Genius No 253 by Eccles – Fifteensquared

There’s an unusual, ~~(possibly~~ ~~unique),~~ theme in this month’s Genius puzzle.

I don’t recall ever solving a puzzle by Eccles before, much less a Genius, but I was impressed by this one. The thematic device was cleverly constructed and there were some witty and concise clues. The preamble stated: The answers to six clues must be manipulated before entry. Each remaining clue contains a single misprint. The erroneous letters, in clue order, indicate the manipulation.

With only six thematic clues, I simply set about solving as many as I could, noting the misprints as I went along. Crossing letters made it seem likely that 5 and 9 down would be thematic, and so it proved. At first I wondered what form the manipulation would take, until the word “cipher” appeared in the misprinted letters. Eventually, I extracted the complete message: Caesar cipher with clue numbers. A Caesar cipher is a simple substitution code, whereby letters of the alphabet are replaced by other letters according to a pre-determined pattern. Here it was clear that you simply needed to move along the alphabet a number of places equivalent to the particular clue number. So, in the case of 3 down, SULPHUR has each letter exactly 3 places in the alphabet after those of the answer, PRIMERO. Once I had worked this out, I was able to reverse engineer a couple of thematic answers to derive the original answers.

There was only one clue (14 across) where I was unable to determine the correction to the misprint, and thus understand the original clue (the misprint occurring in the wordplay). Luckily Kenmac came to the rescue and provided a plausible explanation. And there is one clue (13 across) where in fact there seems to be an additional misprint (an omitted letter) but that did not present any barrier to solving.

I really enjoyed working out this puzzle: many thanks, Eccles, and let’s hope we see you in the Genius slot again. For the purposes of the blog, I have amended the original clues by putting the misprinted letter in brackets, followed by what I think is the intended correct letter. The thematic answers are highlighted in the grid.

ACROSS
1	TEASED	(C)Bantered with Chas and Dave on return after vacation (6)
		TEAS (chas – plural of cha, meaning tea); D(av)E (rev).
5	KINESIS	Dr(a)ug boring family and little sister, making random movement (7)
		E (drug) inside KIN (family) and SIS(ter).
10	NIHIL	Nothing stops Martin(e)i hillwalking (5)
		Hidden in “Martini hillwalking”.
11	STEGOSAUR	(S)Mix argue toss for large vegetarian (9)
		*(ARGUE TOSS).
12	ROUGHEN	Make l(a)ess flat out refuse initially? Enough! (7)
		R(efuse) + *ENOUGH.
13	DULLEST	Possibly (R)soot claims Lille, oddly, to be the most boring (7)
		Odd letters of LiLlE inside DUST. The surface appears to be a cricket reference but would make more sense if it was Lillee (former Australian fast bowler) rather than Lille, a French city.
14	HATER	I begrudge Henry wanting to kill (c)foot (5)
		H(enry): A(f)TER (wanting).
15	TAKE STEPS	P(i)ocket dance-pop band’s act (4,5)
		TAKE (pocket) STEPS (dance-pop band).
18	MIDLANDER	Comedian Bette with (p)fills for Brummie? (9)
		AND (with) inside (fills) (Bette) MIDLER.
20	GULLS	Get together with Miles Kane, say, leaving husband (5)
		The answer to the clue is MARRY, which parses as M(iles) + ‘ARRY (Kane). GULLS is the enciphered version.
22	DUCHESS	(H)Date starter of undercooked game for lady (7)
		D(ate) U(ndercooked) CHESS (game).
25	SCANNER	Small Cub(e)a found by Queen and King in electronic device (7)
		S(mall) C (IVR for Cuba), (Queen) ANNE, R(ex).
26	IMBROGLIO	Briefly, Australian singer’s love for union (r)hole creates complicated situation (9)
		Natalie Imbrugli(a), with O (love) for U(nion) and a final O (hole).
27	ME TOO	Got introduced to (W)rings, producing movement for change (2,3)
		MET (got introduced to) OO (rings).
28	ACADEMY	Covered ar(i)ea, but not right next to my school (7)
		A(r)CADE (covered area), MY.
29	ERRANT	Mother ra(t)n tried to accept stray (6)
		Hidden in “mother ran tried”. Not a very convincing surface, after correcting the misprint, but could be saved by the insertion of a comma.
DOWN
2	EXHAUSTED	Former partner despised keeping American (h)tired (9)
		EX (former partner), US inside HATED.
3	SULPHUR	Maybe 5 run over for card game (7)
		The answer is PRIMERO (5 is a PRIME number, R(un) O(ver)). This becomes SULPHUR when enciphered.
4	DISUNITED	I didn’t use (c)bombs in Split (9)
		*(I DIDN’T USE).
5	KNEED	Bubbly provided on the counter by 3 unknowns (5)
		The answer is FIZZY (IF (rev), Z Z Y (3 unknowns), which becomes KNEED.
6	NOODLES	Silly people from Norway getting lo(l)ts (7)
		N(orway), OODLES (lots).
7	SHALE	Exalt unusual plant product (5)
		The answer is LATEX (*EXALT), which becomes SHALE.
8	STRATUS	Refl(u)ex begins around middle of gut, forming cloud (7)
		START (rev) around U (middle of gUt).
9	ENARCH	Reality of extremely gripping sex (6)
		The answer is VERITY (IT (sex) inside VERY (extremely)); this becomes ENARCH.
16	KERBSTONE	R(e)oad boundary marker on treks and be agitated (9)
		*(ON TREKS BE).
17	ELLINGTON	Du(n)ke, for example, in capital city with flies (9)
		(w)ELLINGTON (capital city).
18	MADEIRA	Dr(u)ink composed with Gershwin (7)
		MADE, IRA (Gershwin).
19	ACETONE	Professional To(m)n, single and solvent (7)
		ACE (professional) T(on) ONE (single).
20	GRAMMAR	Language rules spread over (b)mar (7)
		MARG (rev), MAR.
21	SERMON	Clergyman’s speech l(e)ad entertaining session, but time to leave (6)
		(t)ERM inside SON.
23	COBRA	Couples perhaps welcoming University psychoanalyst (5)
		The answer is FREUD: U(niversity) inside FRED (Couples, American golfer). This becomes COBRA.
24	SALLY	Colleague is after second (r)jest (5)
		S(econd) ALLY.

