Guardian Genius 232 by Pasquale

by

A second Genius of the year from the ubiquitous and prolific Don, after number 225 back in March…

The preamble states that:

“Solutions to eight of the across clues must have two adjacent letters replaced before entry in the grid. The wordplay of their clues leads to the altered version to be entered. The misprints involved are from a set of eight displaced from the usual positions. Wordplay in the other eight across clues contains a superfluous letter that should be ignored. These eight letters in order, with the inclusion of a ninth letter to be deduced and entered in the centre of the grid, spell out the name of a person who admitted to perhaps having the set of eight in the wrong order. All down clues and solutions are normal.”

(Except that fourth sentence should probably read ‘…omits a letter that should be restored.’?)

I got on the wavelength for this puzzle fairly quickly – the wordplay for 1A led to ATIRED (not a word?) but the definition suggested ADORED (much loved), which differs by two letters, with DO becoming TI. Those are both notes in the DO-RE-MI sequence…the penny teetered on the edge of the precipice for a short while until 8A – here the definition suggested OTITIS, but the wordplay looked like an anagram of TORIES, so ORETIS would fit the thematic bill, with TI becoming RE.

So far so good – until I hit 11A, which looked like wordplay of I + O + NY and definition of IRONY. But the wordplay wasn’t giving me a surplus letter, it was short of a letter! I put this down to a Grauniad gremlin, expecting that an updated version would probably be published later, and continued with the premise of omitted letters.

I checked back to see COM-M-AND at 4A and ERG-O-DIC at 9A, giving me M-O-R as the restored letters, and this, combined with the preamble suggesting someone who admitted to perhaps having the set of eight (notes) ‘not necessarily in the right order’, I made the logical jump to (Eric) MORECAMBE. (Well, logical for anyone of a certain age to have been brought up on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas specials – or who has been forced/fortunate enough to watch the endless repeats…)

The note substitutions seem to be random – as per the sketch! The only slight wrinkle was the fact that the third note appeared as ME and MI in different places, but I could live with that once I’d double-checked things (unless I have got something wrong!).

  • DO -> TI
  • TI -> RE
  • LA -> ME
  • SO -> FA
  • FA -> SO
  • MI -> DO
  • RE -> DO
  • DO -> LA

And from there it was pretty much plain sailing – helped by the gradual realisation that all the note substitutions and omitted letters were in a consistent position, albeit swapping over halfway down, after the orphaned C of moreCambe. As such, they don’t interfere with the Down clues, which were all normal:

 

To sum up, this was a pretty quick Genius solve for me – complete by 08.00 on the day of publication, although I did get up quite early for some reason and then printed it off and got started!

There were a couple of new/obscure (to me) words – ERGODIC, CHOREA, INTROMITS – which needed a quick e-check once retro-parsed, and LOOFAH took me back a bit – does anyone still use loofahs, or are they ecologically incorrect these days?

A wonderful theme and clever treatment – too clever for the Grauniad website, which I understand couldn’t cope with the extra letter field on the form for a few days… Also, I did e-mail the Grauniad crossword address to point out the misleading preamble, but answer came there none, nor any updated PDF. I trust that solvers eventually realised and adjusted, as I did.

My thanks to Pasquale, and I hope all is clear below.

 

ACROSS
Clue No Omitted letter / Note transformation Solution / Entry Clue (Definition underlined)

Logic/Parsing (with _ for omitted letters)
1 DO -> TI ADORED / ATIRED Sparkling wine son poured out, sort of wine much loved (6)

A(S)TI (sparking wine with S, son, poured out, or removed) + RED (sort of wine)
4 M COMMAND Have control of fish around island (7)

CO__D (fish) around MAN (Isle of Man)
8 TI -> RE OTITIS / ORETIS Wicked Tories — a problem for the listener (6)

anag, i.e. wicked, of TORIES
9 O ERGODIC Relating to probability of detectives returning to work unit (7)

ERG (work unit) + _ + DIC (CID, detectives, returning)
10 LA -> ME POLAR BEAR / POMER BEAR Animal more frenzied beginning to bash into fruit tree (5,4)

