Guardian Genius 224 – Chandler

29 comments on “Guardian Genius 224 – Chandler”

1. Another month, another unique challenge. I found this to be a bit more complex than most of the other (seven) Genius puzzles that I have tackled.

   I was three or four clues into this when I realised that there was a subtle error in the preamble, which other solvers may have auto-corrected (as it were) into what they expected to read. ‘Wordplay in the remaining 17 clues contains a superfluous letter’ [my italics] is the instruction in question. It should have read something like ‘Wordplay in the remaining 17 clues produces a superfluous letter’.

   Solving CLARK, VICTORIA and DUMPLING pretty much told me what the thematic components would be, and SARAH, MALCOLM and a couple of others confirmed it. None of this was easy, and I had to work hard on some of the clues in order to complete the grid.

   Having read through your solution, Andrew, I think there are some alternatives. I had Adrian Durham as a journalist, Joey Essex as an actor, Yorkshire Dumpling as food (from the same clue as ‘dish’), Victoria Derbyshire as a presenter.

   Clark Kent was both a journalist and a superhero, of course, but here he had to be a superhero.

   I made sure I got all 17 superfluous letters, but I was close to finishing the puzzle when I got the complete set, and the resulting phrase (7,2,2,6) was of no use as a hint. In fact the puzzle at the end was to work out the hint from the solution!

   Thanks to Chandler and Andrew.

2. Thanks Andrew, and Chandler.
   First GENIUS failure for me over that past few months.

   Seeing the solution, I am not surprised. My UKGK is not that good.
   Despite having MAUGHAM, MALCOM, VICTORIA, DUMPLING and PUNCH I could not connect to the theme; with just a few superfluous letters…Maugham/author was the only link I could make.
   I gave up.
   I knew Somerset is a county. I could have persisted. My loss.

3. Very hard work this one. I completed the grid, but could not fathom the anagram hint or match up all the pairs, partly because I couldn’t decide how on Earth to describe Joey Essex. But all great fun over several evenings.

4. We also gave up, so the blog is appreciated. We began hopefully, getting VICTORIA and SARAH quite quickly, so suspected counties were the missing theme. In the end we entered about half the solutions, but many of them were unable to parse (LEVIATHAN, REEF, STARVE, ETCH). In an ordinary crossword, this wouldn’t matter so much, but of course we needed to know which letters/words were superfluous to progress.
   Added to some of the ambiguities in occupation, as Alan B points out, and some obscurities, this made it frustratingly beyond us.

   (btw, “dish” in 26a needs its {}s )

5. Mr Beaver @4
   Yes, 26a does need the {}s, but I could get the clue to work properly only with {food} as the superfluous word and ‘fatty dish’ as the definition (DUMPLING still being the item referred to by ‘food’).

6. Thanks Andrew. I gave up searching for the acting Adrian, but the other pairings were familiar enough to me.
   “Food” has to be the extra word in 25 otherwise the definition is in the middle of the wordplay – the entry in the blog has “suitable” doing double-duty.
   Thanks to Chandler for another very good Genius.

7. I found the grid fill straightforward enough but wasn’t happy with my matching up of some of the county/profession pairs. The main problem was finding the right county for Adrian, further complicated by how to describe Joey Essex and the fact some of the others wear several hats (e.g. Victoria Derbyshire). I eventually discounted Adrian Durham, both the Talk Sport presenter and the obscure actor who appeared in Winterstoke House, on the basis that the county is called County Durham and therefore didn’t fit the theme. So I went with Adrian Wiltshire as the actor and Essex as the presenter.

   It was a nice idea for a puzzle and the clues were very good. But I find it unsatisfying when there’s uncertainty over extraneous, non-grid material because there’s no way of confirming it.

8. If it really is supposed to be Adrian Wiltshire that is calling on very obscure GK. He doesn’t seem to be mentioned at all on Wikipedia. Fair enough using GK that not everybody would know, but if you have to outside general reference sources to find it, that makes the exercise pretty impossible. I had never heard of Adrian Durham nor some of the other entries, but it was possible to look them up.

