Guardian Genius 219 / Kite

13 comments on “Guardian Genius 219 / Kite”

1. Thanks duncansheill and Kite.
   Didn’t get EVRIDIKI and EXS.

   Figured i,.v, and x are missing from the 10 I solved, didn’t link the fact they are all Roman numerals or the fact that they are missing in their order :-(.

   That’d have helped getting the other two…that said, I solved all the normal clues and fitted them correctly…except those two…

2. duncanshiell, sorry.

3. typo in EARTHQUAKE

4. Having very much enjoyed the challenges presented by the July and August puzzles in this series, I was hoping for a similar kind of experience this time. The normal clues were very much what I expected, and I enjoyed cold-solving some of them, including the two 10-letter words, before I turned my attention to the special clues.

   I solved three of the special clues (LEAD TIME, EAVESDROP and ROYAL) but was unable to solve any others without assistance from crossing letters or from knowing something about the theme. [ROYAL was a valid alternative to OXLIP at that stage.]

   In spite of that difficulty, I saw that I would most likely be able to start the jigsaw if I had any of the 7-letter words that I could intersect with the two 10-letter words. Unfortunately I had none of them (three of the four being among the special clues), and I saw no point in continuing.

   Trying to make the special clues into solvable ones was a challenge, and a task, that I didn’t enjoy at all, which goes only part way to explain my lack of success with them. This was my worst performance with any cryptic crossword that I remember, and I’m only sorry that I could not do justice to the neatly implemented theme (which I guessed might have something to do with Roman numerals).

5. EAVESDROP and LEAD TIME were my first italicised solutions, and they were the only two I had for a long time. I’d guessed we were looking at missing Roman numerals but it was only when I noticed that the missing letters corresponded to the positions of the clues that I was able to get any others.
   Overall I thought this was a well judged puzzle – no really tough “normal” clues and a relatively straightforward jigsaw (I don’t think there were many ambiguous possibilities to lead you astray), which compensated for the complexity of the first eight clues.

   Thanks to Kite and Duncan.

6. Thanks for the blog, something of a challenge to present the answers as clearly as you have done!
   As DuncT says, the normal clues were mostly not too hard, which was just as well, as the combination of the non-standard clues and having to fit the answers in kept as scratching our heads for a long time.
   But the eventual lightbulb moment was sweet when it came, and we made good progress after that. Thanks to Kite for the challenge.

7. Thanks for the lucid blog DS (and Kite for the puzzle). Oddly, enough my solving partner and I found this “…was shockingly easy… for a monthly.” — we usually find the Genius series to shockingly hard.

   My only explanation is that we saw the Roman numeral theme very early on and we got lucky obviously with our initial jigsaw guesswork.

   Our only query was whether GUN BARREL was just a cd or something else.

8. Many thanks to Duncan for a superb blog, and thanks also to the commentators. I probably should have put Cypriot singer, but as she’s a Greek Cypriot, I thought this might give a little more opportunity for thought.

   The plural of ex as a former partner in Chambers is given as ex’s or exes, so I assumed the same could be true for the letter. The clue for GUN BARREL is just a cd.

   As to difficulty level, this is very subjective. I did originally have all the themed clues mixed up with the others, but my test solvers thought that was maybe a bridge too far. It seems that nobody picked up on the ‘Clock riddle’ hint – I was thinking about the Roman numerals around a clock face when I first started to compile the puzzle.

9. Kite, thanks for the puzzle and for dropping in. Given that I fail to finish about half of the Genius series or put them aside and never get back to them, I took this to be easier because I finished it in one or two sittings. As with Ilan Coran, I suspect this was because I saw the theme early in the process. Thanks also to Duncan for a comprehensive blog.

10. We got I and V first and we wasted some time thinking that the missing element was chemical. I forget which we got next but it put us on the right track. Evridiki was certainly the hardest and Google search got a good work out. We were a bit unhappy with EXS but clearly had to be.

11. Enjoyed this and did it very quickly by my standards. I thought it was very fair and I liked the theme – simple but intriguing.
    I didn’t spot the hint in “clock riddle” though – nice one Kite.

12. Somehow I missed the (excellent – thank you!) blog on this. I recall picking up the Roman numeral thing pretty quickly and then dismissing it as it seemed unlikely that viii would fit anything! Ho hum…more egg on my face than after a 12 egg omelette when I finally did finish it.

    Thanks Kite for the “clock riddle” clue, though clocks, of course, are the one place you get “iiii” not “iv” for 4 – though not universally (e.g. the clock face of the tower commonly known as Big Ben) so it’s certainly not wrong!

    All in all a good solve – eminently doable with the added twist that means you have to solve a lot of the clues cold or be willing to go out on a limb and see if things work. A Genius does not (and should not) rely on more difficult clues, just less help and a bit more of a puzzle than just the clues. In that respect I thought this worked really well.

13. Could anyone tell me where you can find the name of the winner of the Genius? We’ve just started to do these so would be interested to see who won. Probably the usual suspects!!

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