Some tricky (and educational) stuff from Ifor this week, which kept me going right to the submission deadline…
The preamble states that:
“16 clues contain a thematic item as an extra word. The remainder fall into two groups (designated A and B), with two clues belonging to both. Group A clues each contain an extra letter, to be removed before solving; Group B clues each give an answer too short for its space (in brackets). Letters from A (not in clue order) can be used to fill the vacant cells, making new words as well as spelling ONE DOWN and his creation. Solvers must not do this, but instead fill each with another feature of the relevant clue from group A. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”
Hmm…this took a few re-readings…so there are effectively three groups – those first 16, and then A and B – why not call them A, B and C to be more clear?! Oh, and A and B are effectively an overlapping Venn diagram. And usually when an entry (1D, in this case) is referenced in the preamble it is unclued – but 1D seems to have a ‘normal’ clue – albeit it could be an A, B or extra word clue… And an odd-shaped grid – 10 by 14 – will that be significant?
After a while I gave up trying to make head or tail of this, and pressed on with some solving, to see if that helped clarify things… The clues seemed to be more accessible than the preamble, and after a first pass I had two answers shorter than their grid slots – TRITE and USERS, and several extra words – SAW, BELL, DATE and SKULL, swiftly followed by SPIKES, PURSE and HOURGLASS.
So, there was likely to be some blank space in the grid, and my first instinct was that maybe these items were all linked with Tarot cards?… About which I know very little, but Mr Go-Ogle didn’t seem to agree with that hypothesis, and when I then found HOUND as another candidate, I went down a rabbit hole of Sherlock Holmes titles…’The Mystery of the Saw, the Purse and the Skull’?…
Things ground to a crawl at this point – I had several (but not yet 16) thematic items, several Group A extra letters, but not specifically to be used in clue order, so ILL MO?AD RU?NCEEI didn’t help much. And several short Group B answers – which eventually gave the first inkling of a series of PDMs when I realised they could only fit by leaving a 4X4 square blank in the middle of the grid. This was on the Thursday after publication, after much picking up and putting down…
There were 10 Group Bs, and 16 thematic items, leaving 16 Group As (including two A/Bs), which would presumably fill in the blanks, as per the thing we were told not to do! Much grid-staring and clue-scanning ensued to try and find the last few Group A letters, and also to try and find a creator and a work in there. (I had by this stage decided that LAMPOON at 1D was a dead herring, in terms of the title…)
It was only on the following Tuesday – i.e. last day for electronic submissions – that I had one final concerted effort at this, and had my second PDM. If PANTO at 4D had to extend to 7 letters it had to be PANTOUM, PANTONE or PANTONS, which would make 17A OUT?U?? or OUT?N??. Similarly, SIMAR?? at 5D could only be SIMARRE, making OUT?UR? or OUT?NR?. And OUT?UR? could only be OUTDURE, OUTBURN and OUTTURN. (I confess, I was using my Android Chambers app with its pattern-matching here…)
So, TURN could be the start of TURNER in the middle square; BURN could be BURNS; or DURE could be DURER – as the ‘creator’. And, given that my Group A letters didn’t (yet) have a T or a B, I plumped for DURER first. Some partial anagramming of the remaining letters, pattern-matching with the remaining Group B words and a bit of Wiki-Oogling of Durer’s canon eventually led me to his etching/engraving: MELENCOLIA I. Well, someone suffering from melancholy could be ‘one down’, so that makes sense with the title. And several of the ‘extra word’ items seemed to tally with the panoply of symbols used in said work. Bingo, job done! Except for that last sentence of the preamble, saying we could fill the space with the creator and his work, but we ‘must not’! A bit like Chris Tarrant waving a cheque for £250k in front of a contestant and saying ‘but we don’t want to give you this, we want you to go for the million’!?…
Cue more head scratching and pencilling on my long-suffering working copy…what ‘feature’ of the relevant clue could Ifor be referring to? I tried first letters of the clues. Last letters of the clues…no obvious help there. And then somehow, it all fell together, as I re-read various pieces on the work and the significance of the magic square with the date in it, and realised that the D of Durer was from clue 16A, the U from 3D, one of the Rs was from 2D, etc. So the ‘feature’ was clue numbers, and the final grid should contain the magic square! Wow…OMG…WTF…LOL:
I transcribed my crumpled mess onto a clean printout and managed to get this e-submitted just in time – fingers crossed! – and sat back in jaw-dropped awe for a while, before starting on the blog.
