I had heard of Playfair crosswords but had not seen one before now. I found Azed’s instructions comprehensive but not very easy to understand so I looked up Playfair on the Web. Also a few typos have crept back into the on-line PDF which did not help matters. Fortunately another quick look on the web turned up what has to be done: the clue text for 1, 19, 23 and 37 across needs to be italicised; the clue for 23 across is wrongly numbered as 22 across; the letter count for 16 down is 3 not 4.
OK, so instructions and corrections cleared up on to solving the puzzle. It seemed obvious that we had to ignore the Playfair element until the normal clues were solved. After a fairly normal Azed solving experience I ended up with this:
As expected the solutions for the italicised clues are encrypted. I was able to cold-solve 3 out of the 4 italicised clues: VULGAR, HIRELING and TAVERN. This meant the Playfair solutions would encode as follows:
1 VU LG AR encodes to SI P? DC
19 unsolved encodes to FM KR EN ??
23 HI RE LI NG encodes to ?? VR IP AH
37 TA VE RN encodes to DN ?R SD
Now how to construct the 5×5 grid used for the encryption? First I noted that the Playfair system nearly always substitutes one letter for another letter on the same horizontal line of the grid. The only time this would not happen is when a pair of letters to be encoded fall in the same column, I assumed that Azed has been kind and not stuffed his answers with instances of this exception, so for a first pass I decided to assume that all letters encode to another on the same line. This enabled me to group many of the letters onto lines, though I did not yet know the exact order of these letters in each line nor the order of the lines in the grid.
Instances where a letter appears in both the source pair and the encrypted pair were particularly helpful. For example RE encode to VR so we can deduce : R is on the same line as V, E is on the same line as R and hence E is also on the same line as V. Using all the clues I had solved so far I deduced the lines would contain:
1 LIPU 2 ERVS 3 NATD 4 GH 5
leaving the letters BCFKMOQWXYZ to be placed. The instructions stated that the solutions are synonyms of the codewords. TAVERN and VULGAR were making me think of PUBLIC which was looking likely on the first line of my table of letters. So as a guess I added the unused B to the first group and started looking for a second part of the codeword that is a synonym of HIRELING and follows or precedes PUBLIC in a compound word. PUBLIC SERVANT looked a likely possibility with the letters ERVS sitting in one line in my table and NAT in another. So, adding the final C from public to ERVS and rearranging the letters I ended up with:
P U B L I C S E R V A N T D F G H K M O Q W X Y Z
The remaining letters are added in alphabetical order. I was lucky in that I had got the order correct order for the lines first time but this was by chance not by design. To check my solution I had a look to see what letters would encode to FM KR EN ?? and they were DO ME ST ??. DOMESTIC, of course! It means servant and fits the clue to 19 across. So, all that is left is to encode the last few remaining letters and complete the grid.
Compound code word: PUBLIC SERVANT
Sadly my imagination is not on a par with my deductive skills so I passed on the clue-writing part of the competition. I have seen previous winning and commended entries and I know my limits! Thank you Azed.
| Across | ||
| 1 | VULGAR | Former queen constraining Gaul, unruly, unrefined (6) |
| VR (Victoria Regina, former queen) contains anagram (unruly) of GAUL | ||
| 6 | TELESM | Screen male holding singular charm (6) |
| TELE (screen) M (male) contains S (singular) – variant of talisman | ||
| 11 | BAHAMIAN | Caribbean religion, one gripping millions (8) |
| BAHAI (religion) AN (one) contains M (millions). I wasted a lot of time convinced that this was going to br JAMAICAN (JAIN or JANIAN the religion) which fitted all the crossers I had at the time. | ||
| 12 | ROUX | Wife in tow starts to rear offspring, thickening (4) |
| UX (wife) following (in tow) starting letters of Rear Offspring | ||
| 13 | BROD | Rear of heifer? Person’s holding that goad (4) |
| feifeR (rear, last letter of) inside (that is held by) BOD (person) | ||
| 14 | SUTLERY | Stall serving liquor for the troops: result, drunken yen (7) |
| anagram (drunken) of RESULT then Y (Yen) | ||
| 15 | WOMERA | Missile launcher: face backwards a long time (6) |
| MOW (face) reversed (backwards) then ERA (a long time) | ||
| 17 | RETRAL | I’ll be hidden in second hearing, at the back (6) |
| RETRiAL (second hearing) missing (hiding) I | ||
| 19 | DOMESTIC | Head maybe curtailed cane in the house? (8) |
| DOME (head maybe) and STICk (cane, curtailed) | ||
| 21 | PORE | Muse required for small passage (4) |
| double definition | ||
| 22 | LOIN | Piece of meat, a long way away from R. Blanc? (4) |
| LOIN is far in French (as spoken by Raymond Blanc) | ||
| 22 | HIRELING | One that’s taken on a range of Lancashire lingerie (8) |
| found inside (a range of letters from) lancasHIRE LINGerire | ||
| 26 | ON TIME | Release number with backing not lagging (6, 2 words) |
| EMIT (release) NO (number) reversed (backing) | ||
| 29 | AEROBE | A beer bottled with oxygen in – what’ll need that? (6) |
| anagram (bottled, shaken up with?) of A BEER containing (with…in) O (oxygen) | ||
| 31 | HALITUS | Foreign bed in foreign house, making one fume (7) |
| LIT (bed in French, foreign) in HAUS (house in German, foreign) | ||
| 33 | EYAS | Old-fashioned musket, a feature of Plassey assuredly (4) |
| found inside plassEY ASsuredly – a musket is an old word for a male hawk | ||
| 34 | SCAD | Clubs getting serious about making a lot of dough (4) |
