Kite sets the last Genius challenge of 2024.
The preamble says:
Related features are omitted from wordplay in half the clues. Wordplay in other clues indicates an extra letter in each. The additional letters can be arranged to identify the related features.
Our first one in was 12ac. We thought 2d was BLOOMS but that didn’t fit. The penny dropped eventually and we guessed very early on that we were looking at adding double letters.
You would think that this may have spoiled the rest of the puzzle solving by making life a bit easier. It is thanks to Kite’s setting, that this was not the case. Some of the answers were difficult to sort out the parsing. 6d – MEANDER was our LOI and took a bit of teasing out – we started looking at M being a state for a while.
As we were progressing, we thought the extra letters may spell out DOUBLE LETTERS but we had an N as the extra letter for 10ac. With only a few clues left to solve we wrote all the letters we did have and realised that the extra letter in 10ac was an O not N.
Additional letters are green. We have used a strikethrough in the parsing to indicate that they are extra.
| ACROSS | |||
| No. | Entry | ||
| 7 | ROLL OUT | LL |
Launch uniform adopted by foundation (4,3)
|
| U (uniform) inside or ‘adopted by’ ROOT (foundation) | |||
| 8 | SKIPPER | PP |
Captain Scarlet at first given vat (7)
|
| S (‘first’ letter of Scarlet) KIER (a bleaching vat) | |||
| 10 | ONESIE | O |
Nobody’s missing top that is comfortable clothing (6)
|
| n |
|||
| 11 | HOMELAND | U |
Engineer old and humane found in country (8)
|
| An anagram (‘engineer’) of OLD and H |
|||
| 12 | UNDO | L |
Lundy mostly round and open (4)
|
| 13 | BACK ISSUES | SS |
Sick beau arranged old papers (4,6)
|
| An anagram (‘arranged’) of SICK BEAU | |||
| 14 | ASTROLOGIST | R |
Prophet revealing artists’ log or designs (11)
|
| An anagram (‘designs’) of ARTIST’S LOG O |
|||
| 19 | ALPHABETIC | B |
Two bishops visiting foreign caliphate in progressive order (10)
|
| B |
|||
| 22 | RAIN | T |
Part of dress drops (4)
|
| 23 | EMIGRATE | L |
Blunt, shortly annoy and go away (8)
|
| EMI |
|||
| 24 | CHARDS | D |
Leaves firm investing in discs (6)
|
| HARD (firm) inside or ‘investing in’ C |
|||
| 25 | LEGENDS | S |
Stars show butts on stages (7)
|
| END |
|||
| 26 | CATERER | E |
One is preparing food to recreate pie (7)
|
| An anagram (‘pie’) of R |
|||
| DOWN | |||
| No. | Entry | ||
| 1 | DONNING | NN |
Getting into performing (7)
|
| DOING (performing) | |||
| 2 | BLOSSOMS | SS |
Fabric producer cutting rubbish flowers (8)
|
| LOOM (fabric producer) inside or ‘cutting’ BS (rubbish) | |||
| 3 | SUPERB | E |
Undercoats look brilliant (6)
|
| A ‘lift and separate’ clue – SUB (under) around or ‘coating’ P |
|||
| 4 | SKIMMING | MM |
One interrupts, requesting leader removed for taking off (8)
|
| I (one) inside or ‘interrupting’ |
|||
| 5 | APPLES | PP |
Fruit drinks (6)
|
| ALES (drinks) | |||
| 6 | MEANDER | E |
State Sibyl, needing no introduction, also breaking wind (7)
|
| ME (state – Maine) |
|||
| 9 | CHOCOLATIER | T |
Catholic tore off manufacturer of goodies (11)
|
| An anagram (‘off’) of CA |
|||
| 15 | RIBBANDS | BB |
Irish centre perhaps strips (8)
|
| The ‘centre’ of IRISH is RIS or R, I AND S | |||
| 16 | SERRATED | RR |
Satisfied welcoming European with sharp teeth (8)
|
| SATED (satisfied) around or ‘welcoming’ E (European) | |||
| 17 | GLUMMER | MM |
One who’s sticking together, increasingly sad (7)
|
| GLUER (one whose sticking together) | |||
| 18 | FIDDLED | DD |
Cheated and left hurriedly about 1 (7)
|
| FLED (left hurriedly) around I | |||
| 20 | HUGGED | GG |
Coloured skirt seen in the past (6)
|
| HUED (coloured) | |||
| 21 | COCCAL | CC |
Bacterial fuel (6)
|
| COAL (fuel) |
I remember starting off with APPLES/ALES, which gave me a pretty fair guess where the puzzle was heading. It helped me to have assumed that DOUBLE LETTERS was the key, in solving the last few clues (as in: “this clue has an extra E somewhere”). My LOI was CHARDS. I do not remember this being very hard to solve/parse, but I did have to get on Kite’s wavelength, and now that I am looking back at the clues, I am having a hard time remembering the solutions/parsing without looking back at my notes. I enjoyed this. Nice job on the blog.
