Guardian Genius no. 174 / Soup – December 2017

32 comments on “Guardian Genius no. 174 / Soup – December 2017”

1. I thoroughly enjoyed this, but am concerned about future Soup offerings.

   I believe this is his third genius puzzle.  The first was clever with repeated across clues which made it relatively easy to solve.  The second was of average difficulty, but very enjoyable.  This was very tough indeed and perhaps the toughest puzzle in the past 18 months.  I am scared at what the next offering may be!

   I am aware from other sources that Hamish has apologised for the grammatical faux pas of less/fewer as he had no room for correctness.  In this case I think we can forgive him.

   I had problems with getting ‘homophone’ early on as I had PEN rather than POE as part of 19A.  It took me a while to get that sorted.

   I too, wish the additional letters were not simply attached but subsumed in the wordplay.  I recall having a long debate with another setter about this around 3-4 years ago.

   I really liked the clue for 12A.

   My slight peeve was with 22D.  Being from Stockport, before my exile here in Connecticut, I do not see Chance and Chants as true homophones.  Up north we used to pronounce the ‘T’s in words.

   Still I really enjoyed this and imagine the number of entries to the Guardian will have been well on the lower end this month.

   Thanks to Soup and to BertandJoyce for the detailed blog.

   If Hamish responds to this blog, which I strongly suspect he will do, I would be interested in how he chose his moniker.

2. I’m going to guess he chose his name because Symington is his surname, the same name as a company that makes. amongst other things, packets soups and such.

   As for the puzzle, it took me a couple of days, but I got there in the end. I found all the clues fair, but tough, just the way I like them.

   Thanks to Bertandjoyce and Soup.

3. It was perhaps fortunate for me that my attempt to enter the competition online for this puzzle failed at the first hurdle (I hit the return key after the first entry, which had the effect of submitting the puzzle with only one answer completed: there is no way to withdraw and reenter).  It was fortunate because I now realise that I had failed to spell out the complete message from the extra letters and had not adjusted all the words required (I also for some reason had nightwear at 12 ac).  I agree that to find homophones for so many words is indeed a remarkable achievement.

   As I am down to blog January’s Genius, I’ll try and take more care next month!

    

    

4. By the way, does anyone know the way(s) in which the Guardian accepts completed entries rather than dismissing them as incorrect?

   I am specifically thinking of two-word answers or hyphenated answers where the words are entered in a normal crossword continuously.  So where a clue is indicated as say 6,4 do they expect the two words in the answer space to be separated by a comma, a space, or simply run together?  And with hyphenations do they want the hyphen?  I always use the concatenated method, without punctuation marks, but perhaps I am excluding myself from being a possible winner every month.  I find it strange that the instructions for entry of solutions does not cover this, nor has the crossword editor in my knowledge.

5. Unbelievably, I finished this just hours before the deadline and that despite failing to parse NIGHTLIFE or LINGUINI (thanks Bertandjoyce), but “exercising my judgement” (guessing) correctly. That was after much tearing of hair before I twigged the reason for the clashes. What an excellent conceit. I love homophones.

   Gordon, Uncleskinny is right about Symington’s Soups and in fact it was the family business and Hamish was first dubbed Soup by a schoolmaster because of that. I thought I read that in a Guardian Crossword Blog Meet the Setter post, but can’t find it now.

   Having had recent correspondence with Hamish in his role as editor of 1across magazine*, I can also reveal that he has just finished the first term of a PhD on algae in the Department of Plant Sciences at Cambridge University —
   https://www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/directory/symington-hamish It’s amazing he finds time to think up these fiendish puzzles.

   Regarding how to format entries, I once wrote to Hugh Stephenson (the editor) with a similar query and you needn’t worry as the answers are checked by eye and subject to human judgement, so I’m pretty sure a correct answer would not be disqualified for “bad spacing”.

   *…in connection with a puzzle of my own I was proud to see pubished in 1across’s Newbie Corner last month.

6. I’m afraid I gave up on this with fewer (or less) than half of the clues solved. As regards fewer or less, this link is interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less

   (Sorry, can’t see how to format it as a hyperlnk on my tablet)

7. bridgesong@3: I too have been caught out submitting prematurely by hitting ‘return’, but now I don’t put my email on the form till after checking all my solutions, so that it will not be accepted if sent.