I have been challenged, entertained, educated and amazed – a fantastic puzzle encapsulating the EV ethos, and one for the end-of-year awards ceremony the EV desperately needs to instigate! Many thanks, and kudos, to Ifor, and I hope I have it all covered below…
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Clue Type/ Removed Letter/ Extra Word |
Solution | Clue (definition underlined, extra letter/word in bold) / Logic/Parsing |
|
| 1 | A / I | LIAR | Warily unmasked uniformed bouncer (4) / anag, i.e. unformed, of (W)ARIL(Y) (warily, unmasked) |
|
| 4 | A / L | PSEUDO | Fake plot recalled dues saved (6) / P_O (chamberpot) around (saving) SEUD (DUES, recalled) |
|
| 8 | A / L | ACCLAIM | Praise accountant lending to fulfil earlier estimate (7) / ACC (accountant) + L (ending letyter of fulfilL) + AIM (obsolete, i.e. earlier, for estimate) |
|
| 10 | A / M | MYA | Stormy marriage enthralling gapers (3) / hiddeen word, i.e. enthralled by, in ‘storMY (M)Arriage’ |
|
| 12 | A / O | PAWL | Catch intimate opinions left on WhatsApp (4) / PA_L (intimate) around (pinioning) W (left-most letter of Whatsapp) |
|
| 13 | A / E | PARA | One dropping in to wear separate gowns (4) / hidden word i.e. ‘gowned’ by(?!), in ‘sePARAte’ |
|
| 14 | A / A | TALCED | Ground located without nail covered in dust (6) / anag, i.e. ground, of L(O)CATED (without O – nil) |
|
| 16 | A / D | NORTHER | Back on the take, driven by right to leave London for Edinburgh, say (7) / NO_THER (on, back, plus the, plus r – Latin – recipe, or take) around (riven by) R (right) |
|
| 17 | B | OUT____ | Instruction to leave some books around for anyone to look at (7) / O_T (Old Testament, or ‘some books’!) around U (film classification, suitable for all to see) |
|
| 19 | MONOGRAM | UTU | Put up with pages missing monogram in settlement of debt abroad (3) / (P)UTU(P) (put up, with P – page – missing from front and back) |
|
| 20 | B | CO____S | Hand-reared lamb shunning set leaves to eat (7) / COS(SET) (cosset, hand-reared sheep, shunning ‘set’) |
|
| 22 | B | H____OP | Limp band after a ring’s released (7) / HO(O)P (band, releasing one O, or ring) |
|
| 26 | COMPASSES | ERA | Compasses are spinning round for a long time (3) / ARE spinning around = ERA |
|
| 27 | B | ____SON | The product of anything reflected in small numbers (7) / SON = Nos, or small/abbreviated ‘numbers’, reflected |
|
| 28 | SCALE | MASH-TUN | Mother – avoid obscuring temperature scale in mixing vessel (7) / MA (mother) + SH_UN (avoid) around (obscuring) T (temperature) |
|
| 30 | HAMMER | PLIERS | Antique dealers hammer tool (6) / double defn. a PLIER can be an obsolete (i.e. antique) term for a trader/dealer; and a pair of PLIERS is a tool |
|
| 31 | BELL | ERST | Bell shattered rest at first (4) / anag, i.e. shattered, of REST |
|
| 32 | HOUND | TEDS | Frustrated security guards hound unruly young people (4) / hiddedn word, I.e. guarded by, in ‘frustraTED Security’ |
|
| 33 | DATE | ETA | Date letter later after coming back without envelope (3) / (R)ETA(L) (LATER, coming back, and without outer letters/envelope) |
|
| 35 | PURSE | STRUDEL | Rustled purse to order packaged meal (7) / anag, i.e. to order, of RUSTLED |
|
| 36 | GARLAND | RAMIES | Fibrous plants garland legions, right to left (6) / A(R)MIES (legions) with R (right) moving to the left gives RAMIES |
|
| 37 | SKULL | COWL | Lower skull left as covering for head (4) / COW (lower, intimidate) + L (left) |
|