Very enjoyable challenge, thanks Kite and B&J for the blog.
13A and 9D got me started and showed me Kite’s trick. I love a good anagram. CHARDS was also my LOI, taking some time for some reason even though I knew it was a D missing.
Thanks BJ for a great blog; it’s always interesting to see how solvers approach the challenge. I realised that if the ‘conceit’ was revealed early on, this might make life easy, but the fact that which half of the clues had DOUBLE LETTERS, or which had an extra letter provided some spice. It was quite fun to set, although when I reviewed the crossword I nearly got entangled myself.
Thanks also to the commenters; if anyone else reading this might like to comment, I’m always appreciative of the feedback.
I find it hard enough to comment on a prize puzzle a week later. With the Genius being revealed after a month I can never remember what clicked first. I should make notes – perhaps on Monday I shall! But I do recall (a) enjoying this and (b) the penny dropping pretty quickly.
“Hugged” was my LOI – I just could not find an equivalence with “skirt” that was close enough, though it had to be that. Nevertheless, a very neatly set puzzle-with-a-twist and my thanks to Kite for entertaining me and Bertandjoyce for the explanations.
JFT, from WordWeb, skirt is given as: Pass around or about; move along the border; “The boat skirted the coast”. In the ODE: be situated along or around the edge of: the fields that skirted the highway were full of cattle.; Chambers: To pass along the edge of. I’m not sure now why I put ‘seen in the past’, I must have seen a reference somewhere that it was old-fashioned.
Very nice puzzle. My first one for the theme was BACK ISSUES but that didn’t make it easy! Like JoFT@4, HUGGED was my LOI and I spent a little while reading it to my extended family (I was doing this over winter break) to try and figure out the parsing until the penny dropped in the morning. Kite@5, “seen in the past” makes it HUGGED rather than HUG, correct? I had been trying to justify hip-HUGGER as a skirt of yore.
RIBBANDS and SUPERB were especially nice clues. Even though I had the B I spent a while working on crossers because I just couldn’t figure out the parsing for SUPERB, I feared there might be some undercoat I’d never heard of called a bimbab or something, but eventually saw the lift-and-separate and slapped my forehead.
Thanks Kite and bertandjoyce!
Thanks Bertandjoyce and Kite.
After the drubbing from Twin last month that was 100% based on UKGK (that was my excuse for DNF) I was happy to see this and complete this.
ALPHABETIC and ONESIE yielding B and O, BACK ISSUES and ROLL OUT showing up the device, and 13 being the length of ‘related feature’ guessed DOUBLE LETTERS and went on from there.
Like others, had to confirm the meaning of ‘skirt’, which was LOI.
Thanks to Kite, and Bert and Joyce. As with others, it’s a while ago now, but I seem to remember we started slow, speeded up quite early on when the double-letter thing became clear, then slowed down to tease out the last quarter.
Which is just about what you want for a Genius – at first I thought all the Acrosses might be one kind of clue, and all the Downs the other, but as Kite says, mixing them up gave it enough spice.
HUGGED was the only one I had a query against, although the “skirting the coast” usage was familiar enough – just didn’t twig that ‘seen in the past’ meant a past tense.
Kite@5: Hugged/skirted the coast (with “in the past” making it a past participle) works perfectly for me – thank you. Sorry I could not provide more feedback on the solving process
Due to having 18D as Fleeced instead of fiddled, 22A and 24A just wouldn’t fall out for me. My thinking for 18D was not that bad. I thought it was fleed (which is not really a word I now realise) around Ace (1) with the letter A being the additional letter. Australians use the word fleeced to mean someone has cheated you or ripped you off. I’m guessing it’s the same in the UK?
Nearly got there this time.
Viv from Oz@10: “fleece” is definitely in wide use in the US, and according to the OED it goes back to Holinshed’s Chronicles (“The Cardinall knowing that he was well prouided of money, sought occasion to fleece him of part thereof”) so it should be fine in the UK too!