13 comments on “Genius No 253 by Eccles”

Thanks Eccles and bridgesong.
Enjoyed this.
Got “with clue numbers” first; was baffled by CAESAR as first word, as I was expecting to see a verb.
With that hint, converted FIZZY to KNEED by adding 5. Tried +23 for FREUD and got COBRA, which fitted nicely.
Did not know the cipher’s name, so Googled CAESAR code; just entering c after CAESAR got me the second word CIPHER.
Could not solve 20a, so worked back from G?L?S, – 20, and MARRY made sense.
That’s it. Nice new (for me) device.

Great fun, many thanks to Eccles and bridgesong.
We have seen Caesar Cyphers in Genius puzzles before. Most notably we recently had a lengthy discussion regarding Genius no.13 which required such a cypher to be applied to six Shakespearean characters before entry to the grid.
Btw, this Eccles is the same Eccles who sets in the Independent and posts regularly on X as EcclesCrossword.

25a SCANNER – According to Wikipedia, the IVR code for Cuba was C in 1924, but has been CU since 1930 (marked “[citation needed]”)

And yet FrankieG @3 this wiki article says “The international vehicle registration code for Cuba is C”. Chambers also has it as C.
There’s some obvious confusion as the UNECE which controls this suggests that it’s CU with the footnote that “The distinguishing sign was not notified to the United Nations Secretary-General.” Go figure.

You just can’t trust t’internet!!! 😉

FrankieG @3: Chambers(which isn’t infallible!) gives C as the IVR code for Cuba.

bridgesong@5 Yes, “It’s in Chambers”of course – I knew.
For more Caesar Salad in puzzles see Saladin’s Indy debut: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/05/01/independent-11404-by-saladin/#comment-574899
@16 & @17…

…and its sequel: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/09/18/independent-11524-saladin/#comment-596590
@20 & @25 — Is Eccles Saladin?

The last Genius puzzle to use this device was no. 210 by Soup in 2021. I commented at the time that it was surprising it hadn’t been used more frequently.
This was a good one – many thanks to Eccles and bridgesong.

Just wanted to join in the praise for this – chewy and fun. I realised some pretty significant manipulation of the answers was in order, and even guessed what some of the altered answers must be before small (and soon not to be minted) coins cascaded. I did not help myself by trying to spell cipher as “cypher” when sorting out the substitutions…

Thank you Eccles and bridgesong.

Thanks Eccles, I really enjoyed this, and am impressed by the enciphered solutions all being valid words, and thanks birdsong for the blog.
I had to work out the required “manipulation” by looking at the solutions and their crossings, as the “erroneous letters in clue order” in the margins of my increasingly untidy printout contained my own misprint! Probably should have had the courage to use pen instead of a blunt 4H pencil.

Thanks, DuncT @8, for reminding me of Soup’s Genius 210. I see that I commented on that puzzle, so I should have remembered it. I have amended my introduction to delete the words “possibly unique”!

A typical Genius puzzle, and typical also that it had a unique twist in its design. At least, I cannot remember a Genius puzzle with a Caesar cipher at work with some of the answers. (But I now note what Jay and DuncT have said above.) I admired particularly the 6-letter and 7-letter answers VERITY and PRIMERO, encoded into ENARCH and SULPHUR respectively.

The key to the manipulations came quite quickly in the top right corner, where 5d FIZZY and 7d LATEX had to be encoded into KNEED and SHALE in order to cross the words already there.

I could see that a lot of skill and care went into the clues, and the misprint device made some of them very tricky.

In a sense, the message formed from the misprinted letters wasn’t needed, as the coding device was already discovered, but the relevant clues had to be unravelled and solved regardless.

Many thanks to Eccles and bridgesong.

An enjoyable Genius.

We struggled with 1ac and when we were near the end and googling the possible theme we were using AESAR which proved fruitless needless to say.

Later on we used the code to back solve a couple. It wasn’t until right at the end that we realised the significance of the clue numbers as we were including the letters at the beginning and the end so our enumeration was out by a factor of 1!

Thanks to bridgesong and Eccles.

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