‘Chandler’ is a new name to me, and not obviously present on this site or the inter-web generally, so either a debutant(e?) or yet another collaboration of existing setters…
The preamble states that:
“The solution to 22,23 across, not further defined, explains how eight others need to be treated before entry in the grid. The clues for these eight contain a conventional definition and their wordplay produces the letters to be entered, which are not real words.”
After failing to make the final logical step of last month’s Genius 171 from Qaos (I didn’t spot the planets, so put an O in the middle, as there were the other four vowels A, E, I and U in the central column!), I was just hoping I’d be able to complete this month’s, as it was my turn to blog.
22,23 is an obvious place to focus, from the preamble, so my initial efforts were around getting any crossing letters I could – those two plus the 8 thematics meant there were 18 normal clues, so reasonable odds for a run through of cold solving.
And so it proved – 22A looked like H?R?E? and 223A looked like it ended …?U?S?S -and it wasn’t a huge jump to HORSES and COURSES. So, the ‘treatment’ is probably substituting HORSES for COURSES, or vice versa. But what sort of horses, and what sort of courses?… Well, luckily, I have dabbled in horse riding, and I have played (or tried to play) and watched a bit of golf, so when 9A looked like CLINKS (prisons) but had to fit C?U?C?, I guessed that a LINKS golf course would be replaced by a (Suffolk) PUNCH – type of horse – to make CPUNCH – a non-word.
One down, seven to go! Next up was 11A, which looked like EMPATHETIC (understanding) but its middle section had ?A?A?…so maybe ARAB was the horse replacing PATH – a different type of ‘course’.
After an hour of solving, I had the theme, and pretty much all of the non-thematic clues done – leaving some mopping-up effort on the remaining thematics…which turned out to be several types of COURSES – golf courses (LINKS, TROON), race courses (ASCOT, AYR), academic courses/subjects (LATIN, FRENCH) and the general courses we take in life – PATH and WAY.
However it took a bit of letter-crunching and list-searching to track down all the horses – CAPUL, PUNCH, ARAB, STEED, NAG, SHIRE, COB and – LOI – CAYUSE…a make of horse I definitely wasn’t familiar with before!
All good fun and, at a couple of hours in two or three sessions, I would put that down as a quick Genius solve for me, maybe helped by getting on the wavelength fairly quickly.
Thanks and welcome (if it is a debut) to Chandler, and I look forward to next month’s Genius being a real stinker I can spend all month on without having to worry about blogging it!…
| ACROSS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Thematic solution (as defined) | Grid entry | Definition (with occasional embellishments) | Clue / Logic/Parsing |
| 7 | P(LATIN)UM | P(CAPUL)UM | greyish | Greyish computer, a choice round university (8) / PC (computer) + A + P_LUM (choice) around U (university) |
| 9 | C(LINKS) | C(PUNCH) | prisons | Cold drink in prisons (6) / C (cold) + PUNCH (drink) |
| 10 | FAST | double defn. | Secure period for avoiding fare (4) / FAST can mean secure; and a FAST is a period for avoiding food, or fare |
|
| 11 | EM(PATH)ETIC | EM(ARAB)ETIC | supportive | Bet America after reform is supportive (10) / anag, i.e. after reform, of BET AMERICA |
| 12 | CIRCLE | double defn. | Company in theatre feature? (6) / a CIRCLE can mean a company, group of people; and the CIRCLE in the theatre is the set of seats above the stalls |
|
| 14 | OVERTIME | extra work | Public music business pushed back extra work (8) / OVERT (public, open) + IME (EMI, music business, pushed back) |
|
| 15 | ANY(WAY) | ANY(COB) | carelessly | New Young Conservatives interrupting last part of meeting, carelessly (6) / A_OB (any other business, usually the last item on a meeting agenda) around N (new) + YC (Young Conservatives) |
| 17 | M(ASCOT) | M(STEED) | bringer of luck | Papers support Democrat, bringer of luck (6) / MS (manuscript, papers) + TEE (support, e.g. in golf) + D (Democrat) |
| 20 | POL(TROON) | POL(SHIRE) | despicable coward | Slip hero devised for despicable coward (8) / anag, i.e. devised, of SLIP HERO |
