An alphabetical jigsaw today. You can download the puzzle here… Thank you Julius
If you are new to jigsaws then one trick to learn is to look out for clues where the wordplay only works if the solution is a down entry. Reversal indicators are the most common example of this. Julius kindly provides a few of them to help us here.
| PRUSSIA |
Once-powerful state putting pressure on bellicose nation (7)
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| P (pressure) on RUSSIA (bellicose nation) | ||
| ORCA |
Retired French president uncovered killer at sea (4)
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| mACROn (French president) reversed (retired) and missing outer letters (uncovered) | ||
| ENERGIES |
Powerful forces sabotaging Greens? That is being covered up (8)
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| anagram(sabotaging) of GREENS containing (…being covered up) IE (that is) | ||
| DIOCESE |
See part of Chinese Co I divvied up (7)
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| found reversed (up, in a down solution) inside chinESE CO I Divvied | ||
| JOSEPH |
Special One parked by inn (which had no room available for him) (6)
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| JOSE (foot ball manager Jose Mourinho, nickname The Special One) next to (parked by) PH (inn) – the inn at Bethlehem had no room for him | ||
| QUADRICEPS |
It’s used when working out pi2/100, roughly (10)
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| anagram (roughly) of PI SQUARED containing (over) C (100, Roman numeral) | ||
| KETCH |
Vessel cut out south of Cambodia (5)
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| ETCH (cut) following (south of, in a down solution) K (Kampuchea, Cambodia) | ||
| MOVING |
Transporting old French wine in classic sports car (6)
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| O (old) VIN (wine, French) inside MG (classic sports car) | ||
| USEFULNESS |
American energy plenitude is an advantageous quality (10)
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| US (American) E (energy) and FULNESS (plentitude) | ||
| X-RAYED |
Times editor eats flatfish exposed to radiation (1-5)
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| X (times) ED (editor) contains (eats) RAY (flat fish) | ||
| FISHING RIGHTS |
They permit offshore trolls to use the net (7,6)
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| cryptic definition | ||
| HOBNOBS |
Alternates drinks with biscuits (7)
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| double definition | ||
| VIE |
Regularly avoided contest (3)
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| every other letter (regularly) of aVoIdEd | ||
| WHIZZ-KID |
Pizza without crust fed to wife husband & child prodigy (5-3)
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| pIZZa missing outer letters (without crust) inside (fed to) W (wife) H (husband) and KID (child) | ||
| TOTE |
Carry little ‘un home at last (4)
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| TOT (little ‘un) then last letter (last) of homE | ||
| ROOT FOR |
Cheer on former England captain standing on boundary, reportedly (4,3)
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| ROOT (joe Root, former England cricket captain) followed by (standing on, in a down entry) FOR sounds like (reportedly) “four” (4 runs, a boundary in cricket) | ||
| ICE CREAM |
European tucking into fancy ceramic bowls filled with it! (3,5)
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| E (European) inside (tucking into) anagram (fancy) of CERAMIC | ||
| LIQUEFIED |
Fifty-one quid fee transferred, made available to flow between banks? (9)
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| anagram (transferred) of LI (fifty-one, in Roman numerals) QUID FEE – to liquify an asset | ||
| ZIMMER FRAME |
Back in Biarritz Madame loaded firearm, ordered mobile support (6,5)
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| last letter (back) of biarritZ with MME (madame) inside (loaded) anagram (ordered) of FIREARM | ||
| NASCENT |
Beginning northern climb (7)
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| N (northern) and ASCENT (climb) | ||
| MISFEASOR |
A bad actor, Bond’s boss – occasionally tipsified – upset Ms Klebb (9)
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| M (James Bond’s boss) every other letter (occasionally) of tIpSiFiEd then ROSA (Ms Rosa Klebb) reversed (upset) | ||
| CLAQUE |
Group paid to applaud sound of castanets (6)
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| sounds like “clack” (an instrument making a hard sound, castanets) | ||
| ASSAGAI |
Idiot of the first water holding silver spear (7)
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| ASS (idiot) AI (A1, top quality, of the first water) containing AG (Ag, silver) | ||
| GATECRASHER |
Uninvited guest spilling secret? Aargh! (11)
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| anagram (spilling) of SECRET AARGH | ||
| CLIVE |
Conservative fib about very famous statesman in India (5)
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| C (conservative) LIE (fib) contains (about) V (very) – Clive of India | ||
| BUMPTIOUSNESS |
“A sense of self-importance” Poussin must be going mad! (13)
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| anagram (going mad) of POUSSIN MUST BE | ||
| YODELERS |
In the US, they make peak calls on a person-to-person basis (8)
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| cryptic definition | ||
| SHY |
Quiet year, being socially reticent (3)
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| SH (quiet) Y (year) | ||
Woke up to yet another stormy day so this alphabetical puzzle from Julius was the perfect pick-me-up.
