Enigmatic Variations No. 1351: A Glorious Day for Physics by Encota

A physics-based puzzle from Encota – will my 35-year-old Physics ‘A’ Level be of use? Will there be an ADM (apple-drop moment), rather than the usual PDM?…

The preamble states that;

“Three pairs of entries can each be jumbled to give the names of three famous physicists. Each clue contains a word to be removed before solving; their first and last letters give part of a perhaps apocryphal thematic phrase associated with one of the physicists, and an 11-word instruction. The thematically relevant result and its name must be written below the grid (ten characters); solvers must also highlight what is referred to in the first phrase (nine cells).”

Well, first my even older ‘O’ Level English comprehension is called upon, unpicking a fairly complex preamble. And maybe a bit of Applied Maths – how many permutations of three pairs of answers can you get from the 45 available here?!

My solving notes show that after three sessions, of about 15 minutes each, I had most of the SW and NE quadrants filled, and after a fourth session the SE quarter only had a few stragglers left. But nothing obvious jumping out of the ether at me, and not really enough extra words/first-last letters to work out the phrases.

After a fifth session I had the grid pretty much full, and started to search for that ADM – scanning for any pairs of entries that look like they made Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, etc.?… YES! BIENNIAL SETTER makes ALBERT EINSTEIN, and he is the source of many a quote, apocryphal or not…one down, two to go…

Around the same time I had most of the missing words, and the first phrase looked like it had ‘I UNDERSTAND…LUCKY…BELIEVE…OR NOT’. However, none of Prof. Einstein’s quotes in my online searches seemed to match this, so I widened the net a bit, metaphorically and literally, and hit upon that ADM, or at least a partial one – NIELS BOHR is widely attributed to have said, of a horseshoe nailed on the door of his lab/office, that ‘…I understand it is lucky, whether you believe in it or not!…’ And the site I found this on seemed to mention Bohr, Einsten and Carl Alfred Meier in relation to the quote.

Well, I found BORN SHIEL = NIELS BOHR fairly quickly but, try as I might, I couldn’t find Meier anywhere – and in fact there weren’t many pairs adding up to his 15 letters.

At this point I decided to resort to number-crunching, or rather word-crunching: I needed one pair of entries, from 41 now, as four had been used already, and in fact technically 39, as it was unlikely to involve either of the 13-letter Down entries. So, using the wonderful ‘TEA’ application, I started anagramming them methodically, starting with DULOSIS + GALENA, then DULOSIS + THAI, etc., to see if any more physicists (or rather, hopefully just one!) would be revealed.

By my rusty permutation theory, choosing two from 39 gives 741 permutations (happy to be corrected!) – lets hope I don’t have to try them all… Along the way I discovered that THAI + ARMYANT = RATAN THIYAM, who is a real person, but he isn’t a physicist, he is an Indian playwright!

Luckily, on the sixth pass through, with NAILSET as my first word, I found NAILSET + OKLA = NIKOLA TESLA – bingo! Another apple drops on my head, after only about 190 permutations! (Obviously I stopped at this point, but would I even have gone to all that effort if it wasn’t my turn to blog this puzzle?…who knows…those Telegraph pens do make nice Christmas presents…)

It wasn’t too hard to find Bohr’s HORSESHOE arranged in the middle of the grid. And the instruction? ‘DOUBLE EACH PAIR’S LOWER CLUE NUMBER THEN ADD ALL SIX UP’.

1A BORN + 10D SHIEL = 2 + 10 = 12

1D BIENNIAL + 18D SETTER = 2 + 18 = 20

17A NAILSET + 41A OKLA = 34 + 41 = 75

Giving a total of 107, and there, straight in at no 107 in the Periodic Table, is none other than BOHRIUM, named after our quipping physicist:

 

 

Wow – hats, lab coats and protective eye-wear off to Encota – what a trail you have laid here! A veritable classic of an EV, and in my view a contender for the glittering prize ceremony that is the ‘EV of the Year Awards’ (if only we had one…)

The final piece of the jigsaw, although not technically needed for submission of the puzzle, is that title – ‘A Glorious Day…’. In fact, possibly two glorious days – this puzzle was published on 7th October; Niels Bohr was born on 7-Oct-1885, so that turned out to be a glorious day for physics. In addition, Professor Go-ogle tells me Bohr presented ‘…a new model for the atom…’ on 7-Oct-1913 – another fairly auspicious day for physics…

