Mull It Over by Opsimath
Each across clue contains a misprint in the definition. In clue order the corrections spell out the last four words of a verse from a poem and the speaker. Solvers must rearrange 11 letters in the completed grid to remedy what the speaker claims to have done, and highlight – in roughly appropriate colours – 15 other letters.
I picked up the crossword and read and (as usual) largely ignored the preamble. Then my eyes settled on 39d, which I solved straight away although I spent a few seconds wondering what the misprint could possibly be. Another look at the preamble and I realised that only the acrosses have misprints.
Then, since I had its last letter, I looked at 43a and it cried out SALT but because I couldn’t justify it, I didn’t enter it – how I managed to constrain myself, I’m not sure.
However, the same wasn’t true for 44a, which I entered as AMINO for some reason. I have absolutely no idea why! Of course, this held me up with the bottom-right corner for while as I tried desperately to justify BIRO for 37d.
Still, all came good in the end and, as the corrected misprints became apparent, I could see the makings of WHITE KNIGHT. I suspected that it was from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll and, it turns out, I was right. I’m familiar with a few of the poems from both the Alice novels but this one was unknown to me. The White Knight’s song is called “Haddock’s Eyes” or “The Aged Aged Man” or “Ways and Means” or “A-Sitting On A Gate” and I found the text here: http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/poetry/poems/whiteKnightSong.html. 
The corrected misprints spelt out BOILING IT IN WINE WHITE KNIGHT and it refers to the following lines:
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
Now, Opsimath tells us that it appears at the end of a verse whereas Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) tells me that it’s halfway through the eighth verse. Who am I to argue with either of them? Suffice to say that to complete Opsimath’s instructions, we have to find Menai Bridge somewhere in the grid. After only a couple of minutes, I found anagrams (boiled) of both of them in d6-i6 and e13-i13. Then either side of both of them, we have CHIANTI and SAUTERNE, which are both wines. To remedy the situation, we have to put the words in the right order, which changes a few of the down entries as indicated in the table below. Then the two wines have to be appropriately shaded. I’m no expert but as far as I can tell Chianti is red and Sauterne is white so I’ve gone with the colours you see.
I think that this is Opsimath’s first Inquisitor appearance and I have to say I enjoyed it – though I’m a sucker for anything to do with Lewis Carroll.
So, thanks to setter for giving me an enjoyable solve and equally enjoyable blogging session.
| Across |
||||
| Clue |
Misprint |
Corrected letter | Entry |
Wordplay |
| 1 A churchman, Irish, that will come to me (6) |
Me->Be | B |
AVENIR | A+VENerable (churchman)+IRish |
| 6 If bodily fluids indulge American gangster? (7) |
If->Of | O |
HUMORAL | HUMOR (indulge; American spelling)+AL [Capone] (American gangster) (American is doing double duty) |
| 12 With no beginning, filthy lake ice (4) |
lAke->lIke | I |
RIMY | [g]RIMY (filthy; no beginning) |
| 13 Book into a little space with a lot of sheets (7) |
Book->Look | L |
ENQUIRE | EN (little space)+QUIRE (a lot of sheets) |
| 14 Fund fault with old graft every one considered (7) |
fUnd->fInd | I |
IMPEACH | IMP (old graft)+EACH (every one considered) |
| 15 To take place on hill, what’s stimulating to champ with guts (5) |
Guts->Nuts | N |
BETEL | BE (to take place+TEL (hill) |
| 16 Learner in general confusion, I may provoke a brave reaction (8) |
Brave->Grave | G |
ALLERGEN | Learner+GENERAL (anag: confusion) |
| 17 Seal an incorporated waste (7) | An-In | I |
INCLOSE | INCorporated+LOSE (waste) |
| 19 Parents missing the old man less (5) |
leSs->leTs | T |
RENTS | [pa]RENTS missing PA (father: the old man) |
| 20 Loving energy of Greek character (3) |
lOving->lIving | I |