| C (clubs) inside (getting…about) SAD (serious) | ||
| 35 | TRAINERS | Coaches in running shoes (8) |
| double definition | ||
| 36 | SEANAD | The main honorific going round in the upper house (6) |
| SEA (the main) then DAN (honorific) reversed (going round) Irish Parliament | ||
| 37 | TAVERN | Drunk near TV in hostelry (6) |
| anagram (drunk) of NEAR TV | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | STRAWFLOWERS | Hush before undressed female drops bloomers (12) |
| ST (hush!) before RAW (undressed) then F (female) LOWERS (drops) | ||
| 2 | ISODOMON | Regular masonry one place of ill repute has in progress (8) |
| I (one) SODOM (place of ill repute) with ON (in progress) | ||
| 3 | PLUS | Discharge includes pounds, an advantage (4) |
| PUS (discharge) contains L (pounds) | ||
| 4 | DARTRE | Skill cutting into spreading red skin disease (6) |
| ART (skill) inside (cutting into) anagram (spreading) of RED | ||
| 5 | CHALAN | Pass in India which a landslide has blocked? (6) |
| found inside (a block of) whiCH A LANdslide | ||
| 6 | TAVER | Scottish rag, number taken from pub (5) |
| TAVERn (pub) missing N (number) | ||
| 7 | EMURE | It’s proper to leave off start of dialogue and shut up for Shakespeare (5) |
| dEMURE (proper) missing (to leave off) Dialogue (starting letter of) | ||
| 8 | EARDROP | Pendant doctor’s concealed in comic opera (7) |
| DR (doctor) inside anagram (comic) of OPERA | ||
| 9 | SNOG | Second drink leading to a bit of nooky (4) |
| S (second) NOG (drink) | ||
| 10 | MUDDLEHEADED | Not thinking straight: —— to get dead, eh? (12) |
| if you MUDDLE the letters of HEADED you get DEAD EH | ||
| 16 | ERN | The old make middle of screw centred in nut (4) |
| scRew (middle of) inside (centered in) EN (nut, printing term) old spelling of earn | ||
| 18 | ARABIANS | Horses Scot maybe stabled in Basra strangely (8) |
| IAN (Scot maybe) inside (stabbed into) anagram (strangely) of BASRA | ||
| 20 | KITHARA | A cheer goes up after one stringed instrument or another (7) |
| A RAH (cheer) reversed (goes up) following KIT (a stringed instrument) – a kithara (or cithara) is a stringed instrument | ||
| 21 | PIR | Religious title, one accepted by priest (3) |
| I (one) inside PR (priest) | ||
| 24 | VAILED | Once in disguise a devil runs amok (6) |
| anagram (disguised) of A DEVIL – old spelling of veiled | ||
| 25 | RETURN | Investor hopes for a good one … and ace defies one (6) |
| double definition – finance and tennis | ||
| 27 | MANIA | Personal prestige involving ego, an abnormal fixation (5) |
| MANA (personal prestige) contains (involving) I (the ego) | ||
| 28 | ELAND | Wild creature making two varieties of earth? (5) |
| E (earth) and LAND (earth) | ||
| 30 | LYTE | Washing solution needing time inside to settle (4) |
| LYE (washing solution) contains (needs…inside) T (time) variant spelling of light | ||
| 32 | SCAR | Bits of sea coral are rapidly forming reef (4) |
| first letters (bits) of Sea Coral Are Rapidly | ||
definitions are underlined
I write these posts to help people get started with cryptic crosswords. If there is something here you do not understand ask a question; there are probably others wondering the same thing.
As usual my heart sank when I saw this was a Playfair, but when I eventually got the phrase I realised that I was enjoying myself as I usually do (and it’s by no means the most difficult of Azed’s competition types).
The clues themselves weren’t too knotty – why I spent so long agonising over 22a before I saw it staring me in the face I’ll never know.
The italics oversight in the online print version was corrected on the Monday, but now I see that today’s print version is illegible. There always seems to be something.
The online pdf must have been an earlier draft. The paper version had no errors on this occasion.
Some of us still buy the Observer on paper so don’t have the problems with missing italics etc (though the wrongly renumbered Left/Right can still strike!)
The specials always switch on long-dormant thinking-routes. Thanks PeeDee for analysing your steps to cracking the code. Like you DOMESTIC took me longer to work out than the other coded words. As it happens it didn’t contribute much to the solving. None of the pairs here fitted the alternative vertical column shift- these can make decoding awkward. That helped in getting the “one-liners” and moving these up and down ANT, ERV etc fell neatly into place.
As always some neat clues and new vocabulary made this another Azed delight.
I seem to remember Ximenes once producing a Playfair where the code word was only three or four letters. Or is it just imagination?
PeeDee, thanks for explaining the process you adopted to solve the code. I remember doing so on previous occasions, with much trial and error before finally working out the codeword. I must admit that nowadays I just put the cipher text into an online resource which immediately generates a list of possible key words, with PUBLIC SERVANT being the first. Your method was how it is meant to be done! Azed tries to help by making the clues for the encrypted words pretty simple (except for DOMESTIC, which I reverse solved from the coded version).
PAYFAIR?
I was rather surprised that Azed was unusually helpful with the rubric, indeed so helpful that the codeword was given by the four coded answers, vulgar and tavern giving public and the other two more obviously servant.
Still a pleasant diversion.
AAnd thank you PeeDee for the comprehensive blog.
sidey – I liked it that Azed has linked solving the encoded clues to finding the codeword. This meant it felt like solving a crossword all the way through to the end. Otherwise the end game would just have been code breaking problem, unrelated to crosswords at all.