Azed 2330 – Right & Left Competition Puzzle

13 comments on “Azed 2330 – Right & Left Competition Puzzle”

1. Thanks for the blog, duncanshiell.

   In 14R, grain=GR and unspecified one=ANY.

   I thought I would be able to cope with the mismatch in the numbering if I wrote the two numbers from the grid next to each clue, but I found myself reading at a number in the grid and looking for the same number in the printed clue numbers more often than not.

2. I parsed 14d right as GR for grain inside ANY, as in press any key.

   It took me a while to get 1ac, and the first few clues I got were all at the bottom of the grid. My strategy was to find the pdf of the grid online and print it off. I then started filling that in so if when I got 1ac it was the wrong way round, I could go back to the grid in the paper. As luck would have it, I chose the right way round at my first guess and completed it all just before the Superbowl was due to start.

3. Matthew@1: Snap.

4. Thanks, Duncan. Totally agree with you about the numeration not being a big problem. I thought too much was made of it by one or two. I note a misprint in your grid solution at ‘9’ down. ENIAV for ENIAC. For ANGRY I take that to be simply ‘gr in any’. Perhaps a comma after ‘grain’ has been overlooked.

5. Bob Sharkey @4 – “I thought too much was made of it by one or two”. Presumably that refers to online commenters’ complaints (which I haven’t seen), but I do think it’s a poor show that Azed seems to be treated too cavalierly by the Guardian/Observer site. Hardened setters would have sussed the errors out fairly quickly, but how many people new to Azed would have been put off? This was a comparatively friendly competition puzzle by Azed standards, and it’s unfortunate that it was mistranslated.

6. Agree with Michael @5. Could not put it better.

7. Thanks Azed and Duncan

   I took the parsing of 12L down slightly differently, taking “case of” to mean “first and last letters of” rather than being part of the inclusion indicator. Either interpretation works with Delaware.

8. I definitely am among the one or two who made much of the wrong numbering, and I agree entirely with Michael at #5. I used the same approach as Matthew at #1 and this helped, though like him I found myself distracted by the printed numbers. Still, the puzzle was very enjoyable and the clues were not as hard as they have been in recent plain puzzles. Probably that was deliberate.

   I saw “case of” as setter-speak for “outer letters of” in 12 L, though as has been pointed out, both interpretations work here.

9. According to today’s paper, the competition deadline has been extended a week.

10. I wondered whether what actually happened was that someone at The Observer was trying to be helpful – ‘This one’s been numbered funny – I’ll just put it right’ sort of thing.

11. Phi, that’s exactly what I assumed happened.

    I’m reminded of the message the composer Charles Ives is supposed to have sent to his copyist. “Please don’t correct my wrong notes. The wrong notes are the right notes.”

12. My guess is that it wasn’t some misguided keenie at the Observer who caused the wrong numbering, but that the numbers were automatically computer-generated as for a normal puzzle and nobody noticed.

13. @12 ‘my guess’ – it can be fun to keep guessing, but is there a chance that somebody at the paper might tell us? Does Azed himself know how these things happen?

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