CHI | (double def) |
| 24 Tot in agreement with 39 – a touch of irony (4) |
Tot->Not | N |
ANTI | ANT (the answer to 39d)+I[rony] (a touch of) |
| 26 Loser conflicted about right for a mild herb (6) |
Mild->Wild | W |
SORREL | LOSER+Right anag: conflicted |
| 27 In some regions you could get drunk from this Florida carton, unopened (7) |
drUnk->drInk | I |
FLACKET | FLorida+[p]ACKET (unopened) |
| 28 Opel 27 possibly one French rock damaged (6) |
opeL->opeN | N |
UNCORK | UN (one in French)+ROCK (anag: damaged) |
| 29 Old European typos ghost written incorrectly (5) |
typOs->typEs | E |
GOTHS | GHOST (anag: written incorrectly) |
| 31 Asian, we so regularly used food they cut (4) |
Food->Wood | W |
SAWS | [a]S[i]A[n] W[e]S[o] regularly |
| 34 Once more attract backing for key folder (6) |
Folder->Holder | H |
WARDER | REDRAW (once more attract; rev: backing) |
| 36 Plant with spokes on leaves confusing USA chant (8) |
spOkes->spIkes | I |
ACANTHUS | USA CHANT (anag: confusing) |
| 37 The cry of a sheep takes in younger Indian miller (5) |
milleR->milleT | T |
BAJRA | BAA (sheep’s cry) containing JR (junior: younger) |
| 38 Charles has appropriate technology for gym weight (5) |
gYm->gEm | E |
CARAT | CARolus (Charles)+AT (appropriate technology) |
| 40 Melvin’s casual footwear to yield fashion (6) |
Melvin->Kelvin | K |
PANTON | PAN (to yield)+TON (fashion) |
| 41 Blacked out cenobites with no court disruption (7) |
blackeD->blackeN | N |
EBONISE | [c]ENOBI[t]ES minus CT (court); anag: disruption |
| 42 Base crime solved about where not much loves (6) |
lOves->lIves | I |
EREMIC | E (base)+CRIME (anag: solved) |
| 43 Elfin folk may use this condiment without date – doh! (4) |
elFin->elGin | G |
SAUT | SA (without date)+UT (musical note, same as doh) |
| 44 Foam in eggs contains derivative of NS3 (5) |
nS3->nH3 | H |
AMINE MENAI |
foAM IN Eggs hidden: contains |
| 45 White-sailed flier sounds like Eric’s pal (4) |
white-Sailed->white-Tailed | T |
ERNE | Sounds like Eric [Morecambe]’s pal ERNie [Wise] of Morecambe and Wise |
| Down | ||||
| Clue | Entry |
Wordplay |
||
| 1 A grain harvest – start of change of a region (6) |
ARABIC | A+RABI (grain harvest)+C[hange] (start of) | ||
| 2 Bad-tempered woman against nine English, note (5) |
VIXEN | V (against)+IX (9)+English+Note | ||
| 3 Issue team list with odd omissions (4) |
EMIT | [t]E[a]M [l]I[s]T odd letters omitted | ||
| 4 Mischievous child on open ditch collapse (7) |
IMPLODE IMPLORE |
IMP (mischievous child)+LODE (open ditch) | ||
| 5 Hares disturbed flightless birds (5) |
RHEAS | HARES (anag: disturbed) | ||
| 6 Doctor one hopes the French will come in to listen to (6) |
HEALER HEALED |
HEAR (listen to) containing LE (the in French) | ||
| 7 Relative is indistinct, deprived of 1% of our air? (5) |
UNCLE | UNCLE[ar] (indistinct) minus ARgon (small part of atmosphere) | ||
| 8 Extent of stretching each tour out (8) |
OUTREACH | EACH TOUR (anag: out) Very weak clue, in my opinion |
||
| 9 Set up good local dogfish (4) | RIGG | RIG (set up)+Good | ||
| 10 Small French piece a visitor from afar included in service (7) |
ARIETTE | A+RITE (service) containing ET (extra terrestrial) | ||
| 11 Swerves, and without right, gains knowledge (5) |
LEANS | LEA[r]NS (gains knowledge) minus Right | ||
| 18 Around back a spasm that’s endless (5) |
CIRCA | A CRIC[k] (spasm) endless; rev: back | ||
| 19 Turncoat catches one with a lasso (5) |
RIATA REATA |
RAT (turncoat)+A containing I (one) | ||
| 21 Grain to have developed (5) | GROWN BROWN |
GRain+OWN (to have) | ||
| 22 Large deer seen in Selkirk (3) | ELK ILK |
sELKirk (hidden: seen in) | ||
| 23 First of bovine moos – fighters come to this (5) |
BLOWS GLOWS |
B[ovine] (first of)+LOWS (moos) | ||
| 25 Italy, Thailand, Spain, France – no end of rip-off repetition (8) |
ITERANCE | I (Italy)+T (Thailand)+E (Spain)+[f]RANCE minus [rip-of]F (end of) | ||
| 26 Doubtful character eating fruit hardly ever perspires (7) |
SUDATES (rare: hardly ever) |
SUSpect (doubtful character) containing DATE (fruit) | ||
| 29 Luge? It damaged butt muscles (6) |
