Were you swithering with the jeopardy of dilemma? Blog by Oyler
One of the benefits of being a co-editor is that you get to see other setters’ puzzles. Some
years ago, we had a submission from Czecker in which each entry ended in a different
digit. I was intrigued so decided to have a go myself. The result was just a single grid
puzzle and it appeared in Crossnumbers Quarterly, CQ.
I then recalled that I’d set a puzzle for Chalkdust magazine that had a 5×4 grid with each
digit appearing twice. So, I resurrected that but this time each digit would appear once
as a terminal digit and once not. I am always impressed by the way my co-editor Zag
makes use of sums or products of entries with their results carefully positioned in the
grid and I was keen to try and do the same.
This puzzle was set away back in 2020 Lockdown and in between walking up and down
the stairs with cups of coffee and biscuits for my wife as she was working from home, I
investigated the positioning of various sums and products in different grid barring
patterns. Well, there was nothing else to do really! My technique is to set several puzzles
of the same type over the space of a few weeks – one for CQ, another for The Magpie and
if I think it could be good enough then one for The Listener as well.
The Magpie version was entitled Jeopardy and appeared in Jan 2022. There is a blog on
their website which details the setting of their version. Go to piemag.com and type
Jeopardy into the search box and click on the ‘how not to set a puzzle’! The main
problem with that puzzle was that I had combined two separate puzzles into one. Both
puzzles on their own had a logical solution pathway but when combined things sort of
fell apart a bit and resulted in a bit of clue rewriting. I had set various puzzles for The
Magpie in their early days which had multiple grids and had considered all the grids at
the same time when setting. It was a pity that I’d forgotten that lesson!
The CQ version also appeared in Jan 2022 and was entitled Swithering which is a nice
Scottish word meaning undecided and seemed to fit nicely with the idea of having to
decide on which bit of the clue went with which grid.
Now on to Dilemma where I applied the lesson I’d forgotten as I did when setting
Swithering too. So, two grids with the digits 0 to 9 written underneath twice and a space
for the clues. Of course, you need to have a way in and I decided that this version would
involve products of a 2-digit and a 3-digit number with their positioning in the grid as
symmetrically opposite. So, one set would give the start of an entry whist the other
would give the last digit of an entry. I started with the 3dn = 3ac x 6ac as that forced 6ac
to start with 1. It was then a case of limiting what that could be. Using triangular for one
clue gives 10 and 15 as possibilities – 10 can be discarded straight away as two entries
would end in zero and 15 as that is too large to have 3ac/3dn starting with the same
digit. Giving even for the other clue limits you to 12. I decided to be sneaky and have the
clues for 9ac fit both grids, hence the title. Yes, the title was carefully chosen! As entries
went in and the clues written taking account of both grids the relevant digits were
scored off the list. It took a few days to set in total. My two test solvers managed it fine
so I earmarked it for my next Listener submission.
It seems that solvers found this puzzle far more difficult than I anticipated. Goodness
knows what they’ll make of the two that are in the Listener pipeline!