9. cruciverbophile @7
   You make a fine point concerning County Durham. Funnily enough, DUMPLING was one of my first pairings, and the dumpling I found first was a Yorkshire one (before I found Andrew’s Norfolk Dumpling). As any fule kno, Yorkshire doesn’t exist any more with that name, and I used a list of English counties pre-1974 as the set from which I attempted all my pairings, and Durham is definitely one of them.

10. I found this quite tough, with an interesting device, once I recognised Devon Malcolm and Somerset Maugham!
    Like Fiery Jack at #3 and cruciverbophile at #7, I found it hard to classify Joey Essex, especially as I had paired ‘presenter’ with Victoria Derbyshire. If there had been a ‘sub-lebrity’, or a ‘B-lister’ amongst the extra words it would have helped! However, in his favour, Mr Essex’s Wikipedia page does list a few ‘presenting’ roles he has done on TV programmes – ‘Celebs Go Dating’, ‘Educating Joey Essex’ and ‘Joey Essex – Grief and Me’…none of which, I can say, would have had me changing my plans for an evening…
    I also thought Adrian Wiltshire was a bit obscure – I think a desperate e-search for ‘actors called Adrian’ must have thrown him up as a possible.
    As usual, I was a bit unsure how to submit this – do we just need to type in the form as the grid is filled, e.g. just ‘MALCOLM’, or do we need to show a bit of our working – e.g. ‘MALCOLM (Devon, Cricketer)’ – to prove that we have got the gist? A bit of direction here would help…

11. (I should have added – thanks to Chandler for the challenge, and Andrew for the explication…)

12. The annotated solution tells us it was Adrian Durham (journalist) and Joey Essex (actor). So my point about the accuracy of county names counts for naught. I don’t submit solutions so I’m not bothered, but I’d be interested to know how many people did submit the correct one.

13. cruciverbophile @12
    I don’t submit solutions either, but I too have just read through the annotated solution for this puzzle, and my entry for the ‘food’ item, Yorkshire Dumpling, would have been marked down (Andrew’s Norfolk Dumpling being the ‘correct’ answer). Otherwise my solution is as published. (I was born in Yorkshire when it really was Yorkshire, and I’m sticking with my Dumpling flavour!)

14. Joey Essex is not an actor. Either the Guardian or Chandler have made a mistake. He is a presenter (amongst other things) and Victoria Derbyshire is a journalist, as Andrew says in the blog. That leaves Adrian as an actor, although nobody fits the bill (Wiltshire’s too obscure). I guessed the setter had had a brainfade and got confused about Adrian Lester’s surname. It’s a shame, as otherwise this was a particularly challenging and rewarding Genius.
    I don’t think it stopped us getting the right solution though did it?

15. The current form was introduced as a “temporary” measure a few years ago. Before that you just had to fill in the grid. As far as I know there’s never been anything to indicate that you need to submit more than that.

16. A nice idea spoiled a bit by a poor execution. Who belongs to which county and what they’re known for is moot, but the solution entered by the solver (if you did that) doesn’t include any of the theme. That’s pretty disappointing as the puzzle could be solved without discovering the theme or the cryptic hint.
    For the record Andrew, I had:-
    Adrian Durham – Presenter
    Joey Essex – Actor
    with the rest as per your list.
    Being a non UK resident I had to research a few I hadn’t heard of like Joey Essex. Doesn’t being on ‘reality’ TV mean that you’re an actor by definition?

17. Thanks to Andrew for the blog and everyone for their comments. A few points to clarify: (1) Adrian Durham was indeed the presenter (not especially obscure in my view as a presenter on Talk Sport since 1999). Although the county is commonly called County Durham, its official name is actually Durham (see Encyclopedia Britannica entry) so I felt it was justified, especially given the constraints of the theme. Like others, I had never heard of Adrian Wiltshire and would never have thought of using him (!); (2) Yorkshire could not be paired with ‘dumpling’ as it is not currently a single county (unlike Norfolk); (3) Re Joey Essex, it is actually quite hard to present an accurate, all-encompassing one-word definition for him. Joey Essex is described in biographical profiles as an actor (reality TV participants are often described as such because there is an element of scripting and editing). Although, pace Mc_Rapper 67 @10, I could have used an amusing one-word descriptor like ‘B-lister’ or ‘sublebrity’, I felt it preferable to use a neutral rather than a derogatory term (however tempting!) (4) As Herb @14 and DuncT &15 indicate, solvers were only required to find the correct entries to unclued definitions (linking the pairings was designed as an assistance in the solving process and confirming the entries). I accept it was tricky to disentangle the last two or three one-word descriptors but hope that this didn’t detract too much from the overall enjoyment of the solve.