GLUTEI GLUTEN |
LUGE IT anag: damaged | ||
| 30 Focus on Japanese fighter at home (6, 2 words) |
ZERO IN | ZERO (Japanese fighter [plane])+IN (at home) | ||
| 31 Diver’s equipment found in South Island (5) |
SCUBA | South+CUBA (island) | ||
| 32 Narrow groove in broken sitar (5) |
STRIA STRIM |
SITAR anag: broken | ||
| 33 Opening contralto takes mass (5) |
CHASM CHASE |
Contralto+HAS (takes)+Mass | ||
| 35 Organised European base for Indian princess (5) |
RANEE | RAN (organised)+European+E (base) | ||
| 37 Uncovered sabre in conflict after losing first (4) |
BARE BARI |
[s]ABRE losing first; anag: in conflict | ||
| 39 A National Trust worker (3) | ANT | A+NT (National Trust) | ||
| 40 Literary style seen briefly in Iberia, for example (3) |
PEN PEA |
Iberia is an example of a PENinsula | ||
Not music this time but a poem! I found most clues straightforward, both across and down. It made a pleasant change to know which clues or answers were to be modified (the across clues in this case), although I have liked it also when the solver is not told which clues are modified.
Having found (and recognised) the poem, I knew what eleven letters to look for, and on finding them I had to admire how MENAI and BRIDGE formed themselves, making new words crossing them. I have experienced this sort of device in an Inquisitor twice before, from memory, but it’s still impressive when it’s revealed. Finding the 15 letters was another story. It took a while, even though I was looking for the right kind of items. I got Sauterne first, ‘helped’ by my leaving the ‘L’ of SALT blank at 43a because it was a guess. (A similar experience to yours, kenmac.) The wine in fact confirmed the correct answer SAUT.
I expected more of a challenge from some of the down clues in particular, but the puzzle held my interest throughout, and some of the misprints in the across clues were very neatly executed. The only clues I had problems with were SAUT and PANTON.
Thanks to Opsimath for an enjoyable puzzle and to kenmac for the blog.
Great fun, even though I made this far more difficult for myself than it should have been. I “boiled” the bridges and found the two wines in accordance with the poem, then spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for a 15-letter message. It was quite some time before I realised that it was the wines themselves that should be highlighted! I daren’t ask if anyone else did something similar because the answer is almost certainly no. Perhaps I should stick to Sudoku.
At least I was able to appreciate what a fine puzzle this was, once I stopped being dim. What would setters do without Lewis Carroll (and Edward Lear, too). There have been some excellent puzzles based on these sources and this was one of them.
Cruciverbophile@2: You’re not alone, I filled the grid very quickly (for me) but then spent another couple of days looking for hidden messages in the grid, items that would require colouring etc. before also realising that I just needed to colour in the wines.
Many thanks to Opsimath (his/her second puzzle I think after a debut last year?).
That’s a consolation, Kippax, since I get the impression you’re quite an expert solver!
Ha, that’s very kind of you to say so but I must have given a false impression! Certainly wouldn’t class myself as expert.
Lots of fun without being too difficult. What took the most time? Finding the letters to highlight at the close.
I managed to fill the grid quite easily on a short-haul flight to Carcassonne, and my travelling companion looked up the poem while we waited for our baggage to come through. Unscrambling the MENAI BRIDGE was the easy bit, sitting as it was between CHI-ANTI and SAUT-ERNE. But … I then spent well over the same amount of time again looking for what to highlight. I could see SORREL and BROWN (when the Bridge had been rebuilt) but couldn’t find anything else to do with RUST. So, I never got round to shading anything, and feel slightly disgruntled about the rather woolly end to the preamble (or envious of those who blithely coloured the two wines).
