Guardian Genius 212 – Karla

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A new setter, or at least a new pseudonym, for the Genius slot: perhaps a John le Carré fan?

The rather strangely-worded instructions tell us that “Fourteen clues contain no definition of their solution. Before entry the grid, these solutions must be switched to another word connected to them all by same one word.” At first I guessed this was going to be another “famous pairs” puzzle, with the “same one word” being AND, but it soon became clear that in fact it was THE, with a collection of collection of reasonably familiar people and characters (though I was a bit disappointed not to find Winnie the Pooh in the list).

The extra note that “The letter counts shown for them relate to their original solutions” was perhaps more generous than necessary, as it gave away the location of all but three of the “special” clues.

This was my quickest solve of a Genius for some time, but still a fun puzzle. Thanks to Karla.

In the solutions for the specials below I’ve shown the answer to the clue in lower case (with initial cap) and the grid entry in upper case.

 
Across
7. William the CONQUEROR Setter is appended to testament (7)
WILL I AM
8. CONAN the Barbarian Couple of boozers Diana discovered (9)
BAR BAR [d]IAN[a]
9. BREADLINE Bishop scanned string in food queue (9)
B READ LINE
10. Mack the KNIFE ‘A’ for Oscar in exam (4)
MOCK (exam) with O replaced by A
12. Dennis the MENACE Strayed from the path heading west (6)
Reverse of SINNED
13. ECONOMIC Cheap online mag maybe keeps running (8)
ON in E-COMIC
14. SPATULA Row originally upriver levering a flat implement (7)
SPAT + first letters of Upriver Levering + A
17. Aethelred the UNREADY Organise the leader (9)
(THE LEADER)* – strictly speaking the name begins with the ligature Æ, and is often seen as Ethelred. As 1066 and All That puts it, ‘He was called the Unready because he was never ready when the Danes were. Rather than wait for him the Danes used to fine him large sums called Danegeld, for not being ready. But though they were always ready, the Danes had very bad memories and often used to forget that they had been paid the Danegeld and would come back for it almost before they had sailed away. By that time Ethelred was always unready again.’
20. KNUCKLES Caught Le Skunk rolling joints (8)
(C LE SKUNK)*
22. MUFFIN the Mule Heard cry from a kitten? (4)
Homophone of “mewl”
24. Catherine the GREAT Tom perhaps alongside heartless female lead (9)
CAT + HER[O]INE – my last one in, though it seems obvious in retrospect
25. HEN NIGHTS Husband sinking gins, then parties (3,6)
H + (GINS THEN)*
26. TARKA the Otter How ’arare is compared with ’elsinki (5)
It’s generally [h]OTTER in Harare than in Helsinki
27. DILIGENCE Attention! Drill rig goes regularly by new church (9)
Alternate letters of DrIlL rIg GoEs + N + CE
Down
1. HOARSE Troubled by rough cords, Arab dons tights (6)
AR[ab] in HOSE (tights) – the “cords” being the vocal variety
2. AQUANAUT Diver having a question on a rare tuna (8)
A QU A TUNA*
3. NELLIE the Elephant Old player upset most of Hampshire (8)
Reverse of PELE (footballer) + HANT[s]
4. Pitt the YOUNGER Temperature at bottom of mine (4)
PIT + T (not TATE as I originally guessed, from T + AT + [min]E)
5. BORNEO Delivered last of produce over land (6)
BORN + [produc]E + O[ver]
6. PAN-FRIED Find pear badly cooked like this (3-5)
(FIND PEAR)*, with a sort of &lit definition: I suppose a pear could be pan-fried successfully
11. JOHN the Baptist Bread roll starts to turn in sweaty tin (7)
BAP (bread roll) + first letters of Turn In Sweaty Tin
15. PANCREAS Part of body butcher can spare (8)
(CAN SPARE)*
16. LILY
the Pink		 King crab’s attack from below (4)
K NIP rev
18. EFFIGIES Figures revised fee is bearing fruit (8)
FIG in (FEE IS)*
19. ASTERIX the Gaul Gold embedded in gold, oddly (4)
AU in GoLd
21. CRANKY Weird drug enforcer served up a jelly (6)
Reverse of NARC (narcotics officer) + KY (brand of surgical jelly)
22. MINNIE the Minx Sixty seconds shortly added to ten (4)
MIN[ute] + X
23. INTACT Some brought catnip back undamaged (6)
Hidden rev broughT CATNIp

9 comments on “Guardian Genius 212 – Karla”

  1. Yes, rather gobbledygook instructions, but I enjoyed this.

    My way in was via Gaul, where with some crossers the answer seemed to be either Assyria or ASTERIX. Once I had cottoned on to ‘the’ trick, it was fun to find the other ones.

    Thanks Karla and Andrew.

  2. Thanks Andrew. This was a very enjoyable solve, but as you say, having the letter counts for the original solutions did give an awful lot away.
    24a was one of my last entries as well – I could see the solution was GREAT so just had to work out whether the clue was for Catherine or Alexander.
    Many thanks to Karla.

  3. Another here who enjoyed it though it went a bit quicker than previous Geniuses (Genii?). I also tried to squeeze “Alexander” in for “the great” for far too long before remembering there were others who acquired the same moniker. My first one in was “otter” which, being one of the three that needed changing to its own length, left me a bit confused with crossers for a while! Still, it unravelled much as these puzzles should – lots of head-scratching at the start, an “aha” moment followed by plenty of toothy stuff even once the basic idea was there.

    Many thanks Karla, and Andrew for the blog.

  4. Thank you Andrew, i was surprised that this took less time than many dailies but that is not a complaint as it allows newcomers like me to make progress and gain confidence in these “special instruction” puzzles, in any case here the relative ease was down to those informative instructions as you and DuncT note. My way in was as for Robi and my next one was Minnie the Minx so I did try to find comic characters for all such clues for a while, it may have been (A)ethelred that put me straight. But so many enjoyable clues that it is hard to pick a favourite, TARKA the otter gets points for avoiding the cliched cockney and Hen Nights was very amusing but i think Conan the BARBARIAN pips it. Thanks Karla, i will look out for your future puzzles with interest.

  5. It’s great to see a new setter join the Genius series, especially when he makes such an impressive debut. To be honest I’d started to think the Genius had run out of steam – yet more “funny” book titles and a couple of puzzles with unresolvable ambiguities made me wonder if I could really be bothered with the Genius any more. If it weren’t for recent puzzles by Vlad, Enigmatist and, of course, Soup, I’d probably have given up on this series.

    This wasn’t particularly difficult but it oozed elegance and careful craftsmanship, and to me that’s what matters. The clues were 100% fair, as well as amusing, and there was a fine penny drop moment once you realised what was going on. Just like with Listener and Inquisitor puzzles, setters shouldn’t forget the fun element and we had plenty of that here. I didn’t know Lily the Pink but it was easy enough to work out, and I was delighted to see some of my childhood favourites (Asterix, Dennis, Minnie) make an appearance.

    Any chance that Karla could set daily Guardian puzzles?

  6. Thanks for the ‘of course’, Cruciverbophile@6! I thought this a lovely puzzle – yes, gentle, but very well executed. Favourite: OTTER, though SPATULA is a word that always makes me giggle.

  7. Definitely the easiest Genius I’ve ever attempted, though of course it’s all relative. Still, a very satisfying puzzle to solve, and well-crafted. Once you got the theme, some solutions became pretty obvious. 1d was a very nice surface. Thanks to Karla, and to Andrew for the write-up — though I think “surgical” with ref to KY jelly may be stretching the limits of euphemism!

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