis is doing double duty here as part of the definition (by example, but that’s OK, because of “perhaps”) and as part of the wordplay, which is not acceptable, in my view.
4 ASLANT
Fabled lion starts tipping sideways (6)

ASLAN (the lion in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe) T(ipping).
5 DIPTERAN
Parted in rage, like flies (8)

*(PARTED IN).  I don’t like the noun anagram indicator here.
6 SEA EAGLE
High flyer gets two under par on a links? (3,5)

In golf, an eagle is a shot two under par for the hole; and a links course is by the sea, so I suppose it has to be a sea eagle.
9 ASHEN
Like chicken pasty (5)

AS HEN.
13 VCR
Vicar regularly used to record programmes (3)

ViCaR.
14 TIE
Restrain Asian, reportedly (3)

Sounds like “Thai”.
16 PARANOID
Pandora and I, racked with fear (8)

*(PANDORA I).
17 IMPAWNED
Soup’s bad, we’re told: awful end risked (8)

I’M PAW (sounds like “poor”) *END.  You have to know the setter’s name to understand the clue, which caused me difficulties as there was no name when I printed off the pdf.
18 SKI
Slide down a mountain in a bearskin (3)

Hidden in “bearskin”.
19 NIT
I said “contract”, fool! (3)

Sounds like “knit” (as in “knit one’s brows”).
20 FIRST
Chiefly trees, chiefly trees (5)

FIRS T(rees).  I did like this clue.
22 OPEN UP
Uncover work on raised Indian city (4,2)

OP on PUNE(rev).
23 AUNTIE
A tune I played for the BBC (6)

*(A TUNE I).
24 ELECTS
Picks caught in upright slab (6)

C in STELE(rev).
26 SUET
Girl’s tummy’s beginning to be fat (4)

SUE T(ummy).
*anagram

17 comments on “Guardian Genius No 151”

  1. Hello,
    Thanks for the review, and for being gentle with me. The technical problems were indeed a shame as it meant first impressions were clouded by missing clues and so on; not ideal. The final PDF still missed a couple of things, most importantly the question mark at the end of 27a: It should have been ‘have life?’ which would have made the reverse clue more sensible. I agree that some of the acrosses were a little contrived, but that’s rather the nature of a double-clue puzzle!

    As for the symmetry, if the middle row had two of equal length you wouldn’t know which went on the left and which on the right, so it was deliberate!

    Hopefully it provided a fun diversion for people. If anyone wants another slightly more sensible puzzle of mine, try this: http://www.alberichcrosswords.com/pages/soup2.html – it’s an alphabetical jigsaw like Araucaria used to set, with rhyming couplet clues (all presented as intended!).

    H/S

    PS it isn’t quite novel, because Donk did a double clue puzzle in the Indy a couple of years ago. I saw it and thought ‘how hard can that be to set?’ Turns out ‘very’.

  2. Thanks for the explanation, Hamish. You could have had a symmetrical grid and left it to the solver to determine from the crossers where the answers were to go, which would have added an additional challenge.

    I’ve just noticed that the grid omits the I in TIE: sorry about that.

  4. By the way, for anyone who’s interested in going about constructing a puzzle like this, here’s how I approached it. I didn’t start with a grid. First I thought of the types of clues I wanted – some regular ones (the first pair), an alternator, a hidden word in a clue of a different type, an anagram/anagram plus S, and so on. Then I started thinking about them. For the anagram/S and the alternator I wrote computer programs to pull out all words which fitted the pattern and then visually inspected the results to work out which pairs could be used in a clue. I also had to take care to make sure that the word lengths of the pairs would allow for symmetry, the middle pair excluded. When I had seven pairs of clues I started putting he grid together. The first clue was set because of its surface, and that set the last; the middle clue set because of symmetry, so then I just had to work out where to fit in the others. My criterion was simply ‘which layout gets me a few decent length down clues?’.

  5. Must have taken some tenacity to set this one [ “I started writing the across clues in 2009…” 🙂 ] – ingenious stuff. Thanks, Soup, for the explaining how you went about it.

  6. I found this enjoyable and frustrating in equal doses. Enjoyable because of the across device, but frustrating because of this as the wordplay often seemed a bit unsatisfactory. For a long time I wanted 27a to be LIVE OUT, and nearly submitted it in that way, until I saw the reverse anagram, but without any anagrind that I could see.
    I did not like the several examples of double duty words either; 1D and 27A for example. Still it was good fun, and I look forward to future submissions from Soup. Perhaps Soup and Paul could collaborate with a special Cockaleekie!