8. I was relieved to see we had actually got all the answers right!  I had some doubts as the ‘instruction’ came out somewhat garbled as the missing letter was not always clear (as mentioned above) and I’d wrongly deduced one or two.

   But certainly ingenius, so congrats to Soup!

9. I got a good run of down solutions fairly quickly so knew that whatever was going on, it was likely to be going on only with the entries of “six letters or less”. That let me fill in the longer answers with some confidence and see the word “homophone” emerge in the across column. All in all very entertaining, just slightly let down by the clueing of the extra letters in 15a and 24d.

   Many thanks to Bertrandjoyce and Soup, and happy new year to all.

10. Thanks for the comments, folks, and for the solid review, B&J. Glad that people seem to have enjoyed it. Re LESS/FEWER: I was trying to get to sleep last night and thinking ‘USE A HOMOPHONE FOR SIX LETTERS OR FEWER’ would have worked. I have no idea why I didn’t think of that at the time. It was actually going to be FIVE LETTERS OR LESS to start with when I realised that, with only minor tinkering, I could get the six-letter ones as well.

    Gordon@1: You’re right, this is my third. The comment from Gaufrid for the last was “Overall I would say that this one falls at the easier end of the Genius spectrum”, and for the first from a commenter “on the easy side, even for a daily crossword”, so I wanted to prove (to myself, the Guardian editor, Gaufrid, solvers, parents, agent, pets…) that I could set a snorter, and I set out to make it hard. I’m sorry to people who gave up – solving a puzzle should be an enjoyable battle which you eventually win, not a slog which causes you to give up – I think my next Genius, if I’m allowed back, will likely be a bit easier than this but still on the tough end. We shall see. 

    Uncleskinny@2: As Tony@5 says, yes, my ancestors started the Symington’s factory in Market Harborough a long time ago – it’s out of family hands now.

    Comments about 15a/24d noted, and if I ever get let loose with something like that again I’ll take them on board. Interestingly, the grid was pretty straightforward to fill once I’d had the idea; I was helped by a homophone list somewhere online. I tried to stick to pairs which were confirmed by Chambers’ phonetic descriptions (so SHORE and SURE wouldn’t be allowed); CHANCE/CHANTS was, I think, the only ‘dodgy’ one in any accent, but the others should all work. I was interested to see the discussions about homophones on the Guardian Editor’s blog the week before this one came out!

    Happy New Year, all.

11. Hamish,

    Don’t know if you’re a fan, but BBC Radio4 ran a Christmas Day Just A Minute special, “50 Years in Twenty-Eight Minutes“, which cleverly wove together clips from the JAM archives. In one of the clips, Stephen Fry is tasked with talking for one minute without repetition, hesitation, or deviation on the subject of Chance and immediately begins to expound upon Gregorian chants. A swift challenge leads to a spat between that “national treasure” and the other, chairman Nicholas Parsons, who rules against the former, even suggesting his pronunciation leaves something to be desired. Personally, I’m with you and Fry as to the homophony of those words and was delighted when, later in the clip, Fry wreaks revenge for the putdown.

    Thanks for a great challenge. I’m well chuffed at completing it correctly, even if only with a bit of intelligent guesswork.I had an idea that Liguria was known in English as Ligory (cf, Toscana, Tuscany et al) and did try (but fail, obviously) to use that in parsing LINGUINE. Looking forward to the next one.

12. Well Tony @11 I hoped you parsed LINGUINI rather than LINGUINE, for your sake, in looking for the prize.

    Seeing as I am the one who raised CHANCE/CHANTS, I presume, like Mr. Fry, you must be a southern whimp!  I bet you don’t eat mushy peas either!

    In reality, I always think that crossword homophones should just be recognisable as such, even if they are not truly the way someone would pronounce them.  Not really a lot different than a clue that uses science incorrectly but you know what the setter means.

    I also would caution Hamish from taking anything that Gaufrid says as being the view of the man on the Clapham omnibus.  I suspect that Gaufrid found this as being nothing more than a ‘walk in the park’.

    I am grateful to The Sauvian Scrabbler [whatever that is] @6 for the link about less/fewer.  I will not stop ‘correcting’ my American friends on this though, as it gives me great pleasure to do so.

