A characteristically devious and topical puzzle for this month’s Genius competition.
The special instructions read as follows: “From each down clue an item of misinformation must be removed to reach the solution. Each row of across solutions contains one that clashes with down solutions until it has been corrected to produce an item of information”.
At first I could make little sense of the instructions, so I concentrated on solving some of the clues. I made good progress with the across clues, but none at all with the down ones, for reasons which are now obvious. I entered the first few across solutions (in pencil!) into the grid and had another look at the down clues. I focused on the shortest clue, 2 down. It looked like an anagram with “doctor” as the anagrind, but the answer was only 4 letters long and the anagram fodder “answered” was eight letters long. A challenge might be a dare, but that clashed with OPED. I went to bed. A few moments later I had what I can only describe as a lightbulb moment. If the letters NSWE were removed from “answered’, what was left would form an anagram of DARE. And the letters removed were an anagram of NEWS, so could be described as an item of misinformation. I turned on the light.
On examination, every down clue contained an anagram of NEWS. Once those letters were omitted, it became possible to solve the down clues. That just left the clashes. I already had TYROS at 9 across; that was an obvious anagram of STORY. And OPED was an anagram of DOPE, which resolved the clash with DARE. After that breakthrough it was plain sailing. In some cases the amended down clues made little sense, but it was easy enough to solve and parse them. All the corrected across solutions are types of information.
I have highlighted the “corrected” across clues in the grid. The blog gives the wordplay for the original answers, which are shown in bold. For the down clues I have for the most part not shown the clue as it may appear after the anagram is removed; it’s usually obvious (e.g. “show of kit” at 3 down) or else impossible (e.g. Robot crog by… at 7 down). Definitions underlined are the original uncorrected solutions in the across clues.
The title “Fake News” is mine, not Arachne’s but it seems most appropriate. Thanks, Arachne, for a most satisfying puzzle which produced, for me, that memorable lightbulb moment!
| Across | ||
| 8 | SEDATIVE | She loses heart: case for sleeping pill? (8) |
| S(h)E DATIVE. A straightforward charade to get us started. | ||
| 9 | STORY | Apprentices from County Roscommon (5) |
| TYROS (hidden in County Roscommon). | ||
| 10 | DOPE | Page in dictionary is page for comment (4) |
| OP-ED: P in OED. | ||
| 11 | MOTHERS BOY | Rearranging bosom, try to keep male child too closely attached (7,3) |
| HE in *(BOSOM TRY). | ||
| 12 | REPORT | Patient pusher of drug left first, right? (6) |
| PORTER: PORT (left) E (drug) R(ight). | ||
| 14 | BOOTLEGS | Merseyside educational institute deals illicitly (8) |
| BOOTLE G(rammar) S(chool). | ||
| 15 | INFO | Government department once importing popular sherry (4) |
| FINO: IN in FO (Foreign Office; now Foreign and Commonwealth Office, hence “once”). | ||
| 16 | SOLID | Small, smelly and dense (5) |
| S(mall) OLID. | ||
| 17 | AURA | Left-wingers in Acton unfriend rebellious, angry character (4) |
| First (left) letters of Acton Unfriend Rebellious Angry. | ||
| 19 | BIBULOUS | Drunken bachelor Louis astonishingly consuming eight gallons (8) |
| BU(shel) in *B(achelor) LOUIS. | ||
| 21 | LATEST | What’s in most flat white coffees (6) |
| LATTES: |
||
| 22 | DEAD CENTRE | Completely reviewed recent position of crank (4,6) |
| DEAD (completely) *RECENT. This definition is from Chambers: “In a reciprocating engine or pump, either of the positions, at top and bottom of a piston stroke, at which the crank and connecting rod are in line…” | ||
| 23 | WORD | Shetland troll first to defend altercation (4) |
| DROW: D(efend) ROW. | ||
| 24 | INTEL | Sound of signal sent at regular intervals (5) |
| INLET: alternate letters in sIgNaL sEnT. “Sound” here is used in its geographical sense. | ||
| 25 | ORATORIO | Musical work of Queen inciting a riot in O2 (8) |
| R(egina) *(A RIOT) in O O. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | MELODEON | Men swear rival bus company lost cinema organ (8) |
| After removal, this might read: Me ARRIVAl bus company lost… ARRIVA being a bus (and train) company. Cinema of course is obvious. | ||
| 2 | DARE | Doctor answered challenge (4) |
| *ARED. | ||
| 3 | KISMET | Show of Ken’s wit captivating company initially (6) |
| SME(small or medium-sized enterprise) in KIT. | ||
| 4 | DESTABILISATION | Rocking almost all boats in West Indies violently (15) |
| *(AL(l) BOATS I T INDIES). | ||
| 5 | ASTEROID | Drug is behind unbridled rawness in member of rock group (8) |
| (R)A(S) STEROID. | ||
| 6 | CONSULTANT | Specialist diplomats went to support Brown (10) |
| CONSUL TAN T. | ||
| 7 | CYBORG | Robot crew snog by vibrating (6) |
| *(CROG BY). | ||
| 13 | OROTUNDITY | Owen’s stout and periodically filthy pomposity (10) |
| O ROTUND fIlThY. | ||
| 16 | SLOVENLY | Scruffy son means well, leaving repast and just eating endless veg (8) |
| S(on) (MEAL)L, VE(g) in ONLY. | ||
| 18 | RESTRAIN | Stop making section of shrew’s nest rainproof (8) |
| Hidden after EWSN is removed. | ||
| 20 | IBERIA | Ibsen warier right away, travelling in part of Europe (6) |
| IB *ARIE(R). | ||
| 21 | LEEWAY | Slackens W Spooner’s little lines (6) |
| 23 | WOOL | Women’s circle sew no end of beautiful fabric (4) |
| W O O (beautifu)L. | ||
*anagram
I enjoyed this puzzle very much. Thanks to Arachne for the challenge.