Thanks for the blog and to Opsimath – second time out. (Ken – If you check the index of IQ setters you’ll see that s/he set the Oscar Wilde puzzle last February that you blogged.)
I’m sort of in the HolyGhost camp – except that I lazily put SALT as the condiment without checking/parsing properly, so I reduced my chances of spotting the wines. I then saw BROWN, SORREL and PEACH (15 letters, as the R of BROWN crosses one from SORREL) and coloured them in reddish-brown as indicators of ‘rust’. After more grid-staring I realised that BROWN uses a letter from BRIDGE, and the preamble specifically says ‘other letters’, so I tried adding CORK as another possible colour (in my defence, I am a bit colour-blind!)…and there are 15 letters in SORREL, PEACH and CORK.
Doh – another 70-odd pence wasted on a first-class stamp and an envelope – if only the IQ would come into the 20th century and start accepting faxed entries, or even the 21st and take scans/e-mailed entries!…
NB. Presumably the ‘MULL’ of the title refers to mulled, or boiled, wine…hopefully no-one ended up looking at Scottish bridges over mulls?…
An enjoyable solve. I managed to fill the grid fairly quickly, a welcome relief after spending much longer sorting out Nimrod’s ingenious marathon the week before. I was initially stumped by the quotation until I found enough misprints to guess WHITE KNIGHT, which immediately made me think of Alice, although I did not recall the poem. We have the Octopus Press version of the two Alice books and this also gives the quote as the fourth line of an eight-line verse. Having eventually found and unscrambled MENAI BRIDGE, I soon spotted the two wines and shaded them accordingly. It gives me great comfort to hear that some folk missed this as it is usually me that cannot spot what Basil Fawlty called the b—-ing obvious!
Thanks to Opsimath and to Kenmac for his self-deprecating analysis.
DaveW @9: as I indicated in my comment @7, I did spot the two wines immediately after I saw the boiled bridge – they were indeed obvious. What wasn’t obvious to me was that those were the cells that we had to highlight.
An enjoyable solve, and on the easier side of the IQ spectrum I thought. Rather clever the way the setter could maintain real words after unjumbling the two theme words. I’m often a frustrated end-game grid-starer, but the pair of wines jumped out at me … though I probably have what my GP would describe as an unhealthy amount of both C and S stashed away. Wine is my passion so any puzzle which ends with a fine glass or red AND white gets my vote. Thanks to kenmac and opsimath.
Very enjoyable romp with a nice conclusion
I liked the endgame – normally struggle with searching the grid, but this was nice, and ingenious. Was on holiday when solving, so grateful it fell at the easier end…
HG@10 Yes, I understood that. My point was that it is was obvious to me what shading was required whereas quite often I miss the obvious – see my comment on the 4 Candles puzzle, where I totally missed the four spellings of CANDLE and shaded an obscure set which it took the internet to find.
I’m with the marginally disgruntled contingent, having not thought to shade the wines. What threw me were the number of references to colour in the rest of the poem – in particular I spent a fair bit of time looking for various mustachios to shade green. An editorial fault, I think. Changing the final instruction to “… the 15 other letters involved”, or even just “… the 15 other letters”, would have avoided this issue? This slightly marred an otherwise enjoyable solve for me.
Thanks as always to cunning setter and clever blogger. I always feel I’m taking unfair advantage when it’s a verse that (as Terry Pratchett used to say in various contexts) is imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. But getting there was a lot of fun. Shading Chianti was no problem, but I worried for a moment or two whether Sauterne should be literally white — in which case the only thing to do other than nothing at all would be to white out all those cells, which I sincerely hope was not the expected action. So like kenmac I went for the yellow highlighter.
As someone who has on occasion found ways to misinterpret preambles to these puzzles, I have learned to set great store by what is written there. In this case I felt that the preamble gave clear and sufficient information in the most economical way, and I don’t see that it needed to be clarified or improved. Using the message that emerges from the across clues in combination with what is stated in the preamble, we are directed to a particular part of a particular poem, specifically these lines: “To keep the Menai bridge from rust By boiling it in wine.” With our attention drawn to ‘wine’ in this way, and because wine has colour, we should expect to be looking for wine or wines – totalling 15 letters.