18. Thanks for the explanation Chandler. It’s good to hear the setter’s thoughts. I must admit that I was happy to discover Sarah Lancashire as one of the pairings as it’s my original home county and she is one of my favourite actresses (I must watch Happy Valley again).

19. Thanks for the clarification, Chandler. If Durham was the presenter, then Derbyshire was presumably the journalist and the Guardian annotated notes are wrong?

20. Other than Clark Kent and Somerset Maugham, I would say these pairs rate as somewhere between very obscure to completely unfamiliar in the US. By sheer luck, googling “TV presenter Victoria” produced Ms. Derbyshire for me, (wrong category, though), and my heart sank when I thought all the pairs might be UK TV celebrities. (So, Roisin Conaty? David Walliams? *Sigh* This might take a while.) But that plus “UK actress Sarah” set me on the right track, at least. I worked backwards from a list of counties, randomly googling pairs until I got a plausible match. Getting the pairs did not help much with the solve, except to confirm the superfluous words, I guess. It took me the longest time to make sense of the “cryptic hint,” but got a good laugh from that in the end.

21. Chandler
    Many thanks for your clarifications and explanations – much appreciated.

22. Andrew thanks for the blog – I was stuck for weeks with the NW corner until I finally got Leviathan. I could not parse Leonard as I had Leon as the Spanish city and simply went ARD??? An enjoyable puzzle despite my overly long effort to solve it. I too was expecting Susan Hampshire to appear and had never heard of Adrian Wiltshire.

23. Chandler @17
    I think I should point out that the Guardian annotated solution has Adrian Durham as a journalist, not a presenter (the presenter being Victoria Derbyshire).

24. Re comments from Cruciverbophile @19 and Alan B @23, apologies – there was a transposition of descriptors in the published annotated solution (different from my original submission) and it is currently being corrected. Thank you for pointing it out!

25. I couldn’t do this one at all – too hard for me! I normally get there with a Genius after a few weeks’ mulling, but not this time. I got 28a, 4d, 9d and 22d, but that’s all, and nowhere near cracking the theme, though I did wonder if Victoria (4d) Derbyshire might be the presenter from 28a.

26. I got two or three of the thematic clues quickly. Can’t remember which ones now, but probably LANCASHIRE was one. Sarah is such a good actor. So we needed counties, but then I rapidly got stuck and decided that life was too short for this.

    I don’t have the excuse of being outside the UK, but have never heard of JOEY ESSEX, or specifically NORFOLK dumplings, or ADRIAN WIKTSHIRE for that matter.

    If there’s still anybody out there can they please explain the thematic hint and how it helps or otherwise.

    I see Chandler did the Quiptic on Monday, to universal approval, mine included.

    Thanks Chandler and Andrew

27. Crossbar: I explained the “thematic hint” in the blog. It’s “release in an island”, which leads to UNTIE (release) in COS (Greek island), i.e. CO(UNTIE)S. It was no help at all to me in solving, as I’d spotted the counties theme long before getting enough of the extra letters to give me an idea of the phrase.

28. Thanks Andrew. I’m being a bit dim. I read your blog, but didn’t twig COS to mean counties. I was stuck on the Greek Island.

29. Crossbar @28: COS doesn’t mean counties; it is the Greek island. COUNTIES comes from inserting UNTIE (“release”) into COS (“island”).

    I set this aside weeks ago and forgot about it until this weekend, when I gave it another go. I was pleased to see I managed to get the correct solution, even if I wasn’t able to parse 20a and 21d. This proved particularly challenging to this Yank, as Somerset Maugham and Clark Kent were the only thematic pairs familiar to me. It took MAUGHAM and BLUE VINNY to work out the theme, then lots of searches involving English county names.

    Like others, I was uncertain how to match journalist, presenter, and actor, but this proved not to be an impediment to solving.

    Thanks to Andrew for the blog and Chandler for an engaging puzzle (and for chiming in with additional explanations)!

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