Hopefully all is explained clearly below – a special mention in dispatches for the wonderful 1A, referencing the Periodic Table yet again. (Luckily I carry a copy of the PT around with me, in the back of the plastic wallet of my current ‘crosswords-in-progress’ portfolio, as I find it invaluable for those occasional elemental references and abbreviations…)

NB. After finding the first two names, I did wonder whether we were supposed to enter them re-arranged, as they do fit in their contributing grid locations, but then Nikola Tesla didn’t fit so neatly, and also the preamble only says they ‘could be jumbled’, not ‘should‘, and it doesn’t make any mention of resulting non-words…

 

Across
Clue No	Extra Word	Solution / Entry	Clue (definition underlined, extra word bolded) / Logic/Parsing
1	IncorporateD	BORN	Brought into incorporated existence alongside carbon? (4) / The two elements in the periodic table either side of C (Carbon) are B (Boron) and N (Nitrogen), hence B OR N – a scientific clue to kick off a physics-themed puzzle!
6	UntO	DULOSIS	Tortured soul entering unto hell’s enslavement (7) / D_IS (Hell, the Underworld) around ULOS (anag, i.e. tortured, of SOUL)
12	NassaU	GALENA	Form of lead fair to squeeze Nassau bridge opponents (6) / GAL_A (fair, fete) around (squeezing) EN (East and North, opponents in bridge)
14	DumB	THAI	Knot reportedly in dumb sort of massage (4) / homophone, i.e. reportedly – THAI (a variety of massage technique) sounds like TIE (knot)
15	ElegiacaL	EPSOM	Derby town’s contrived elegiacal poems (5) / anag, i.e. contrived, of POEMS
16	RodE	ANTHILL	A knight rode by shaft in army location? (7) / A + N (knight, chess notation) + THILL (shaft, of a cart or carriage)
17	SalinE	NAIL SET	At sea entails one to push head below saline surface (7, two words) / anag, i.e. at sea, of ENTAILS
19	TriviA	NINTH	Some Bernstein trivia in this final symphony? (5) / hidden word, i.e. some, in ‘bernsteiN IN THis’
21	ArtistiC	CELLED	Like a prison release perhaps carrying artistic magazine (6) / C_D (compact disc, musical release format) around (carrying) ELLE (glossy magazine)
22	NineteentH	ICE-COLD	Alex’s nineteenth hoped-for beer like this? (7) / &lit-ish/CD? In the film ‘ICE-COLD in Alex’, one of the main plotlines is the desire to have an ICE-COLD lager in Alex(andria)…
23	DamP	EOLITH	Stone tool – it’s found in damp swimming hole (6) / EOL_H (anag, i.e. swimming, of HOLE) around IT
25	IncA	RAREE-SHOW	Spectacle wearers excitedly taking Inca house (9) / RAREE-S_W (anag, i.e. excitedly, of WEARERS) around (taking) HO (house)
28	TaxI	LITUUS	Staff previously got off taxi for all to see me (6) / LIT (got off) + U (film classification, for all to lee) + US (me, the royal we?!)
29	ScholaR	ASSURER	More certain to follow that scholar, one might confirm (7) / AS (in that degree) + SURER (more certain)
31	LifelesS	ANTRES	Caves concealing lifeless enchantress? The opposite (6) / hidden word, i.e. concealed by, i.e. the opposite of concealing, in ‘enchANTRESs’
35	UnlawfuL	AZERI	Ganja’s maybe unlawful in Arizona and Eastern state (5) / AZ (Arizona) + E (Eastern) + RI (Rhode Island, state); definition: Ganja is a city in Azerbaijan, so the possessive ‘s indicates the adjective – Azeri (?)
37	CommandO	ARMY ANT	Arabic lord wants disarmed commando soldier? (7, two words) / AR (Arabic) + MY (lord!, interjection) + ANT (w-ANT-s with outer letters, or arms, removed – dis-armed?!)
39	KnowhoW	HEARSES	Knowhow to examine steps regularly in vehicles of late (7) / HEAR (examine, try – in a legal sense) + SES (regular letters of StEpS)