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Clue Type/ Removed Letter/ Extra Word |
Solution | Clue (definition underlined, extra letter/word in bold) / Logic/Parsing |
|
| 1 | BEACON | LAMPOON | Spoof light over in the direction of beacon (7) / LAMP (light) + O (over, cricket) + ON (in the direction of) |
|
| 2 | A / R | ICY | Formal introduction to rich company’s margins (3) / I (first letter, or introduction, of Ich) + CY (marginal letters of CompanY) |
|
| 3 | A / U | ACARI | Ticks first two items in auction with relaxed air (5) / AC (first two letters of, or items in, ACtion) + ARI (anag, i.e. relaxed, of AIR) |
|
| 4 | B | PANTO__ | Naval battle with the French running away in laughable confusion (7) / (LE)PANTO (naval battle, with ‘le’, definitie article in French, running away!) |
|
| 5 | B / R | SIMAR__ | Choirmaster repeatedly barred changes shift (7) / anag, i.e. changes, of (CHO)IRMAS(TER) (with the outer letters removed three times, i.e. bared repeatedly) |
|
| 6 | A / N | URACHUS | Ligament can’t hurt us spending time jumping after skipping back to front (7) / anag, i.e. jumping, of CA(T) HUR(T) US (removing T twice – ‘spending’ time, and ‘skipping’ the back letter of ‘fronT’) |
|
| 7 | A / C | OIL DRUM | Well-filled container of cold drink which I must pierce (7) / O_LD + RUM (drink), around (pierced by) I. (Chambers has this as two words, so should have been (3, 4)? |
|
| 9 | A / E | SWEET SPOT | The best place to strike set after taking very little notice (9, two words) / S_T around (taking) WEE (very little), plus SPOT (notice) |
|
| 11 | B / E | MAN____ | Cheap complaint originally OK to be ignored (7) / M(O)AN (complaint, ignoring O – first, or original, letter of OK) |
|
| 15 | A / I | MUCORALES | Moulds affected muscle hoisting mouths (9) / MUC_LES (anag, i.e. affected, of MUSCLE) around (hosting) ORA (mouths) |
|
| 18 | B | ____NED | Nasty end for thug (7) / anag, i.e. nasty, of END |
|
| 21 | LADDER | TEMPTER | Revamped department ladder after sacking rogue and seductress (7) / anag, i.e. revamped, of (D)EP(A)RTME(N)T, removing (sacking) the ‘rogue’ or scattered letters of AND |
|
| 22 | RAINBOW | HASIDIM | Religious group tolerates one not seeing rainbow clearly (7) / HAS (tolerates) + I (one) + DIM (not seeing clearly) |
|
| 23 | B | __TRITE | Hackneyed start to the ceremony (7) / T (start to The) + RITE (ceremony) |
|
| 24 | B | __USERS | Those practising tricks when head’s down (7) / (R)USES (tricks) with R (first letter, or head) moving ‘down’ could give USERS |
|
| 25 | HOURGLASS | INSTALL | Put hourglass in during delay (7) / IN (during) + STALL (delay) |
|
| 29 | SAW | CREDO | Belief saw company embracing rubbish (5) / C_O (company) around (embracing) RED (noun, long way down in the Chambers entry for RED!) |
|
| 34 | SPIKES | TEW | Excitement locally spikes as the rain turned up (3) / WET (rain) turned up |
|
MC, thanks for the great blog and kudos on finishing the puzzle. Ifor is on quite a run, having drawn the same type of “best of the year” comments for his Inquisitor 1594 a week prior. I too was amazed at the grid, and the solver who sends me the EV found the construction amazing and the puzzle delightful. I can’t say it was a lot of laughs for me, but I sort of got there in the end. The theme words are so common that placing them in a search engine did not yield Durer, and I failed to see that the 4×4 spelled his name and his work until I got a hint. The preamble was enough of a hint that I should have seen it.