P_EAR (fruit tree), around OMER (anag, i.e. frenzied, of MORE) + B (beginning to Bash)
11 R IRONY ‘I love New York’ — incongruous use of language? (5)

I + _ + O (zero, love) + NY (New York)
12 SO -> FA ISOGON / IFAGON Figure one female will face endless pain (6)

I (one) + F (female) + AGON(Y) (endless pain)
14 E ORIENTS Lines up squaddies in street after about-turn (7)

OR (Other Ranks, squaddies) + I_N + TS (St., street, turned about)
16 A REGATTA Uncontrolled rage about dry event needing water (7)

REG__A (anag, i.e. uncontrolled, of RAGE) around TT (teetotal, dry)
19 FA -> SO LOOFAH / LOOSOH Toilets supplied with my skin scrubber (6)

LOOS (toilets) + OH (interjection, surprise, my!)
20 M PRIME First-rate member of the clergy, but no saint (5)

PRI_E(ST) – member of the clergy, without ST – saint
21 MI -> DO INTROMITS / INTRODOTS Admits distortion is awful — electrical current to be switched off (9)

subtractive anagram, i.e. is awful, of DISTORT(I)ON, removing, or switching off, I – electrical current
23 B STABILE Fixed seal — it is coming apart (7)

anag, i.e. coming apart, of SEAL IT
24 RE -> DO CHOREA / CHODOA California to restrict house party disorder (6)

C_A (California) around (restricting) HO (house) + DO (party)
25 E NOSEGAY Bunch of flowers a good boy brought back to mummy, finally (7)

NOS_GA (A + G, good + SON, boy, all brought back) + Y (final letter of mummY)
26 DO -> LA SADDOS / SADLAS Pathetic folk beginning to sob unfortunately, daughter included (6)

S (beginning to Sob) + A_LAS (unfortunately)
DOWN
Clue No Solution / Entry Clue (Definition underlined)

Logic/Parsing
1 APOLOGISE A sport eg is getting out of hand? Show contrition (9)

A + POLO (sport) + GISE (anag, i.e. getting out of hand, of EG IS)
2 ROTOR One doing a turn is rubbish — nothing right (5)

ROT (rubbish) + O (zero, nothing) + R (right)
3 DISCERN Make out most of antenna atop a research establishment (7)

DIS(H) (most of an antenna) + CERN (a research establishment)
4 CHEERIO Applause with Zeus’s maiden giving final message (7)

CHEER (applause) + IO (a maiden loved by Zeus)
5 MAGNIFICO Trembling, I’m facing old grandee (9)

MAGNIFIC (anag, i.e. trembling, of IM FACING) + O (old)
6 AND SO ON Ere long will receive military decoration etc (3,2,2)

AN_ON (ere long) around (receiving) DSO (military decoration)
7 DACTYLS Feet sadly suffering — about time to get tucked in (7)

DA_YLS (anag, i.e. suffering, of SADLY) around (tucking in) C (circa, about) + T (time)
13 GATHERING Good work by Wagner (in English) bringing in a crowd (9)

G (good) + THE RING (Der Ring des Nibelungen, or The Ring Cycle, in English, work by Wagner) around (bringing in) A
15 TAHITIANS A tin hat is unusual for islanders (9)

anag, i.e. unusual, of A TIN HAT IS
16 ROPES IN Successfully gets hold of sticky stuff to seal in gym (5,2)

RO_SIN (sticky stuff) around sealing in) PE (Physical Exercise, or gym, usually as a school class)
17 GUITARS Sentinels having day off protecting Italian instruments (7)

GU_AR(D)S (sentinels, with D, day, off!) around (protecting) IT (Italian)
18 AGILELY A soldier joining artist with a lively style (7)

A + GI (soldier, US) + LELY (Sir Peter, artist)
19 LATICES The French confections, including the latest in excellent milky fluids (7)

LA (French, definite article, feminine) + ICES (confections, desserts), around T (latest letter in excellenT)

[LATICES being a plural form of LATEX]
22 OVOID Like egg with perfectly round shape, useless (5)

O (perfectly round shape) + VOID (useless, null)

17 comments on “Guardian Genius 232 by Pasquale”

  1. Thanks mc_rapper67 and Pasquale.
    Somewhat unoriginal, if I am permitted to say.

    2 adjacent letters replacement is possible when they are not crossers as down solutions are normal. That identified the 8 across solutions 1, 8, 10, 12, 19, 21, 24, 26 to be messed with. DO-RE-MI suggested itself, for 8 pairs of letters (again!). Down solutions anchored the rest.