40	YuletidE	BAKER	Fly from terrible Yuletide break (5) / anag, i.e. terrible, of BREAK
41	WinteR	OKLA	Satisfactory city state in brief winter? (4) / OK (satisfactory) + LA (Los Angeles, city)
42	HorrifiC	ASYLUM	Horrific greasy lump’s inside bin (6) / hidden word, i.e. inside, in ‘greASY LUMp’
43	ExceL	ANALYST	Any last moves for Excel tester? (7) / anag, i.e. moves, of ANY LAST
44	Thank-yoU	PREX	US college head’s quiet thankyou to King (4) / P (piano, quiet) + REX (king)
Down
Clue No	Extra Word	Solution / Entry	Clue (definition underlined, extra word bolded) / Logic/Parsing
1	HerE	BIENNIAL	Every two years, good amateur seen in love here (8) / BIEN (good, French) + NI_L (zero, love) around A (amateur)
2	EvacuatioN	OUPA	Publisher with one grandfather in East London evacuation (4) / OUP (Oxford University Press, publisher) + A (one); definition – East London referring to the South African city, not the East End of London!)
3	RagU	RESINER	Sap collector’s sample of ragu mixtures in error (7) / hidden word, i.e. sample of, in ‘mixtuRES IN ERror’
4	YaM	CAMSHO	Glasgow’s deformed yam – no time for upset stomach (6) / anag, i.e. upset, of S(T)OMACH, without T – Time
5	On-the-joB	SLEEPLESSNESS	Inability to go off on-the-job request for Vanessa to remain up more? (13) / Ness is an abbreviation for Vanessa, and if you asked her to stay up (awake) more, you might request her to ‘SLEEP LESS, NESS’!
7	UnacceptablE	UNNECESSARILY	Any unacceptable rules since reviewed … for nothing? (13) / anag, i.e. reviewed, of ANY RULES SINCE
8	BurneR	LATHE	Machine for shaping trimmed metal after turning around hot burner (5) / LAT_E(M) (trimmed and turned METAL) around H (hot)
9	Eight-fooT	OTHELLO	Play on the eight-foot lilo and I’ll disappear (7) / O (on) + THE + L(I)LO (I disappearing from ‘lilo’)
10	LavisH	SHIEL	Hut’s lavish protection cut short (5) / SHIEL(D) (protection, cut short)
11	InhalE	SILT	Inhale fine sediment occasionally found in skillet (4) / occasional letters of ‘SkIlLeT’
13	EstoniaN	EATS	Cycling saddle irritates Estonian (4) / SEAT (saddle) with the first letter ‘cycling’ to the back = EATS
18	VodkA	SETTER	Cop and this person mixing vodka could be top secret (6) / combinative/subtractive anag. – COP + SETTER (this person) mixed could give TOP SECRET
20	EmbattleD	I CHING	Fortune-teller and embattled soldier climbing around feature (6, two words) / I_G (GI, American soldier, climbing) around CHIN (feature)
24	IrkeD	HERITRIX	Will irked recipient broadcast ruses to support her and I? (8) / HER + I + TRIX (homophone, i.e. broadcast – TRIX sounds like TRICKS, ruses)
26	NarniA	AURORAL	Of the ear welcoming Narnia gold, fresh and beautiful! (7) / AUR_AL (of the ear) around (welcoming) OR (heraldic, yellow/gold)
27	IdoL	WREAKER	Softer surround for idol Purdey’s third Avenger? (7) / W_EAKER (softer) around (surrounding) R (third letter of ‘puRdey’)
30	TunefuL	SAMBUR	Large creature dancing tuneful rumbas (6) / anag, i.e. dancing, of RUMBAS
32	ObviouS	TRA-LA	Oddly, terra alba’s showing obvious sound of pleasure? (5) / alternate/odd letters of ‘TeRrA aLbA’
33	RomanI	ESSAY	Try to speak Romani after exams on vacation (5) / ES (e-xam-s, emptied, or vacated) + SAY (speak)
34	NiX	EASY	It’s nix back in view, endlessly tranquil (4) / E_Y(E) (view, endlessly) around AS (SA, sex appeal, or ‘it’, back)
36	OgpU	WHOA	Stop OGPU before a team of health experts can be found (4) / WHO (World Health Organisation, team of health experts) before A
38	ToP	NETE	Greek top string’s lowest energy (4) / NET (lowest price, subject to no further deductions) + E (energy)