| 22 | HORSES | thematic – undefined | & 23 Choose errors? Fuss breaks out (6,3,7) / anag, i.e. breaks out, of CHOOSE ERRORS FUSS |
|
| 23 | FOR COURSES | see 23A | See 22A (3,7) / see 23A |
|
| 24 | TAUT | tightly drawn | Greek character close to protest tightly drawn (4) / TAU (Greek character) + T (last letter, or close, of protesT) |
|
| 25 | PREFER | like better | Like better official in person (6) / P_ER (person) around REF (official) |
|
| 26 | PL(AYR)OOM | PL(NAG)OOM | area for tots | A long mop works in area for tots? (8) / anag, i.e. works, of A LONG MOP |
| DOWN | ||||
| Clue No | Thematic solution (as defined) | Grid entry | Definition (with occasional embellishments) | Clue / Logic/Parsing |
| 1 | SCIATICA | (medical) disorder | Spies on habitual movement in South Africa, creating disorder (8) / S_A (South Africa), around CIA (American spies) + TIC (habitual movement) |
|
| 2 | SPOT | locate | Locate second trophy (4) / S (second) + POT (trophy) |
|
| 3 | ALLEGE | claim | Claim, say, jazz singer raised (6) / EG (say) + ELLA (Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer) – all raised |
|
| 4 | SCRAPERS | cleaning tools | Fight over common woman’s cleaning tools (8) / SCRAP (fight) + ERS (‘hers, woman’s, dropping the aitch, so ‘commonly’) |
|
| 5 | RUPERT BEAR | comic strip character | Rare brute agitated holding power, comic strip character (6,4) / RU_ERT BEAR (anag, i.e. agitated, of RARE BRUTE) around (holding) P (power) |
|
| 6 | SCHISM | division | Southern Switzerland is beginning to minimise division (6) / S (Southern) + CH (Switzerland) + IS + M (first letter of Minimise) |
|
| 8 | MEADOW | stretch of grassland | Oddball mowed a stretch of grassland (6) / anag, i.e. oddball, of MOWED A |
|
| 13 | (FRENCH) CUFF | (CAYUSE) CUFF | (cuff) link’s put to it | Variable purpose found by copper in drinking establishment — link’s put to it? (6,4) / CA_FF (café, drinking establishment) around A + Y (variable, mathematics) + USE (purpose) + CU (Copper) |
| 16 | OBITUARY | &lit-ish/CD? | Writing after departure? (8) / An OBITUARY is usually written after a ‘departure’… |
|
| 18 | DREW UPON | made a demand against | Made a demand against Barrymore, say, going after success (4,4) / DREW (Barrymore, film star) + UP (success) + ON (going, working) |
|
| 19 | MESS-UP | confusion | Writer upset cat? There’s confusion (4-2) / ME (the writer) + SS-UP (puss, cat, upset) |
|
| 21 | ODOURS | smells | Mention central European river’s smells (6) / homophone: ODOURS sounds like ODER’S (central European river, the Oder, plus possessive ‘s’ or contracted ‘is’ |
|
| 22 | HOSING | what car washers do | Timelessly entertaining — what car washers do? (6) / HOS(T)ING (entertaining, without T – i.e. less time) |
|
| 24 | TOGA | cloak | Cloak taken up in Chicago township (4) / hidden, reversed word, i.e. taken up, in ‘ChicAGO Township’ |
|
A Genius debut by a well-established setter. The Chandler handle is a clue to his other pseudonyms.
Couldn’t finish this one. Got fixated on the idea that the horse in 11a was a MARE, and that 12a was ?I?COE (company in a theatre, ?I?E, leading to a feature), and kicking myself for not getting CPUNCH, not being able to bring “clinks” to mind. Thanks for the explanations, Mc.
Btw, Ayr is a racecourse, which may be what Chandler was actually thinking of. That was in fact my FOI of the specials, having cracked HORSES FOR COURSES from the anagram.
Thanks, Richard, at #1 – someone did suggest yesterday that there was a Chandler/Marlowe connection…so another pseudonym for Philip Marlow (aka Hypnos, etc.) maybe?
Tony at #2 – glad to be of help – and thanks for your help at #3. You are quite right, there may well be a golf course or two in Ayr, but it is much more well known for its racecourse! Have updated accordingly…
I finished this – sort of. I got the grid correct but did not know the existence of French Cuff. I have had many of those types of shirts in the dim and distant past, but never knew they had a special name. To my way of thinking that was a bad clue as I could literally have spent hours trying to guess what went before cuff and was also a type of course. Luckily I did not need to know the ‘correct definition’ to submit the solution.