As it turned out, there were two wines, placed in the grid in the most thematic way possible (by reference to the two lines of the poem). Congratulations to those who saw the split names of the two wines straight away by knowing where to look. I spent a long time looking for likely names (with contiguous letters) all over the diagram before noticing the split name SAUT-ERNE (actually SA?T-ERNE because I had not solved SAUT).
I enjoyed this. Like some others I found the Menai Bridge but got distracted by shades of brown and didn’t find the wines. I din’t see this as a problem with the instructions, they seem adequate to me. We are looking for boiling the Menai Bridge in wine, and told the number of letters to look for. In retrospect it seems harder to miss than to spot but as is often the case I managed it anyway.
Thanks to kenmac and Opsimath.
Alan B @17, to slightly reword your remark …
… we are directed to the lines: “To keep the Menai bridge from rust By boiling it in wine.” With our attention drawn to ‘
wine’ ‘rust‘ in this way, and becausewinerust has colour, we should expect to be looking forwinerust …I don’t understand all this talk about the instructions being unclear.
The speaker has “boiled” the MENAI BRIDGE – no question.
The two parts of the “boiled” name are contained in wines: CHI-GDERBI-ANTI, SAUT-AMINE-ERNE.
We (the solvers) need to remedy the situation by “unboiling” the wines and, to show we’ve understood, we have to colour the wines.
“Simples”, as Alexsandr would say!
HG – your complaint seem to boil down to “I found a different way to interpret the instructions and couldn’t finish the puzzle”. Your interpretation was wrong then wasn’t it! Not the setter’s fault.
Ken & PD: of the distinct commenters above, it seems that only two didn’t find the wine, but about half of those that did took various amounts of time to decide what to shade, if at all (“a ridiculous amount”, “couple of days”, “the most time”). Obvious?
{that’s my lot}
HG @19
A clever riposte! I would now say, though, that if I had immediately seen the wines in a thematically ‘perfect’ place I would have just counted the letters and blessed my luck rather than seek an alternative. Perhaps one is supposed to expect something more challenging and better hidden than that? But as you know, I was slow to find what was obvious to you. If had failed, I too may have started to look for nameable rust colours.
Then it would seem that a lot of otherwise clever people got suckered by a simple solution. One-nil to the setter I think.
PeeDee, I have no problem getting suckered if it’s intentional, but in this case I don’t think the setter did intend for there to be an extra twist to catch us out. As kenmac says, the shading of the wine is just to show that we’ve understood, but then there was no need for there to be any ambiguity. It’s often said in these posts that if in doubt read the preamble, which are usually carefully worded. I’ve become quite obsessive in the last couple of years about trying to satisfy myself on every last detail (I blame Pointer and the trilby thing) in case I miss out on another wonderful hidden PDM but I’ve been really tight on time in recent weeks and had to put this one aside with a feeling that I was still missing something important. As it turned out, it was only a minor detail that was simply to confirm what I had already spotted.
Just to add my agreement to those who found this a very enjoyable puzzle, and it was great to be reminded of the White Knight and this poem, and of Through the Looking Glass too, which I too always loved. The preamble all fell into place for me readily, but it seems those attuned to more devious and tortuous puzzles (like the latest Phi Phase Shift!) expected something more intricate and failed here to see the obvious? Whilst life would be more mundane without those harder challenges, sometimes, wonderfully, as here, things that are simple are indeed right!
O’Patrick – I’m with you in the sense that the various vaguely red colours in the grid may not have been intentional. I’m also with you that I got sidetracked by finding several of these, looking for more and failing to come up with a satisfactory explanation how they clearly fitted the instructions.
The human brain is unrivalled in its pattern-matching ability. With a little effort one can discern patterns in almost any random set of data. Being smart involves being able to distinguish the real patterns form the invented ones. In my book failing to recognise the obvious because of the (possibly) self-invented distractions in the chaff wasn’t a sign of how smart I was, it was a sign of how dumb I was being. No one to blame here but myself.