Instructions from the setter on Saturday:
Komorník offers a drink at his expense to the first solver able to bring him a correctly filled grid with the information required. Or take the puzzle home with you and imagine you’ve just won a cup of tea.
Enter answers where they will fit. One item appears twice. Build and fill the grid (parts below correctly orientated but in random order), locate the greeting that’s out of usual order and comply with the terms of the required information (in accordance with the title): that information to be entered in your own choice of characters, depending whether you are a (Desert) Fox or a Roman, in two unused cells, providing aid to Royal Mail and a catflap. Komorník recommends building the house first, then filling in the cells – this avoids the tiresome experience of discovering that the end walls are upside-down, which must have seen many a construction company go to the, um, liquidators.
The house is of conventional rectangular shape with shallow-pitched roof. The setter apologises for a lack of chimneys and gable ends (supply problems) and entry numbers (there’s no demand); for some answers to be entered in reverse (habit); for an entry which is not a regularly-formed sentence (incompetence, or if feeling kind, blame the theme); and for a spelling of a sinuous regional greeting which may offend some, but is attested online by Cambridge Dictionary, Collins and Wikipedia.
Solvers should have brought their own, but may just this once borrow scissors and a glue stick from Komorník to help in completing this puzzle. Please take turns and avoid Jostle. You are advised to leave a small border round each individual grid when cutting out.
Once the house is built you will need to complete the following information:
Greeting (4,7,3,8) …………………………………………………………………………………………..
Information (1,1) ………… (show in grid in whichever characters are preferred)
Clues (in alphabetical order of solutions)
Advanced club meets centrally in Fall? (5)
ABATE
A (advanced) BAT (club) and E (middle or ‘central’ letter of meets)
Grand afternoon – drink, entertaining … some will be washing up (5)
ALGAE
G (grand) A (afternoon) in or ‘entertained by’ ALE (drink)
Excise party advanced, using diagonal roughly to make tally (5)
ALIGN
The setter is asking us too remove (‘excise’) DO (party) and A (advanced) from dIAGoNaL and then form an anagram (‘roughly’)
With diagonal in retreat register first class cut (3)
AND
Another clue where letters are omitted or ‘cut’ from ‘diagonal’ – this time it’s LOG (register) and AI (first class) DiagoNAl -the remaining letters are reversed (‘in retreat’)
I had to somehow abandon the ‘diagonal’ nonsense – that may be right (5)
ANGLE
Another one where letters are ‘abandoned’ from ‘diagonal’. After thE diAGoNaL is missing I HAD TO you need an anagram (‘nonsense’)
This fool, after parting pout, becomes graduate (3)
ASS
pASS out (become a graduate) without pout
Honshu yawl’s reportedly ‘caught fish’? (3)
AYU
We couldn’t solve this one. It’s apparently hidden or ‘caught’ and reversed in HonshU YAwl, but we cannot see that ‘reportedly’ is a reversal indicator – apparently, a Japanese food fish
‘Paragons’ deprived of power they used to get seats in House (5)
EARLS
pEARLS (paragons) missing or ‘deprived of’ p (power)
They show hesitation – perversely, not all (3)
ERS
Hidden (‘not all’) in pervERSely
Vetch Field abandoned by those playing cricket? (3)
ERS
fieldERS (those playing cricket) without or ‘abandoning’ ‘field’
What rubric says at the beginning: drawin’ some beer? OK, though nothing formal (5,2,3,1,3,2)
FIRST TO WIN I PAY UP
Another one that defeated us. FIRST (at the beginning) TOWIN’ (drawin’) IPA (some beer) YUP (OK – informal)
Joke, or keep quiet: either way will do (3)
GAG
Double definition with the ‘either way will do’ indicating a palindrome.
Shut up Komorník? I haven’t finished yet (4,2,4)
GIVE ME TIME
Double definition with the first one alluding to the setter going to prison
Have you initialised software installed that identifies Diamond Digger? (5)
HAPPY
APP (software) installed in H and Y (first letters only or ‘initialised’). Happy was one of the seven dwarfs
‘Hard ones lacking content’: label last of five one’s taken to exchange later (7)
HOSTAGE
H (hard) OneS (first and last letters only or ‘missing content’) TAG (label) E (last letter of five)
The very best setter negotiates … (5)
IDEAL
A play on I DEAL (setter negotiates)
… with publication: that is about self-representation (5)
IMAGE
MAG (publication) IE (that is) around the outside or ‘about’ – we kept thinking of ISSUE which we couldn’t parse.
Gramophone records losing fringe listeners for a long time (2,5)
IN YEARS
vINYl (gramophone records) missing first and last letters or ‘losing fringe’ EARS (listeners)
Ideology supporters may represent briefly … (3)
ISM
A sort of ‘clue as definition’ – initial letters (‘briefly’) in Ideology Supporters May
… that follows ‘the only truth I know’ – Simon: extract from ‘Hypocrisy Ousted’ (2,3) ‘
IS YOU
Hidden (‘extract’) in HypocrISY OUsted – you have to know the lyrics to Paul Simon’s ‘Kathy’s Song’ for this one
What’s khao niew?’ ‘Pound each, love’ (3)
LAO
L (pound) A (each) O (love). We had to check the A here but Chambers has ‘per’ as ‘for each or a’. Khao niew is sticky rice from Laos though we couldn’t see that the dish was called LAO.
