Guardian Genius 260 – Karla

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“Each across clue contains a word that must be removed before solving. The first and last letters from these words, in clue order, explain changes required, to varying degrees of effect, in all down answers prior to entry.”

After I’d solved a few clues, it became clear that some of the down answers would almost but not quite fit. I soon got enough of the acrosses to work out the hidden message was BETWEEN ENTRIES BLOCKS ACT AS MAGNETS, and from the downs that the “changes required, to varying degrees of effect” involved moving N or S (the North and South poles of a magnet), upwards for N and downwards for R, corresponding (roughly) to repulsion or attraction from the “bars” around the middle row. The movement is “to varying degrees of effect”, i.e. different answers have varying amounts of movement.

The “two thematic phrases are formed of four answers” are OPPOSITES ATTRACT and POLES APART.

Thanks to Karla for the puzzle. The superfluous words in the across clues are italicised below.

 
Across
1 COCKATIEL Parrot broke shell almost covering peeled spuds (9)
[t]ATIE[s] (potatoes, spuds) in COCKL[e] (shell)
6 APART Throw old man aboard craft away from the others (5)
PA (old man) in ART (craft)
9 APOSTLE One of twelve in spinning exercise felt so paranoid (7)
Hidden in reverse of fELT SO PAranoid
10 GARNISH Butcher rang his nice bit on the side (7)
(RANG HIS)*
11 POLES Nationalist supports citizens of Europe (5)
Double definition
12 TENNESSEE 10 angels regularly call on Rabbi Williams? (9)
TEN + aNgElS + SEE (call on), with the definition referring to the playwright Tennessee Williams
13 ASSOCIATE Engineers link rugged seacoast and island (9)
Anagram of SEA COAST + I
15 COLT Equine tense on baleful pass (4)
COL (mountain pass) + T[ense]
18 EDDA Elders initially go on about Orphic songs of heroism (4)
E[lders] + reverse of ADD (go on about)
20 OPPOSITES Fat and thin kids maybe work by river locations (9)
OP (work) + PO (river) SITES. Here the definition (by example) is split by the extra word…
23 TREE-TRUNK Something animalistic barked in forest (4,5)
… and again, leaving a cryptic definition
25 MAIZE Variety of grass tea Warren picked up (5)
Sounds like “maze” (warren)
26 ATTRACT Draw edges of stadium against area of land (7)
A[gains]T + TRACT (area of land)
27 ON THE GO 100 cycling with ageing male turn very active (2,3,2)
TON (100) “cycling” + HE (male) + GO (turn)
28 MUDDY Confuse naive pal Mark standing in for bishop (5)
BUDDY (pal) with B replaced by M
29 RESURFACE Busy RAF rescue teams appear again (9)
(RAF RESCUE)*
Down
1 CHAMPAGNE Wine winner Jonathan the cricketer losing wickets (9)
CHAMP (winner) + (Jonathan) AGNEW less W
2 CLOSELY Finish ends of metal effigy in an attentive manner (7)
CLOSE (finish) + last letters of metaL effigY
3 ABSTRACT Street artist bolstering sailor before court summary (8)
AB (sailor) + ST[reet] + RA (artist) + C[our]T
4 ISLET Main outcrop has a landlord (5)
If a property has a landlord then it IS LET
5 LIGHTEN UP Relax thin leg cryptically (7,2)
LIGHTEN UP could be a cryptic indication of THIN LEG
6 ARDENT Passionate time with Gordon’s girl (6)
ARDEN + T. Dale Arden is (I learn) Flash Gordon’s girlfriend
7 ATISHOO Expiratory sound at 13.00? Get away (7)
AT 1 [o’clock] + SHOO (get away!)
8 THANE Article outlines another one of Alfred’s nobles? (5)
AN (indefinite article) in THE (definite ditto)
14 ABOUT‑TURN Command concerning rear of hit vessel (5-4)
ABOUT (concerning) + [hi]T + URN
16 STEVEDORE Docker outside of Dieppe checks up on mineral (9)
Reverse of D[iepp]E VETS (checks) + ORE
17 SCIMITAR Cliff gives shelter for one with German weapon (8)
1 + MIT (German “with”) in SCAR (cliff)
19 DENOTED Shown cleared score sheets? (7)
If you cleared musical scores you might have DE-NOTED them
21 TIBETAN East Asian container inscribed with letter (7)
BETA (Greek letter) in TIN. I was a bit surprised by the definition, but Tibet is (at least de facto) a part of China, which I see is regarded as part of East Asia
22 TWANGY Women in function with guys oddly like The Shadows? (6)
W in TAN[gent] + odd letters of GuYs.
23 STEAM Energy Nick finally increased 20-fold (5)
STEAL (nick) with the final L (50) changed to M (1000)
24 KIOSK Lout climbing atop vacant snack stall (5)
Reverse of OIK + S[nac]K