    Not knowing the gentleman and the quote, had to guess the name with the letters I had, and Googled to confirm.

  2. I went through a similar thought process to solve this, and too remembered the Morecambe and Wise sketches with Previn as a penny clunking moment when looking at the missing letters.

    LOOFAH brought back memories too, having used the plant version as a child. I’ve just googled and they are still available – coming from a member of the cucumber family.

    Thank you to Pasquale and mc_rapper667 for the blog.

  3. Thanks for the animated filled-in grid, mc_rapper67. Excellent.

    As you say the preamble was misleading, however it became obvious which way it worked so it didn’t hold me up for long. And the business with not being able to enter the missing letter in the solution was annoying, but sorted out fairly quickly.

    IMO one of the most common and possibly overused two letter sets in crosswords has to be the sol-fa notation, so that pretty soon became obvious too.

    I knew the Eric Morecambe reference, and remember that particular show, and again I agree with you that you’d need to be of a certain age to get it fully. I’m not sure that it falls into the realms of the GK that everyone might know.

    So all in all I don’t think this was particularly difficult or satisfying for a Genius, and completed disappointingly quickly.

    I appreciate how tricky it must be to set these things, but I’m afraid this one missed the mark for me.

    [Btw Shanne@2, you can grow your own LOOFAHs. The gardeners among us will have seen Monty Don on Gardener’s World on the Beeb doing just that this year. It is a bit of a faff though to get from the fruit to the bathroom accessory.]

    Thanks Pasquale and mc_rapper67.

  5. I too had to adjust that one sentence of the preamble in my mind in order to make sense of what we had to do.
    This was, incidentally, another Genius puzzle where ‘wordplay’ means what the wordplay in a clue produces rather than what is contained in the clue. (I have encountered this unusual definition twice before in this series, one such instance being Pasquale’s previous puzzle.)

    Remarkably, this puzzle comes only five months after a puzzle by Qaos in which notes in the tonic sol-fa scale are changed to another note. (And I note what Crossbar has just said about this.) That might well have accounted for my early discovery of this theme with OTITIS/ORETIS. However, there was still plenty of puzzling left to do to solve clues with mismatching wordplay, and I enjoyed this all the way to completion, albeit without much difficulty.

    Having all but the C of MORECAMBE made that last bit easy, but that was just as well because I would have struggled to find that name from the hint in the preamble.

    The ordering of the notes in the scale was very neat, going from DO to DO through a complete scale. I didn’t actually notice the (also very neat) positioning of these changes.

    Thanks to both Pasquale and mc_rapper67.

  6. Alan B @5, I am now wiser. I had always thought ‘wordplay’ meant the contents of the clue, not the solution, so when I had COMMAND and IRONY as solutions that I thought must be correct, I started to wonder about the meaning of the preamble or whether it was a mistake. The trouble was that for some other across clues, I thought I could find the extraneous letter. For example, 9A , if the letter f in the clue is ignored, the clue becomes Relating to probability o detectives returning to work unit. This gives ERGODIC. I tortured some others in a similar way, (looking back I can’t really recall how), and had r, f, k, r, p and c as some extraneous letters. As a result, I got out my old year 12 poetry anthology and looked up The Love song of J Alfred Prufrock to see if it had anything about him getting the musical scale incorrect. Talk about going down the wrong path!! Nevertheless, as far as my answers were concerned, I only missed 23A and 24A. I have a bit of a grumble about ‘restrict house giving’ the letters HO however. Don’t think I’ve ever seen the third note written as ME either.

  7. It must have been on the easier side of the Genius because when I look at these I can’t even get a toehold, and this was one I eventually managed to chisel out. Based on the one or two I have managed, I enjoy the challenge, but you do need a good start before you can get to the fun bit of decoding and applying the preamble.

