Another tough Genius this month, after last month’s relatively gentle puzzle.
This puzzle was of a kind that we have seen before in the Genius series, with a number of solutions representing partners “in familiar pairings”. The clue (without a definition) leads to one partner, but the grid entry has to be the other partner. 26 out of 33 clues were of this kind, a very high proportion. The main difficulty is that the enumeration given relates to the grid entry, which means that you have no idea of the length of the answer to the clue itself. With only 7 normal clues to provide any sort of structure, progress was slow. In addition, the clues were pretty concise (not having any definitions). I have a few issues with the fairness of some of the clues, which I discuss in greater detail below.
The puzzle was plagued by production problems, which led to corrections to the PDF being made over 48 hours after the puzzle was first uploaded to the Guardian website. Because the puzzle, when I downloaded the print version on 6 January, had two apparently conflicting clues at 29 across I emailed the Guardian’s crossword editor, Hugh Stephenson, to draw his attention to this and to obtain an explanation. He responded by explaining that he had been ill over the Christmas period and had consequently got behind with the necessary editing. Then, the person responsible for actually uploading the puzzle broke a rib and had to work from home. Between them they managed to get an accurate entry form and “a printout which was correct in all respects other than the wording for 29 across”. On Monday 6 January the corrected PDF printout was created. I am not sure that this is the whole story as it is apparent from comments on the crosswordsolver.org forum that there were also minor mistakes to the clues at 5 down and 23 and 24 down, although these were swiftly corrected. One particular oddity is the additional clue for 29 across, which Hugh claimed “worked correctly for the required clue”. This additional clue read as follows: “Obstruction has been removed for walking encyclopaedia (4-3)”. I can’t work out what this is supposed to mean, bearing in mind that 29 across is a conventional clue with 9 letters in the answer!
For the purposes of the blog, I have entered the grid entry first, with the partner answer (for the 26 thematic clues) second.
| ACROSS
Grid entry Answer |
||
| 9 MCCARTNEY | LENNON | Christmas returns without news (9) |
| NN (news) in NOEL (rev). | ||
| 10 NIECE | NEPHEW | Henry occupies Tyneside seat (5) |
| H in NE PEW. | ||
| 11 GOING | COMING | Business in Gulf brings in millions (5) |
| M in CO IN G. | ||
| 12 VERTICALS | HORIZONTALS | As far as I can see, stories lack energy (9) |
| HORIZON, TAL(e)S. The answer was fairly obvious, but I don’t consider these two plural words to be “a familiar pairing”. You might speak of the horizontal and vertical axes of a graph, but I can’t think of an expression using the two terms on their own. | ||
| 13 PENATES | LARES | Left sign without one (7) |
| L AR(I)ES. Lares et penates were the ancient Romans’ household gods. | ||
| 14 GUMSHOE | Detective‘s mugshot almost corrupted tablet (7) | |
| *(MUGSHO) + E. The first conventional clue; I wasn’t entirely happy that tablet=E. | ||
| 17 PORGY | BESS | American elected to abandon affair (5) |
| B(us in)ESS. | ||
| 19 FUN | GAMES | Note stolen from cells (3) |
| GAME(te)S. | ||
| 20 NAMES | ADDRESSES | Bill lines up lectures (5) |
| AD DRESSES. “lectures” seems to be a definition, which should have been omitted. | ||
| 21 LEANDER | HERO | Old king’s missing daughter (7) |
| HERO(d). | ||
| 22 JOHNSON | JOHNSON | Toilet’s working (7) |
| A simple charade and a reference to the US pharmaceutical company. | ||
| 24 MORECAMBE | WISE | Lives in western Spain (9) |
| IS in W E(spana). | ||
| 26 VAULT | A big safe jump (5) | |
| Double definition. | ||
| 28 LAGER | LIME | Fiction enthrals Mike (5) |
| M in LIE. | ||
| 29 SLEEKNESS | Even sheen of boats reflected by a loch (9) | |
| KEELS (rev) NESS. But what’s “a” doing in the clue? | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 SMUG | Sticks up like narcissus? (4) | |
| GUMS (rev). Narcissus needs to be capitalised to make the clue make sense. | ||
| 2 ACTION | REACTION | Soldiers start shooting (6) |
| RE (Royal Engineers: soldiers) ACTION (command given by film director to start shooting scene). | ||
| 3 BRIGHT-EYED | BUSHY-TAILED | President Kennedy ultimately dogged (6-4) |
| (President) BUSH (Kenned)Y TAILED. | ||
| 4 KNIVES | FORKS | People swapping sides (6) |
| FOLKS with R for L. | ||
| 5 HYDROGEN | Greyhound injured ignoring sharp bend gets gas (8) | |
| *GREYHO(u)ND. | ||
| 6 ANTI | PRO | Regular features of parrot and sparrow (4) |
| Alternate letters in PaRrOt and sPaRrOw. I was misled by “features” in the clue into thinking the answer was PROS, which led me to enter CONS as the answer. I think “feature” would have been fairer. | ||