Thanks, ub – I have to admit that I eventually let out a ‘primal’ scream and gave up on IQ 1594 – luckily I don’t blog the IQ!…
Ifor really is at the top of his game, isn’t he? To be absolutely honest I’ll say that I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as some of his other puzzles (e.g IQ 1594 and 1562), but then I don’t enjoy Die Zauberflöte quite as much as Le nozze di Figaro, and the old Flute is still better than anything most other people could dream of writing. For me the endgame lasted a bit too long, but I was still in awe of the incredible skill of construction that went into this.
It’s easy to forget the quality of the clues in a complicated puzzle like this. Ifor’s clues are tough but yield after a bit of thought, and are never a slog to solve. They are also fun, which is the main thing. A barred puzzle I solved very recently (no names!) gave me the impression that he was trying too hard to do tough for the sake of tough, and solving was like peeling off a stubborn sticky label. Ifor gets just the right balance in this respect.
Hats off to a truly great setter. If only more people commented on these excellent puzzles!
Great blog thank you MC. This was really a fabulous puzzle with lots to admire, and some great penny drops. The magic square numbers being referenced by the clue numbers themselves was the cherry on the cake. Brilliant by Ifor. A very vote worthy puzzle if there were an EV POTY type thing ……
My thanks for the generous comments. Perhaps we need a “blog of the year” award? Thorough (and entertaining) expositions such as these deserve tangible appreciation, especially when, as in the case of the EV, the space available in the paper to explain a solution is so limited. On which note, my understanding is that contractual or legal issues make it impossible to provide a link there to this site, which is a pity. One can only hope that EV solvers in general are aware that the details of what may have entertained, exasperated or eluded them appear here so helpfully.
Ifor
Thanks for the various comments and feedback – and to Phil R and Ifor for your kind words…
cruciverbopile at #3 – I agree with your comments on the quality of the clueing in this puzzle – I did make a passing reference to them being more ‘accessible’ than the preamble, but I didn’t devote any ‘column inches’ to specific clues. When I blog more ‘standard’/blocked puzzles like the Indy and Cyclops, I do usually try to comment on the clues, either generally or specific favourites, but with a themed EV or a Genius there is usually so much more going on to cover in the blog that I tend to take it as read that if someone is solving this level of puzzle they are pretty attuned to the level of clueing… I like the analogy of trying to peel off a stubborn sticky label!…
ifor at #5 – I have the same understanding…our esteemed web-meister has tried to persuade the ST to add a link, as the IQ Editor does in the i, but there wasn’t any traction with the idea. It does sometimes feel like the old ‘tree falling in the forest’ analogy, but my hope is that that there are more lurkers than commenters out there, and that the service the EV blogging team are providing is being made use of, to a reasonable extent…
mc_rapper67 is correct. I have asked the EV editor to include a reference to the 15² blog, in order to increase the number of people commenting. However, he declined to do so.
Many apologies, McRapper, if I gave the impression that I was criticising your excellent blog. That was not my intention at all – I was merely commenting on one of my many shortcomings as a solver!
As for the ST link business: you’d think that the they’d want the maximum publicity possible, wouldn’t you, especially as EV puzzles have stiff competition from the Listener and IQ. No doubt politics are at work here and that’s never a good thing. I just hope for the setters’ sake that the puzzles reach, and are appreciated by, many more solvers than the number of comments here would suggest.
cruciverbophile – I certainly didn’t take your comment as a criticism…I thought you made a good point that was worth expounding on…
I noticed that the type-A clues were numbered 1-16 and guessed that the extra feature of the clues to use might be their numbers and that I might have to make a magic square.
Having spent most of the week teasing away at the clues, I spent Saturday afternoon trying to find a permutation of the 16 type-A letters that gave real words and also resolved to a magic square.
I then realised that the letters version of the grid also read DURER, MELENCOLIA I and the intertubes allowed me to join up all of the remaining dots.
A truly magical ending.
There have been several EVs this year which were great feats of composition and this ranks as one of the very best.
Congratulations and thanks and to Ifor and to mc_rapper67.