Thank you to bridgesong for the blog. I think 21a is an implied hidden clue – most flat would be “flattest”, and LATTES is “in” that.
PS I don’t see the problem with 21d – I took lay as meaning a lyric or narrative poem, consisting of a number of “lines”.
Giudice, thanks for those comments. I’ve amended the blog. And you’re right about 21 dn as well, I had the wrong Spoonerism (ley instead of lay).
Thanks bridgesong. Arachne leaves me speechless! I don’t normally attempt the Genius, but her name being on it I had to give it a go. The ingenuity of the puzzle suggests to me that if she were working for a foreign power Arachne would be really dangerous. 🙂
I thought this was fantastic – often Genius puzzles are extremely clever in their construction, but a long grind to solve. This was constructed beautifully but fun throughout – although we had reached the point of despairing of ever working out what was going on, before having a similar moment of illumination to bridgesong. The second breakthrough – realising that we had to enter anagrams of the solutions – didn’t come immediately, but was similarly satisfying. Fab!
I’d say this is the best Genius puzzle we’ve had for a long time. It’s quite an achievement to fit NEWS in various combinations into all the down clues and still come up with clues that have smooth surface readings. Also much appreciated was the tight cryptic grammar in every clue – necessary at this level, but we don’t always get it. I’d love to see an IQ or Listener puzzle composed by Arachne!
I haven’t been finding time for the Genius recently but had to make a space for this one. Saw the fake news quite quickly, but didn’t twig how to resolve the clashes until right at the end after staring at the completed grid for a while. A lovely moment when I did, and a delightful solve all round.
Many thanks Arachne and Bridgesong.
I looked at this on and off for a couple of weeks and despite pencilling in a few provisional acrosses, just kept shaking my head at the instructions. Then finally the lightbulb came on, looking at 1d, I think, for how to “remove an item of misinformation”, and, having already solved 9a as TYROS, solving 7d, CYBORG gave me the way to treat the across answers. After that it went pretty smoothly, thanks to the exquisitely crafted clues.
Somehow I parsed 23a as TROW, which is another version of DROW (neither of which I knew), so originally I had WORT (German for word), even though I wasn’t happy with it. It was only when I was filling in the form that I thought to look up DROW (thankfully!)
I didn’t really know OP ED, but it was easy from the wordplay. Similarly with 13d, OROTUNDITY. I didn’t know there was a show called KISMET either, or know the abbreviation SME, but it had to be something in KIT and KISMET was the only word I could think of. Thanks to Mr Google for the show title and bridgesong for SME.
I loved the surface for 16a SOLID and the cryptic def for 5d ASTEROID.
Anyone who ever adjusted the ignition timing on an old car knows that the setting is defined as so many degrees BTDC (before top dead centre), so I needed no dictionary for 22a.
Great puzzle!
I was very lucky in noticing the combination of N E W S in the down clues before I even started the puzzle. I’m not sure how I saw these, but just did. That meant that I was able to get most clues done quite quickly. I struggled with the last six and had to leave the puzzle to one side for about 10 days to ‘clear my mind’ of previous thinking; then I was able to do the rest. I have found most Arachne puzzles very enjoyable, and this was no exception. My one slight quibble is getting DESTABILISATION from ROCKING in 4D. Surely these are different parts of speech; The former is a noun, and the latter either an adjective or verb?
Thanks to Bridgesong and Arachne.
Gordon,
“Thinking is the best way to travel”
[Noun] is [noun]
Or rather, [Noun] is [noun phrase]
Gordon: in the phrase “the rocking of the cradle” rocking is clearly acting as a noun. It is a gerund, but also an adjective.
Thank you Tony and Bridgesong: I stand corrected.
I should have remembered about gerunds as I once spent an hour with a friend trying to come up with a gerundive, which apparently many linguists say we do not have in the English language. I did think of one that he grudgingly admitted might be correct, but I know longer recall what the word was.
I shall now go and put on my dunces cap.
I didn’t try and solve the puzzle, sorry to say, but it looks great. The down clues are unbelievably clever.
First Genius I ever finished! Thanks Arachne 🙂