    Congratulations on the animated solution. mc_rapper67. It illustrates the solution far better than a few static images could.

  8. Another one raising a cheer to the lovely animated solution – I had missed that the swaps all occurred at the same place and the symmetry of the whole thing was very neatly shown.

    I thought this fine but the trope of the sol-fa scale is getting a little overused. Also I was not a fan of the use of “mi” and “me” in the same crossword but I appreciate that setting these things is an act of genius in itself.

    Again, very fair cluing giving a start rather than staring at a blank grid for ages. I’d say the same of this month’s puzzle where getting a foothold did not take long at all.

    Thanks Pasquale and mc-rapper

  9. This was my first attempt at a Genius, and I found the preamble very unhelpful! I eventually shrugged once I’d worked out without doubt what needed doing.

    Thanks mc_rapper67 and Pasquale.

  11. Thanks for the comments so far – much appreciated…and nice to see a few new names…

    Viv from Oz at #6 – HO for ‘house’ is a common abbreviation, the ‘restrict’ is there to show it is being included within C_A to help make CHODOA/CHOREA. [Love the diversion you took into poetry and Prufrock – hope that entertained, as well as frustrated, you?!]

    TheZed – agreed on the MI/ME point, as I mentioned. I have just checked in Chambers, and it has ME as an Anglicised spelling of MI…

    Various comments about the theme/device being a regular occurrence (in varying forms) – I guess it lends itself to this type of puzzle, and the editor can only publish what he gets submitted to him, depending on how much of a bank of puzzles he has…

    And the definition of wordplay could keep a whole thread going…glad to hear most adjusted fairly quickly!…

  12. At the risk of repetition mc_rapper67 thanks also from me for the colourful animated solution as i too failed to spot the lovely symmetry of the alterations, though i did at least appreciate the ordering of the missing letters.

    Somehow twigged the musical substitution quite early, think it was ‘loofah’, then Eric popped into my head from somewhere, a very happy eureka moment (and I only ever saw repeats), though actual solution took a long time (as there were a few new words for me in here which needed careful checking).

    I had the same worry that the me/mi meant I had messed up somewhere so am now relieved and on balance have decided that Pasquale deliberately included both versions to explicitly reflect the ambiguity of the ‘official’ spelling, and managed to do it in a way that left the actual solution unambiguous, bravo to him if so, and thanks in any case: I do not have Solfa fatigue and enjoyed the battle.

    And respect to Amoeba for cracking on with a first Genius despite the unhelpful rubric (I was grateful recipient of clarification elsewhere).

  13. Whilst I appreciate that comments re live crosswords should not be made I am in the same position as Thezed and the observation re the current months crossword encourages me to have a go which is surely what we need ie new solvers. My own levels of intelligence/competence coupled with available time mean that I find myself struggling but I am always interested in the solutions

  14. As I managed to finish this (I saw the sketch live and I remembered the similar switch in the Qaos puzzle), I’m interested to know if the Guardian publishes the winner?

  15. BrianG @14, the winners of the latest Genius and Prize crosswords are listed on the main crossword page. I’m not sure how to find one’s further back than that.
    I, like others didn’t have much trouble with this one once I’d sorted out the (misleading?) preamble. It’s interesting that the wording in the preamble of “Wordplay in the other
    eight across clues contains a superfluous letter that should be ignored” has changed in the annotated solution to “In the other eight across clues the wordplay is missing a letter”

  16. Good spot Tim C at #15 – but let’s leave it there on the wordplay/preamble!…

    Brian G at #14 – as Tim C says, the latest Genius winner is usually displayed on the main Grauniad page – quite far down, under ‘Genius solutions’. It is a bit sporadic as to when, and some months it doesn’t get published at all (e.g. Genius 230), or the last two names appear for a short while the following month. (My understanding, from a lucky win a while back, is that they draw a winner and try to contact them to verify (and get bank details). I guess that if they fail to get a response within a certain amount of time they will go and pick another and start the process again…anyway, fingers crossed and good luck to all…and make sure you check your junk mail folder!…)

Comments are closed.