‘Self-importance’ and ‘mobile support’ were a big helping hand when it came to filling in the grid with half of the answers yet to solve.
The rest fell steadily with most consideration given towards the end to the c-words.
Plenty of smiles to be had here. Those I liked best started with the words ‘special one’, ‘alternates’, ‘pizza’, ‘uninvited’ and the aforementioned ‘mobile support’.
Free-spirited and witty as ever.
Thanks for the cheer, Julius, and to PeeDee for a super blog.
This wasn’t too hard, as in most cases there were only a couple of answers with the same number of letters. I completely forgot about the alphabetical aspect until I was almost finished — but it didn’t matter. All pretty straightforward, although I hadn’t heard of Robert Clive. I wasn’t sure why Cambodia was K. I found references to KH, but not K. And I still don’t understand why AI is first water.
Geoff: AI is A1, top-quality= of the first water.
K is listed in Chanbers as the IVR for Cambodia (Kampuchea), though it seems that KH is also used.
Have never heard of “of the first water”. So much to learn, so little time …
I think the setter aka Rosa Klebb should be informed of this wee gem
Thanks J.
Thanks for the blog, great to see one of these, not had one for a while. QUADRICEPS is a brilliant clue among many that are merely very good.
I agree with Geoff @2 that small numbers of each length was a big help in fitting in the answers.
Your troll has snagged an extra N in the net.
I find these random alphabetical puzzles a bit less difficult having now done a few, but I mucked things up by putting in “assegai” despite the clear wordplay. I couldn’t parse JOSEPH or HOBNOBS either so can’t complain. A couple of new words in MISFEASOR and CLAQUE added to the challenge.
Yes, QUADRICEPS was a classic.
Thanks to Julius and PeeDee
“FISHINNG RIGHTS” – I guess that you didn’t intend the double “n”.
How are we Aussies expected to know that “Jose” is the “special one”?
And I have no idea of the parsing of “hobnobs”.
Down here we would spell “yodellers” like this.
As for Joe Root: “root” has a very different meaning here in Australia. Asking a girl for a root would end up with a slap … or a very happy ending.
Thanks Julius and PeeDee
I don’t think “In the US” is part of the definition of YODELERS, it’s to indicate the American spelling. I wonder how many American yodelers there are?
It is yodellers in the UK too Peter , Julius has been precise with his “In the US” .
Thanks for spotting the typo in fishing. Fixed now.
Peter @8 – as a noun Hobnobs is a brand of biscuit, and as a verb to hobnob is to make alternate toasts to one another
In what sense does PH mean inn? I got the solution, but assumed that it had something to do with P for parking and H for hotel. “Public house”???
I knew of hobnobbing in the sense of socializing, but not specifically in the sense of drinking or toasting. The other gaps in my GK were amenable to googling.
QUADRICEPS was a remarkable clue.
Getting BUMPTIOUSNESS, VIE, and SHY right off locked things into place pretty quickly, so this was a quicker solve than I first anticipated. The random clue order was a bit of a speed bump.
Thanks PeeDee and Julius.
Cineraria@13 you were finally right, PH= public house, we call them pubs, they are licensed to sell alcohol on the premises, also called inn, bar, boozer etc.
Fun crossword and not too taxing, though I was held up for a while by having confidently entered ‘FISHING QUOTAS’.
Thanks Julius and PeeDee
sourdough – I think fishing quotas is a better answer. I would have entered that myself if I had thought of it.
Thanks Julius and PeeDee
As it happens, I think FISHING RIGHTS fits the clue slightly better than QUOTAS, but that is not really of any importance. The reason I am bothering to comment is to make the more general point as to how difficult it is for a one part clue to be unambiguous. I can accept the argument that ambiguities can be resolved by the checked letters from crossing clues, but feel that this argument carries less weight in a “jigsaw” type crossword than in a normal puzzle.
While I am in, I should like to reinforce PeeDee’s tip in the introduction about clues which obviously belong to down answers as a general point and well worth noting for future reference. However, in the puzzle with this particular grid, the length of the answer always tells us whether it goes across or down.
One final point about the ordering of the clues. I know that random ordering is something that commenters have requested as a variation on the idea of giving clues in alphabetical order of the answers. I would suggest that with a random ordering, it would be appropriate to group clues by the length of the answer. Once I had got a reasonable number of answers in, I found myself looking for (say) an unsolved clue with a nine letter answer. This was just tedious searching, rather than anything of intellectual value.
Thanks for the blog, dear PeeDee, and thanks to those who have commented.
I’d have thought you’d need fishing rights before you got given a quota but hey..