Lines from setter ‘too French, page detached’ (5)
METRO
ME (setter) TROp (French for too) with P (page) missing or ‘detached’
Old? Unaltered! Source of refreshment amid the wilderness(5)
OASIS
O (old) AS IS (unaltered)
Merry do with glorious Henderson address taking seconds … (5)
OILED
‘Second letters’ in dO wIth gLorious hEnderson aDdress
(‘totally opposite, recurrent ephemeral opportunity’s bottled?’) (5)
POLAR
Hidden (‘bottled’) and reversed (‘recurrent’) in ephemeRAL OPportunity
… in which host came round, seeking submission (5)
SIEGE
Cryptic definition – another one that defeated us.
What jeweller may need for working garnet, right where it is (4,12)
WIRE STRAIGHTENER
An anagram (‘working’) of GARNET R (right) WHERE IT IS
…………………………………………………………..
Kormornik provides this advice at this stage:
Note about reversed items:
It is not impossible that someone will find that the house can be constructed in such a way that the other entries are those which have to be reversed. I don’t have the ability to say whether that is likely or not. There may in that case be two solutions possible (though the house will look identical, just a mirror image, and the required information will still appear in the same place) but there are not more than two.
Those items which cross the roof are not regarded as having a ‘normal’ or ‘reversed’ orientation.
We have to admit defeat on this one. All of the clues needed to be solved without any crossing letters although you could hazard a guess as to the initial letter. We eventually managed to solve all bar 6 of the clues.
With some of the answers still missing, we were only able to guess where two of the long answers would fit in the grids and then guessed where a couple of the crossing ones would fit in. As some of the answers needed to be reversed we had no faith in the little progress we had made. Finally, we looked at the solution that Komornik had supplied and filled in our house.
We found that one of the ‘roof panels’ needed reversing but the long 16 letter answers did not read up and over the roof. The V and M and the T and A needed to change places which was a shame.
Even when we had constructed the house from Komornik’s grid, we took a while to find the hidden phrase.
So, no drink from the setter for us and we definitely needed something stronger than a cup of tea at the end!
Finally information from the setter:
Required items to write on dotted lines: Greeting: AYUP BETTERS AND SLOGGERS (This appears sinuously around the house walls)
Information: either 60 or LX (60 for the [Desert] Foxes, who presumably speak Arabic, and LX for the Romans)
The information is requested by the solutions ‘on the house’ i.e. HOST AGE IN YEARS written on the roof.
This puzzle is far from flawless, but I hope it generates some fun.
4 blogs today B&J! WOW!
I didn’t solve this puzzle but read your blog. A lot of fun, I should say.
AYU
Chambers says: report=to echo back. reportedly as a reversal indicator seems ok
considering this sense.
I finally finished this one at about 10.40 last night, having drawn out a net of the puzzle in my crossword design program. I parsed all of them except AYU and SIEGE – making the same parsing as you for them – and then settled down for trying to get the endgame.
I should say that I’m experienced with Komorník’s antics; I’ve doggedly persevered with his Christmas Challenges and managed to just about get to the end of the 2022/3 one. I find he’s on the libertarian end of libertarian (as someone yesterday described him); he virtually never means what he says, even if he says what he means. Case in point: “one item appears twice”. I didn’t realise he meant literally one solution is the same as one of the other solutions and thought it was one solution is entered twice in the grid.
I stared at this for a good hour last night trying to get the endgame. Something that was really not a help was that the end walls could be either way up and either way round, given things could be entered backwards and there are no crossers between the end walls and the side walls or roof, as far as I can see. As it is, my layout was lucky – I had the end wall son the right side and the right way up, but the one with METRO in was flipped so I had AYUTTEBPERSANDSLOGGERS. I did try rotating them, but I just couldn’t see it.
I *think* that you’re not right about that roof piece needing to be inverted. It all depends on what the ‘right way up’ is, and I think that the V of VEM is at the apex of the roof, so you’ve got your roof piece upside down for entries (ie the bottom of one piece should touch the top of the other piece, not bottom to bottom).
I should have got HOST AGE IN YEARS. ‘IN YEARS’ should have been a giveaway because he could have used ENDEARS or some other more ‘normal’ word – IN YEARS would have been a strange solution to have chosen were there not a particular reason for it. I knew the solution would be ‘on the house’ but I just didn’t see it, even though it was right in front of me (but upside down).
So: I feel I got pretty close, and a couple of extra bits of help would have got me over the finishing line. I’ve found this with his Challenges too: they are very, very, very hard. If you’re on the right wavelength and lucky, you can work things out, but you have to be thinking not only along the right lines but in the right direction as well. It’s a very Komorník puzzle – as long as you don’t go into it expecting the Times, and know what you’re getting into, I think his work is good fun, but I also understand it’s not to everyone’s taste…! Hat tip to B&J for persevering.
Good lord above.