    Happy New Year to everyone.

     

13. Mushy peas are an abomination.

    (Also a good way of clueing PEAS*, so I shall file that one away.)

14. I generally only glance at the Genius, but did all of this one and thought it was great.  I got homophones early, but six or less only very near the end, so there was a nice level of puzzlement throughout.  I’d always say ‘six letters or less’.

15. I’m from north of “the north” and frequently get annoyed by supposed “sounds like” clues which don’t even come close in my head. “Sure/shore” is a perfect example, and thank you Hamish for not having any like that here. I know people say it doesn’t matter, and you know what the setter means, but it does make them significantly more difficult for me.

    I’m not so sure that chance/chants falls into that category. The vowel sound is the same in both (?), the difference being more to do with the enunciation of the T. I would have thought it equally (un)fair to all – a bit of a Christmas cracker pun.

    My northern English wife, after a couple of goes at saying the two words, said “that’s funny, I think of them as different but they sound the same”.

16. Yes, the vowel sound is ä in both, which is why I let it in… personally I speak with a ‘standard public school’ accent, if there is such a thing, and feel there’s only minimal difference between them even though I do pronounce the T. (I love the idea of a bunch of people reading this now saying ‘chants?’ ‘Chance.’ ‘Chance?’ ‘Chants’ ‘aunts’.)

17. A chance of chants of chants and chance?

18. Gordon @12

    Yes, it was LINGUINI I wrote in the grid. Just hope that’s also what I entered on the online form. It was STYLE/STILE (and doubts about the spelling) that opened the theme for me, actually. I’m sure it was knowing Hamish was a botanist that stirred a vague memory of the word from ‘O-level’ Biology.

    Haha! Yes, I’m a Southerner, but no whimp (or wimp, even, as I think(?) we write down here. Sounds the same dunnit? No?). I even eat mushy peas every Friday to keep me tough.

    I commented on the editor’s post Hamish refers to, with the suggestion that homophony be decided by the reference dictionary’s phonetics and it’s nice to see Hamish had the same thought. On the other hand, despite my love of homophones (including spoonerisms), one could argue that, as crosswords are about letters on the page, they shouldn’t be allowed.

    Happy New Year one and all.

19. As a cunning linguist I perceive two differences in how I say Chants and Chance.  In the former I do pronounce the ‘T’ but also whilst I say the ‘S’ it is cut short, almost like a glottal stop.  With the latter there is obviously no ‘T’ sound, but the letters ‘CE’ are pronounced as a much longer sibilant hissing ‘S’

    There’s nowt wrong with them pushy peas.

20. [Gordon, if you are indeed a linguist, not simply a punter with a penchant for paronomasia, you will be very wary of drawing conclusions from self-interrogation. I suggest you should create two wordlists, one of which contains chance and the other chants and record someone from your locality who is blind to the objective of the experiment reading the lists. Then ask a (large) number of people to listen to one or other of the recordings, chosen at random and to write down the words they hear. If a statistically significant proportion correctly identify the target words, you’ll have proved your point.]

21. Ooh, a double-blind trial. Let me know if you want me to do the stats on it; I need practice at this sort of thing (see Tony@5 earlier)!

22. OK Tony @20.  You have me ‘bang-to-rights’ on this.  Also I have learned a new word to describe myself.  Sorry Soup @21 I do not see the trial happening.  Do not forget I currently live in a land where the adverb is all but dead and algae is horribly mispronounced by everyone here.  As you both will know they do not even know how to pronounce tomato or basil properly.  I would not take a CHANCE on any American’s pronunciation of CHANTS ever!

    Now let me ask you two a question about pronunciation.  We all know that berk is rhyming slang and comes from Berkshire Hunt, but although I have visited that county many times when I worked for ICL in the 1970s and had to go to Bracknell, I never heard anyone pronounce Berkshire as Burkshire, but always as Barkshire.  Yet the word ‘berk’ is pronounced as ‘burk’ not ‘bark’.  What gives?

    By the way I like the latest Arachne Genius puzzle.  I had done about 30% of it by yesterday, but have seemingly lost the plot temporarily today.  I find that happens to me a lot.

23. Gordon, can’t help with the Berkshire question, but I remembered reading, and tracked down, a lively and illuminating discussion of the less/fewer issue in the comments to this post on Separated by a Common Language.