I did not like this crossword much at all and was initially put off by the poorly written instructions. Surely there is a less convoluted way to explain what was to be entered in the grid?
I also would have preferred the wordplay to have ended up with real words not jumbled ones for grid entry.
Final niggle for me was Platinum as a type of grey. I have never heard Platinum used as a hair shade except as Platinum blonde, although there seems to be as many hits on Google for each. Maybe I am just uneducated on women’s hair!
Clearly the setter is clever and I hope that next time he/she sets a puzzle it is more on my wavelength.
Thanks Chandler and mc_rapper67
Hi Gordon at #5 – thanks for your comments, shame you didn’t enjoy this/weren’t on the wavelength.
I can kind of see your point with ‘French cuff’. Unless you have some form of electronic searcher, which I do, then it is going to be quite hard to find ‘French cuff’ manually in the dictionary – assuming you start from ‘aardvark’ then it is 593 pages into my heavily un-thumbed 10th edition of Chambers. However, as you point out, you didn’t need to know that – with the crossing letters the eventual substitution was C?Y?S?, which must be a much easier manual find.
As for ‘platinum’ – the clue doesn’t explicitly mention hair colouring, it just uses ‘greyish’ as the definition. My 10th edition paper copy, and a couple of e-Chambers versions, all have platinum as a ‘steel-grey metallic element…’, and my Android/smartphone version explicitly has a second definition of ‘similar in colour to platinum’. So I think Chandler is on fairly solid ground here…although I can’t hear or see the word platinum without Blondie’s ‘I wanna be a platinum blonde…’ looping in my head for the foreseeable…
I will leave Chandler, and/or any other setter of this type of puzzle (I don’t have the mindset for setting), to respond as to whether it would have been possible to do this type of substitution with real words resulting…I suspect ‘maybe, but it would have taken a lot longer to set’!
You say you did finish it (‘sort of’) – hopefully you got it submitted in time and, if so, good luck with your chance in the prize draw!…
Hi mc_rapper67 @6
Thanks for the comprehensive response – much appreciated. I too thought of Blondie and recall hearing her sing that song many years ago in Manchester around 1977 or 1978 I recall. Living here in Connecticut now, I regret not getting to see much live music, as it is at least an hour for me to travel to any concert and the tickets are extortionate.
Wasn’t Ms Harry supposed to have been an early practitioner of rap? I thought you might know.
Yes, I did get the puzzle entered for the draw. I actually won the prize about 3 years ago for a Tramp puzzle, which was nice as he is one of my favourite setters these days.
It always is strange how sometimes I love a puzzle that other hate and vice-versa.
I wonder how mc_rapper66 is doing!
Gordon
Commemts above have reminded me what I forgot to mention before, namely that I never worked out PLATINUM, just found “capul” in Bradford and realised it satisfied the wordplay. I did the same with CAYUSE CUFF, having got CUFF early from “link” — although in that case I later decided the “course” could be French, after discovering “French cuff” in Chambers (under “cuff” — no need to consider aardvaarks). So really, I didn’t fully solve all the clues even for what I correctly entered, which makes me tend to agree that perhaps this was not a very good device.
Thanks for the wonderful animated solution!
We did get HORSES FOR COURSES fairly early, but as our first two courses were AYR and ASCOT, we naturally assumed they’d all be racecourses, which held us up for a while. It would have been more pleasing had they been so – substituting horses for golf courses makes less sense.
I also thought ‘Latin’ and ‘French’ for courses was a cop-out: if you accept those, then any subject of study could be allowable.
We got there in the end, LOI being 13d of course. We did get French Cuff, but I agree with Gordon – it seemed a little unfair as you had to replace a whole word which made it hard to be sure of the answer.
Thanks for the writeup, and to Chandler for the puzzle.
I didn’t complete this one, despite figuring out the device early enough, properly deriving some affected answers, and skipping a step with others (like Tony, I derived PCAPULUM and didn’t ever work out how to transform it).
I do have a complaint about the preamble though, which has conflicting instructions. The second part is correct (use the wordplay to make nonsense words and enter those letters exactly into the grid). The first part misleads though, saying that some answers “need to be treated before entry in the grid” — this is just not true. Rather, they need to be treated to arrive at the definition (but the untreated letters are to be entered). This slowed me down somewhat, and while I worked it out eventually (as did everybody here, it seems), it seemed unfair.