@Pelham Barton, re grouping of clue lengths…forgive me if I’m being obtuse, but if the answers were listed by alphabetical order and let’s say you solved the last one first and that it had 7 letters then surely you’d have to look through the rest of the clues to find others with 7 letters? The are only 28 clues. It doesn’t strike me as being a major task.
best wishes to all Rob/Julius
Thanks Julius for popping in. Of course it is not a major task to hunt for clues of a given length answer, but for me at least, given the fairly small print in which the clues appear, the effort required is not negligible either. When the clues are in alphabetical order of answers, there is a good reason for having to put in that small amount of effort, but there is no such reason in the “random jigsaw” type. I can see no benefit to having the clues completely jumbled compared to having them grouped by length of answers, whereas I can see a small benefit to having them grouped in that way.
@Pelham Barton
OK I’ll see if I can find a way of grouping similar length entries together in future.
I decided to jumble the clues when I started setting these puzzles for the FT because the grid library is quite restrictive and the only suitable grids (the last across light must be numbered 26) have long perimeter entries. If the clues are listed by given first letter, simply by solving a couple of longer ones the solver gets 13 starts immediately which takes away the bulk of the jigsaw feature. The software I use to configure the files allows for clues to be presented in alphabetical order of first letters, by given first letter, or in random order. I don’t use any spreadsheet tools to fill the grid though, I use trial and error, which takes easily 10x longer than a plain cryptic, so I imagine I could spare another 10 mins to reset the clue order.
Best wishes, Rob/Julius
I enjoyed the random clue positions. Pelham is right that searching for a numbered clue is mechanical exercise, but I liked the arbitrary nature of the task. That is how information usually comes the real world: facts present themselves in a in a random manner and the job of making sense of it all is to seek the order in there.
I think this way about many conveniences: does providing a bus to the summit make climbing a mountain a more enjoyable or less enjoyable experience? The work is part of the reward.
I don’t mind the jumbles clue sequence. I solve on a printout of the pdf.
For any alphabetical, whether given the initial letters or not, I copy the clues from the pdf into a Word template I’ve created for the purpose, and sort them into solution-length order myself. Takes maybe five minutes at most.
I see it as part of the work PeeDee alludes to.
It would be different if solving in the printed newspaper, of course.
I agree with Pelham Barton in that I would have appreciated the clues being grouped by answer length. Would have saved me much marking of clues and rubbing the marks out 🙂
Thanks to Julius for a nice challenge and PeeDee for an excellent blog.
Just to be awkward, I would like them in random order but also no answer lengths given ( like an Azed Carte Blanche, although this is in normal clue order ) , this would force a lot of cold solving before we even think of the grid.
Thanks for the blog.
I don’t understand the significance of ‘trolls’ in defining Fishing Rights and I’ve never ever heard the expression ‘of the first water’. I also thought Cambodia = K was unacceptably obscure.
Julius’s crosswords are usually much more enjoyable than this one.
Hi Lynn, to troll is to fish with a revolving bait. I often get this confused with trawl, which looks like it should be the same but is different, to fish with a dragged net.
Hi Lynn @25
I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the puzzle and you certainly wouldn’t see K=Cambodia in The Times or Telegraph, although it is accepted by the Indy, FT & Guardian. I wanted to use the “south of” idea to inform the solver that this was intended as a down entry.
Regarding “of the first water”, I could have used the more straightforward “first class” but speaking of an “idiot first class” doesn’t seem to make too much sense and I perhaps hadn’t thought the expression too obscure.
“Troll” = “to fish by drawing a line” and I wanted to create a cryptic definition to combine the trolling/fishing net usage with that of posting negative messages on the internet (fwiw, I’m quite pleased with this clue).
Anyway, I hope you’ll tune in again next time
best wishes, Rob/Julius
Beat me to it PeeDee, thanks
Thanks Julius@20 for some insights into the setting process. Given the differences of opinion shown in the later comments, perhaps the solution is to vary your approach to clue order between different puzzles. At least Tony De@23 has confirmed that I am not in a minority of one!
@Roz, 24…I sent a random alphabetical jigsaw with clue lengths omitted as one of my 94 submissions to The Guardian pitched at the genius section but like all the others it merely provided lining for Prof Stephenson’s parakeet cage, alas.
I don’t think the FT would want the extra layer of complexity, but I might suggest it
Thanks for the reply Julius , it was just a thought, maybe once every couple of years when I am on holiday with lots of crossword time. I really like this type as well, the random order is a nice twist on the traditional format.
Since Julius has been reading (thanks), I’ll chime in late (I have a stack of puzzles to work on, FIFO).
Remember that 15^2 readers tend to be the more experienced and expert solvers, and the typical punter having a go at the puzzle will not be so familiar with the tricks. Omitting enumerations would certainly add to the challenge for us, but at the expense of scaring many other solvers completely off. If they have an attainable challenge in the occasional RA in their daily puzzle and succeed with it, that might spark them to try the next level up.