    You can page-search for “fewer” to find the relevant comments (125 hits), but if you can’t be bothered with all that, just check out this cartoon.

    PS maybe if you worked for ICL you also came to Stevenage?

24. An enjoyable month-long challenge – submitted late in the evening on the deadline day! Not least because I was held up by the ‘not-really-hidden’ letter in 24D, and the choice of homophones – CITE or CYTE? Both in Chambers, with the same phonetic symbols – s, long ‘i’ and t. (I’m a softy-southern RP speaker myself, with a bit of ‘Ampshire thrown in – not sure if there are any extreme variations of dialect or accent where those two wouldn’t be pronounced the same as SITE?)

    Gordon at #4 – I have pondered on this subject before, including in a previous Genius blog, and I have seen something from the Grauniad editor where he confirmed that Genius entries are human-read/checked, not machine processed, so there is some leeway in how things are entered – e.g. hyphens, punctuation. I vaguely remember that his direction was that one should just enter the ‘final’ answer, as it would be in the grid (so if a reversal is needed, enter the DROW backwards) although I always feel that where there is some sort of transformation going on, one should ‘show one’s working’, e.g. ‘WAIST -> WASTE’, or in this case. ‘SITE -> CITE (or CYTE?)’.

    Of course it would all be made simpler if the grid could just be interactive with a ‘submit’ button – the Times seem to be able to manage this perfectly easily, even with their barred ‘Mephisto’ puzzle, but I guess that would cost money, and the Grauniad is free, whereas the Times charge for access…you pays your money and you takes your choice…

25. Gordon@22: It’s from Berkeley Hunt, rather than Berkshire; the Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Hunt) says that “The “berk” in Berkeley is pronounced /?b??rk/, but in Cockney it is pronounced /?b??rk/, as in American English.”

    MC@24: Ugh, CYTE. I thought I had so carefully checked all of the homophones, but I hadn’t seen this one. I was aiming for CITE. I will email Hugh and note this one.

26. Hugh’s confirmed he’ll accept both CYTE and CITE.

27. Hamish, don’t know if it’s just my smartphone, but your phonetics ended up as question marks on my screen. Still, we know what you mean.

    Didn’t the American Embassy used to be in Berkeley Square?

28. Tony @27

    It’s not your smartphone. There are certain characters that WordPress doesn’t recognise/support and these are replaced with a question mark.

29. Cheers, Gaufrid; that’s what I thought.

    Btw, I missed your end-of-year-post, so I’ll take this opportunity to thank you for all your hard work and to wish you a very happy new year.
    Tony

30. Hi Tony @23

    Yes, as a Project Manager helping instal computer systems into Local Government sites in the north, I frequently had to go to not only Bracknell, as mentioned, but also Stevenage and Letchworth in Herts too.  I presume you have some link with Herts?  I used to get my head bitten off on many occasions by weird technical programmers for failing to understand the niceties of the GEORGE 3 and/or VME/B operating systems.  They were actually very enjoyable times mostly.  Also, thanks for the two links.  The cartoon is very reminiscent of several Dilbert ones that spring to mind, where he blows any chance of a date by correcting everything his female companion says or debunks what she believes in; actually thinking about it, Dilbert is quite like the technical staff at ICL I just mentioned!

    Hi Soup @26 I am surprised at Hugh’s response.  I thought the winner was always picked on the Monday after submission [it certainly was the time I was lucky enough to win 3 or so years back].  The only way that would make sense would be if they had eliminated someone with CYTE and now agree to give out a second prize.

    I also endorse what Tony @29 says about Gaufrid.

31. Yes, Gordon, I was brought up in Stevenage and I live there now, though I’ve spent many years here and there elsewhere in between. I also visit Letchworth every fortnight to play Go. I probably know a few people who’ve worked at ICL, but I can’t think of any now.

    As you’re an Englishman living in the States,with an interest in language, you can probably find a lot of good stuff in the archives of Separated By A Common Language, even it’s gone a bit quiet in recent times.

32. Many thanks to Soup @25 re: The hunt and to Tony@31 re: ‘Separated by a common language’.

    This dialogue has been fun for me, and hopefully for everyone else, and almost as much so as doing the crossword itself.  See you all next month.

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