    The real contempt should go, as ever, to the Guardian technical staff and crossword editor for yet again screwing things up. How difficult can it be to check that a grid is correct before it is published?! Having worked as a project manager in IT for 40 years I would never tolerate such shoddy work and I also know how EASY it would be to put in an interactive grid, if only they could be bothered to give it some priority. As I have said before it would be about 2 days work for a competent programmer.

    I had ‘communications’ with their IT staff about a year ago when I had difficulties accessing certain pages of the crossword part of the site at all. The idiotic suggestions they made to me were astonishing.

  7. I agree 27a is probably the weakest of the across clues; a reverse clue is hard enough at the best of times. It really, *really* needed the question mark at the end of it; that was there in my submission but got lost in the pdf. I tried to get it corrected but by then I had already had two new PDFs produced, each with new errors, and I was told we would just have to live with it. I remain Not Convinced but as a new setter I’m not really in a place to moan; it took a bit of a sparkle off my first puzzle!

    As for double duty: I think it’s ok if it’s unambiguous, intentional and with a pretty surface and I would say that both isle and sprain match those criteria. Xims would (do!) disagree. To each their own!

  8. Ps I think the genius is much more at the mercy of the production staff than the daily crosswords, which the editor has much more direct control over behind the scenes, and the production staff don’t really understand crosswords, which is why
    There are more frequent issues with the genius than with the dailies.

  9. What I did of this I enjoyed. I only didn’t finish because of the technical incompetences, shame. I can only assume that crosswords is run by unpaid interns these days.

  10. I solved this puzzle and sent in a filled-in ‘form’. I liked doing it.

    My completion of the grid took some more minutes than it should have – until I noticed the lack of symmetry in the middle row. (Perhaps that fact might have been mentioned in ‘Rules and requests’.)

    Captcha: If nine + ? = 14 is too much for me, I can now get another simpler sum, I find. Is this a new facility?

  11. sidey #9

    From my observation of the use of puzzles in Indian newspapers, I can say that ‘crosswords’ is a neglected area. This despite well-paid regular staff with good benefits being in charge.

    Even in newspapers where the feature is accorded due place, horrible mistakes occur now and then.

  12. For 27a I dismissed File Out as it made `somewhat` in the clue redundant, after a fair amount of musing I entered Live Out, possibly being defined by `Leave lodging`, and also being `somewhat sequentially` of `have life`, ie. veli, which, while not a real word, is an anagram of live ( so, `live` out ). With or without QM. Ho hum, not that I ever win anyway.

    Apart from that, I wouldn`t say it was a bad puzzle, some of it was quite nice, it just wasn`t close to Genius level … but that`s not your call Hamish, so thanks and good luck with whatever you do next.

  13. A nice enough fist puzzle from Soup.

    The conceit of pairs of identical across clues was amusing but not too difficult to guess at what was going on. Identical clues leading to different answers.

    However the cluing was fairly straightforward so the puzzle submitted in less than an hour!

    Really quite unbelievable that this was chosen as a “Genius”. (Especially as it was the setter’s first “Guardian” puzzle.)

    I have discussed this with Soup via “Twitter” who was also a little bemused at the decision to make this the Genius.

    However the “editor’s” decsion is final. Surely flawed but final ;-).

    Thanks to bridgesong and Soup (and better luck with future puzzles)

    The most astonishing thing is Hamish/Soups post @8

    I think the genius is much more at the mercy of the production staff than the daily crosswords, which the editor has much more direct control over behind the scenes !!!!!

    Direct control by the editor? Apparently our illustrious ed chooses not to take advantage of this facility. Perhaps he doesn’t know about it.

  14. At first I thought the usual ‘special instructions’ had been omitted in error. Then, as for some reason I started on the down clues and the first few wrote themselves in, I thought a Rufus had been smuggled in… it was only then that I noticed the across clues and the penny dropped.

    Very clever, but the result was that some of the clues were a bit strained, as others have observed.
    I also entered LIVE OUT for 27a 🙁

  15. Welcome, Soup. You will be a welcome addition to the Guardian pages.

    I agree, this was a well constructed and enjoyable puzzle. It was an impressive piece of setting with the double clues, but unfortunately solving was on the easy side, even for a daily crossword. I do hope this does not signal an editorial decision to dispense with the challenging Genius format. We have had Genius crosswords that took less than an hour to solve before, but this one was surely a record — no longer than a Rufus (but vastly more enjoyable).

  16. Thanks for the kind words, folks. Having a first puzzle published is a little like bringing out one’s first-born for the first time. Hopefully as and when I get others published they’ll be of a more appropriate difficulty for people!

    You’ve got Enigmatist in the Genius slot this month, so any hope of an easier puzzle is likely to be short-lived 🙂

Comments are closed.