9 comments on “Guardian Genius 260 – Karla”

  1. I am not sure whether the explanation covers this, but the “magnets” in the middle are all oriented with N on the top and S on the bottom, and the S or N of the solutions move accordingly. I thought that was a neat little extra. I originally had INLET for 4D, but I realized that I did not have a N-S pair in that column, so caught my mistake. I identified the extraneous words in the Across clues in part by working through the first and last letters of each of the words in the clues, to see whether some intelligible word or phrase would result. The phrase that ultimately resulted was itself a little cryptic, but the puzzle overall was a lot of fun to solve.

  2. Thanks Andrew and Karla.

    I got this going fairly fast, with the instructions and the thematic phrases. Also figured out what to do.
    Not having 12a, I started guessing where S & N can go, hoping to derive it from the crossers, and tied myself into knots.
    So, 4d, 5d and 7d had to be corrected, when I got TENNESSEE – (LOI, shamefully).

    I am not fond of puzzles where grid entries are not real words. Picaroon’s #259 is classy in that sense.

    Typo in the blog? should be downwards for ‘S’.

  3. Thanks for the blog, Andrew. Our entry was the same as yours, but I had little confidence that it was correct. Cluing was fair, and the extra words in the across clues were often fairly easy to spot, so we worked out the thematic instruction and even spotted the thematic pairs of answers.
    But how to interpret the ‘magnetism’ of the blocks? At first, I thought that the Ns and Ss should be placed immediately above and below the bars separating the down clues – but then that would ruin the across answers. Eventually, the grid shown here seemed the only way it could be entered, but I fail to see how the blocks are acting as magnets. Yes, the Ns and Ss move, but in an apparently random and inconsistent way. If the Ns always move up and the Ss down, then how is the block between them acting as a magnet?
    I agree with ilippu that having non-words as answers is somewhat unsatisfactory, but having vague and apparently misleading instructions to arrive at them made it even more so for me.

  4. Another super Genius puzzle with a clever twist affecting the Down answers. There was always a unique way to shift the N or S up or down while leaving the remaining letters in the original order.

    I noticed that every (columnar) pair of Down answers had one N and one S. Every S was shifted south and every N north, all eight magnets being positioned with N uppermost (as pointed out by Cineraria @1).

    The clues were excellent. TREE TRUNK was my last to solve, following KIOSK. The gridfill was impressive, accommodating as it did the phrases POLES APART and OPPOSITES ATTRACT as well as all the altered Down answers. MAIZE was an interesting clue as it had a dual answer, and I wrote in BURRO first. As that clashed with both TIBETAN and STEVEDORE I had to change it to what was indeed the more familiar grass.

    Thanks to Karla and Andrew.

  5. Yet another inventive Genius crossword. Like Cineraria@1 I worked out the the extra words in the across clues fairly early on by looking for those that made a plausible sentence.
    I didn’t mind entering non-words into the grid, but it was a pain transcribing them into the entry form – very easy to make a mistake
    Many thanks to Karla and Andrew.

  6. I’ve been keenly awaiting this blog. Quite surprised to find that I almost had this one out. It really had me scratching my head. Like DuncT @5 I found the hint sentence fairly early, and I knew I had to shift S and N in the downs to make them fit, but how? I got most of the transpositions by working out where they fit with the crossers, bit didn’t see the up/down idea. That meant I still had two possibilities for steam and thane. The only clue I could not get the answer for was edda, not having heard of it. I did consider edna, but looking it up it had nothing to do with definition. Very clever, but I must admit I prefer real words.

  7. I’m not sure the explanations in the comments above are quite clear, so perhaps this might help if anyone’s still struggling:
    Each column contains two solutions separated by a black block. Consider (per the rubric) each black block as a magnet with North at the top, south at the bottom.
    In the solutions above the blocks, N’s move away from, i.e up , and S’s towards. i.e. down, the magnet because of the North pole.
    In the solutions below the blocks, N’s still move up, because they’re attracted to the South pole and similarly the S’s still move down, because they’re repulsed.

  8. typos: ‘…and downwards for S‘; 5d LIGHTEN UP = just “Relax” (not thin). Took longest to twig 19d DNEOTED Liked Cliff & The Shadows (1958-68) having a reunion.

  9. Mr Beaver@3 and I-cant-remember-myname@7
    For me, the source of dissatisfaction was – the across answers locked the positions of N or S, where they contained either of the letters, making the magnet somewhat ineffective. “To varying degrees of effect” hint was helpful, but not satisfying. In other words, only some Ns and Ss were affected by the magnet; not all.

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