Genius no 264 by Pangakupu

11 comments on “Genius no 264 by Pangakupu”

1. Thanks Pangakupu and Bertandjoyce.

   In fits and starts got “ENHARMONIC EQUIVALENT PAIR”.

   Of the 6, I had 23a REFLATE, and 12d STAGFLATION.
   They would not fit in their numbered spots due to size, and/or mostly due to crossers.

   With 24 answers entered, the grid was 80% full offering effective constraints.
   Googling the instructions led to ‘Theory of Music’ and learnt about enharmonic equivalent notes, and the FLAT/SHARP connection.
   Applying that, found home for 5 of the 6.

   And lastly, 9d AFFLATUS = AF(NATURAL)US went into 12d
   Here, one had to ignore the F as crossers had: A?N?T?R?L?S – just changing FLAT to NATURAL.

   Before modification, the notes in order were:
   D-FLAT
   D-SHARP
   E-FLAT
   E-FLAT
   F-FLAT
   G-FLAT explaining the “ascending order” in the rubric.

   Took several sittings over a couple of days. With practically zero knowledge of music, this was challenging. So, satisfying to complete.

2. Very good I thought with a novel idea for construction. My grid is the same as the blog. I don’t recall making use of the ascending order instruction.

   I did try playing the result. The notes work quite nicely as an Eb min 7 11 chord.

   Thanks to Pangakupa and Bertandjoyce for the blog.

3. Like Bert & Joyce, we found the instructions very confusing, almost to the point of not attempting it at all. However, we slowly chipped away at the extra letter clues, but were mystified by the message they (claimed to) reveal. Our best guess was the meaningless ENHAR TONIC EQUIVALENT PAIR – as we’d confidently parsed the soldier in 18a as ANT instead of MAN, leading to an extra T.
   By this time, we’d realised it was something musical and involved FLATs and SHARPs, but (like ilippu) it was only at the very end, when 12d refused to fit this pattern, that we realised it was the whole note (D sharp etc) that needed to be replaced. Finally, the instructions made sense!
   We felt it was something of a triumph to finish, but too hard for us to have really enjoyed it. However, I salute Pangakupu’s ingenuity in putting it all together!

4. This was well within the Genius puzzle tradition. I saw the “sharp” and “flat” part pretty quickly, but it took me a while to figure out that the note also had to change, e.g., D to E. It was a little tricky determining how the six special solutions switched around, but then again, there were only six of them. In general, I find clues with an extraneous (or missing) letter quite hard to solve, until almost the end, when the group of extra letters typically spells out some other message. Very nice job on the blog.

5. Reading the blog and the comments, my understanding is, that you replace the appearance of a note with it’s pair and then put them in wherever they will fit. Is this correct? Unfortunately I read 21D as ‘FP mostly’ giving F and then dropped the D of RAPPED to get ‘FRAPPE’ but this gave me DAIR, not PAIR in the list of letters so I never understood the necessary modification.

6. BrianG – that was our understanding from the preamble.

7. BertandJoyce, thanks for the clarification. And thanks for the blog.

8. Even my very musical wife had not come across the phrase “enharmonic equivalent pair” but once I had discovered its meaning, she was able to provide the necessary conversions to enable me to fill the grid.

   I thought this was a very ingenious and interesting puzzle. Was there a Māori nina? I couldn’t see one.

9. Thanks to Pangakupu for a terrific puzzle, and to Bertandjoyce for a splendid blog .

   This took me several goes over the course of three days, and it was only on the third day that different pennies finally dropped together.

   Like Mr Beaver @3, I found the instructions curious and baffling. What the devil can it mean – to replace something by itself? A translation, maybe? Replacing ONE with UNO, or WHITE with BLANC, etc?

   As I worked through the clues, getting solutions here and there, I found two that didn’t fit – CARDSHARP and STAGFLATION. Then came REFLATE – but still nothing twigged.

   Meanwhile, I was slowly building up the extra letters, spelling out words which would – I hoped! – ease my confusion about replacing something “by itself”. The first word to emerge was ‘equivalent’, followed – I guessed – by ‘pair’. For the third word I needed my dictionary. I hadn’t known the word ‘enharmonic’ or the phrase ‘enharmonic pair’. But now I did – and suddenly I realised what was going on …

   CAR D-SHARP wouldn’t fit anywhere, but if D-SHARP was replaced by E-FLAT (ie, by itself), CAR E-FLAT would! Similarly with STA G-FLAT ION and STA F-SHARP ION. And R E-FLAT E and R D-SHARP E.

   And so, at last, it all came clear and the grid was filled. Although, like Jay @2, I didn’t seem to need the ‘ascending order’ hint. I also couldn’t parse MUDFLAT. I didn’t know MUFF meaning a poor athlete, or D meaning deserted.

   Thanks again to Pangakupu fur a most enjoyable and clever puzzle.

10. Thanks for the well documented unravelling, bertandjoyce. I put this away half finished early in the month with only the Sharp flat swapping part identified. Without the full message it was a bit complicated. I only got the satisfaction of solving it when the penny dropped with the word equivalent. An excellent Genius puzzle, thanks to Pangakupu on whom we’ve come to depend for classy puzzles.

11. ilippu might like to check their answer:
    “And lastly, 9d AFFLATUS = AF(NATURAL)US went into 12d
    Here, one had to ignore the F as crossers had: A?N?T?R?L?S – just changing FLAT to NATURAL.”
    As per bertandjoyce’s answer, FFlat = ENatural. The enharmonic pairs always have a different note.
    I puzzled over the rubric’s “one part of each replaced by itself” for quite some time.

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