@Steve:
A shame you misinterpreted the instructions at first, but I don’t think they were unfair: the definition part of the clue is primary and leads to the “answer”, which must be treated according to the special clue, guided by the wordplay, to obtain the “light” (entry — though some reserve this term for the slot where it goes). It does mean you don’t get wp for the “answer”, though, which is why neither of us got (or needed to get) PLATINUM. Perhaps the potential ambiguity could have been avoided with more explicit instructions, though.
Thanks for the reply Tony.
I think my issue is that, practically speaking, a solver never starts with a definition, but with a word derived from wordplay (because wordplay is fairly specific, but a definition rarely leads to a single answer). As a solver I start with wordplay, derive an answer and check it matches the definition. If there’s to be a transformation step, for me it would always be FROM the derived word TO the definition (because the former is what I already have). Instead, here we derive a nonsense result, apply the inverted transformation to get the “answer”, discard that answer and then enter the original derived letters as the entry in the grid.
It didn’t help that “horses for courses” could be interpreted as a transformation in either direction. What did help was remembering that the Genius puzzles have had (in the few months I’ve been attempting them) errors in the preamble, so I don’t always trust them!
Anyway, I got it in the end and can’t blame it for the eight I didn’t solve. 🙂
Cheers.
Hi Tony and Steve
If you look back at my initial comment at @5 above you will see that I also criticised the ‘poorly written instructions’. I could have written exactly what Steve said @10 above. The instructions are gobbledegook and should have been changed by our invisible crossword editor, but clearly were not. It absolutely suggests that something needs to be changed prior to entry in the grid. That is not so, nothing needs to be changed, all we do is accept the wordplay and ignore the definition. That is not changing anything. I, like Steve and others on other sites, were looking for something even more complicated for a while – which was only because of the instructions being awful.
Contrast these instructions with those for the Genius 171 which were clear and concise for something that was far more complex than this crossword needed.
My main complaint, as it often is, is with the crossword editor.
Steve, you say “a solver” does this and that, but you you really mean “I”. I’m a solver, of sorts, and I get the answers sometimes one way, sometimes the other. I will often think “I need 9-letter word with these crossing letters in these positions that might be defined by this word or phrase”, then when I think of one, see how it could satisfy the wp. In fact, it was not being able to do that that made this one so hard as it was “piece together these bits of wp to make nonsense containing a word I’ve never heard of for a horse …” that got me to some of the answers.
I was never in doubt about what the instructions meant or — once I’d solved the key clue — which direction the substitution went. It’s very easy not to see ambiguities in what you write when you have it so clear in your own head what you mean. Of course, it’s an editor’s job to spot such things but that’s not always easy and creatives tend to like an editor who tampers as little as possible with what they produce. Presumably it’s the same editor who didn’t anticipate your take on this puzzle’s instructions who wrote or agreed those for 171 that Gordon liked so much? That’s right, isn’t it, Gordon? — but you don’t praise the editor for his part there.
Tony, you’re quite right that I was generalising my own perspective to all solvers. And I simplified it too: really I do a bit of wordplay and then see if any answers come to mind that fit the partial construction and the definition. And that’s what made this one so hard, as you allude to: for the eight affected clues, it wasn’t easy to make those wp-to-defn leaps.
And while I found it hard I applaud the setter for the construction and the cleverness — I just hope if the device appears again, the instructions are made clearer. Apologies if I’ve seemed argumentative here; it’s not something I intended to argue about!
Cheers
Hi Tony @14
I don’t think that the editor bothers to do much constructive editing, based upon many other comments on the daily blog from many people on the daily blog over the past few years. Even compilers, when they have joined in the discussions, have remarked upon this as well. I therefore think the kudos should go to QAOS for 171. I go along with you and Steve that we all use different techniques to solve clues exactly as you say. I don’t think we were in disagreement about that. I also worked out what the instructions meant after a few clues, as you seem to have also done. Don’t you think though that the instructions should be clear BEFORE you have answered any? Anyhow I think the three of us have done this to death and we all should respect the others point of view [even if Steve and I are right and you are wrong!!]
Best wishes to everyone.
Heh! Heh! I agree!
Thanks for all the comments – some valid points on the preamble and the device used, although hopefully most of us got there in the end. ‘Horses for courses’, indeed?!
Gordon at #7 – I don’t think there are 66 other mc_rappers! The 67 indicates my year of birth, so unfortunately I was a bit too young to be watching Blondie live in the late 70s – I’m jealous, as I have never managed to see them or Ms Harry live on stage (;+<).