| 7 SERAPHIM | CHERUBIM | Polish writer’s supporting Catholic ambassador (8) |
| C(atholic) HE (His Excellency, an ambassador) over RUB, I’M. I do not think that “writer’s” can be said to equate to I’M. | ||
| 8 BEES | BIRDS | Offers impress Republican (4) |
| R in BIDS. | ||
| 13 PUPIL | TEACHER | Three cobblers catch a cold (5) |
| *(THREE A C). | ||
| 15 MENSHEVIKS | BOLSHEVIKS | Idle lout’s given up casing hotel (10) |
| H(otel) between SKIVE (idle) and SLOB (both rev). You have to read “idle” as a verb for the parsing to make sense. | ||
| 16 ESSEN | City makes sense to some extent – or even completely! (5) | |
| Hidden in “makes sense”. | ||
| 18 ROAD RAGE | A bore stops ruminant pet on the way (4,4) | |
| A DRAG in ROE (a ruminant). “Pet” seems a little mild for the behaviour described. | ||
| 19 FOREMOST | FIRST | Duke collars king (8) |
| R(ex) in FIST. | ||
| 22 JEEVES | WOOSTER | Stone blocks one trying to win (6) |
| ST in WOOER (one who is trying to win the hand of his beloved, perhaps). I don’t have to explain who Jeeves and Wooster are, do I? | ||
| 23 CUP | SAUCER | Two pennies, the first one old? (6) |
| CU (copper) P(enny). | ||
| 24 MILK | HONEY | Head office ready to be turned over (4) |
| HO YEN (money, rev). I originally entered MOON instead of MILK which was of course not the familiar pairing. | ||
| 25 CART | HORSE | Romeo’s wearing tights (4) |
| R in HOSE. | ||
| 27 TOSS | PITCH | Start to publicise appeal, when out of cash (4) |
| P(ublicise) IT (sex appeal) C(as)H. | ||
Hi Bridgesong
The ‘second’ clue for 29A was actually the last clue for Genius number 147 by Paul. The theme was a missing letter needed to be added to all answers. All 26 letters were used. The missing letter for this clue was K. The wordplay gave NO WALL. Adding the K gave the answer as KNOW ALL. What Hugh claims is therefore BO******, as is often the case.
I liked this crossword but thought 6D was poor as well. I had CONS in for a long time also as the two repetitions of PRO gave me PROS. I think taking the singular is a bit naughty.
I took 20A as a double definition rather than a word play and spurious definition.
I thought 29A was OK as NESS is “A Loch”. Leaving the ‘A’ out would make the clue clunky.
Thanks for Bridgesong’s blog and Crucible for an entertaining and fair puzzle except for where stated.
Thanks Bridgesong, I thought this was tough but fair, with only the presence of a definition in 20a giving some confusion. I just ignored the second clue at 29 as an obvious typo. I had some idea “horizontals and verticals” were used as terms in design and architecture, but Google brings up more business related use. The “features” in 6d are the letters, so no problem with the plural, but I agree the clue as a whole does suggest PROS.
Many thanks to Crucible.
Thanks to Bridgesong for putting us out of our misery. I always wait until the middle of the month before attempting a Genius as cock-ups in the original posting seem so common.
It was certainly tough, but some clues were barely fair, IMO. When you have the uncertainty of length of the answers, and no help from crossers, it behoves the setter to be a little more lenient with the clues, even in a Genius.
PORGY for 17a was one of several possibilities (with Parry/Thrust, Perky/Pinky even Perry/Cider) but I couldn’t persuade myself that any of the partner words answered the clue.
Likewise, GAMEteS seemed to be asking a bit much of the solver. And was Narcissus smug? Vain, yes, but they’re not synonyms.
Also, a couple of answers admitted of different partners – I started putting PUTT for 27d – perhaps a more familiar partner to Pitch than Toss, BOSWELL for 22a and LEMON for 28a which also seemed valid partners.
Having got all that off my chest, let me say that we did enjoy most of it, it’s a good theme for this sort of puzzle, it was just frustrating to have to give up on it with a few blanks left.
I didn’t try this, not having a working printer at the moment, and I’m rather glad, given all the editing problems. A couple of points I noticed, reading the blog:
7d SERAPHIM ‘I do not think that “writer’s” can be said to equate to I’M’.
That’s ‘writer (the setter, who has written the clue) is’ = ‘I am’, which seems ok to me.
13d, TEACHER is A C(old) (caught) in THREE*
16d ESSEN is also an anagram of ‘sense’, hence the second part of the clue, if you accept that “makes” can imply an anagram
23d CUP & SAUCER They’re the wrong way round, aren’t they?
I gave up on this – clearly I printed it out too early and had a version riddled with errors which is, frankly, pathetic. Also I had a number of “wrong” partners – “cons”, “lemon”. Again, this is just bad setting. An answer should be pretty unambiguous and hence the partners should be, just as much as the unentered solutions.
Lesson learned – don’t even bother with tomorrow’s Genius until Valentine’s day…though my wife may not forgive me taking it out to dinner!
Thank you for the correct answers at least.