Soup provides this month’s challenge for the old grey matter
The preamble reads:
Definitions in all clues are normal, but you must count on a knowledge of French and German (as well as English) to determine a number of letters missing from their wordplay (in two cases twice). All solutions are too long for their allotted grid spaces, so the missing letters must be entered figuratively.
We realised fairly early on that we would have to substitute numbers for letters in the entries – the inclusion of ‘count on’ and ‘figuratively’ in the preamble offered a good hint.
It took us a while to get into the puzzle, largely due to a fair number of unusual words (for us anyway). 8ac was our last one in – we realised that it was one of the two entries containing two numbers, but it’s not a word that tends to crop up in everyday conversation.
Congratulations to Soup for managing to get numbers into all the entries – our only minor gripe is the number of UNs included.
All in all, a fitting contribution to the Genius slot.
G (golf in the phonetic alphabet) ROO (jumper). VIER (4 in German) not clued
ToRCH (one carries a flame, without the ‘o’ (love) or ‘lovelorn’) E S (east and south – opponents in bridge etc) round or ‘stealing’ R (middle letter or ‘heart’ of choirgirl). UN (1 in French) and ONE (1) not clued. A new word for us, although not particularly obscure.
An anagram of SABRE – anagrind is ‘rattling’. UN (1 in French) not clued
INS (‘insert’ key on a keyboard) ELY (diocese). TEN (10) not clued
BARe (stripped) without the last letter or ‘nearly’ aSSES (fools) without the first letter or ‘topless’. ONE (1) not clued
HAT (bearskin). UN (1 in French) not clued
An anagram of MY LIFE – anagrind is ‘exploded’. NINE (9) not clued
clERic without the first two and last two letters or ‘disrobing twice’ in PEES (urinates). ACHT (8 in German) not clued
C (100) in SS or ‘taken on board’. HUIT (8 in French) not clued. Another new word for us
First letters or ‘starts’ of Sturgeon Blusters Under Independent Leadership Devolved. ELF (11 in German) not clued
I (one) + an anagram of AMErICA without the ‘r’ (‘runs off) – anagrind is ‘touring’. SEPT (7 in French) not clued
IRA (Gershwin’s first name) CD (disc). UN (1 in French). Another new word for us
SCILLa (flowering bulb) without the last letter or ‘cut’ + EmeralD (first and last letters or ‘edges’). TEN (10) not clued
CHER (diva). DREI (3 in German) not clued. Yet another new word
R O D (last letters or ‘tails’ of terrier, cockapoo and dachshund) in or ‘covered by’ GAGES (estimates). UN (1 in french) not clued. Another new word.
An anagram of PIE and FROG – anagrind is ‘baked’. UN (1 in French) not clued. We’ve not come across ‘pore fungi’ or ‘penny bun’ (a cep) before
Hidden in (‘a piece of’) algeBRA IS Solved. NINE (9) not clued
Odd letters of SeCuRe + CHIEf (key) without the last letter or ‘not long enough’. UN (1 in French) not clued.
Hidden in (‘part of’) strataGEM STeal. ONE (1) not clued
PR (pair) LYing with ‘in g’ (government) omitted or ‘chucked out’. ONE (1) not clued. No comment on who this clue might refer to.
F R S (Fellow of the Royal Society – ’eminent scientist’). EIGHT (8) not clued
FELLER (bloke) round (not ‘in’ or ‘quite the reverse’) RN (navy). UN (1 in French) not clued
L (Liberal) + an anagram of MOSLEY – anagrind is ‘fulminating’. ONE (1) not clued
An anagram of hURRiCANE with ‘h’ (husband) and ‘I’ omitted or ‘taken out’ – anagrind is ‘preparation’. EINS (1 in German) not clued
TATE (gallery) in S D (first letters or ‘early pieces’ of Salvador Dali). UN (1 in French) not clued
CH (chapter) ACE (one). UN (1 in french) not clued
I E (Indo-European). DIX (10 in French) not clued
Even letters of mItReD. UN (1 in French) and ONE (1) not clued
Yes, getting the device wasn’t too difficult, but this still took me several days to complete. The fact that French and German have more than one way to spell the word meaning “one” didn’t help! Good job we are given a month!
Looking forward with some trepidation to to tomorrow when the July Genius is due to be published (and blogged by me).
Yes, we found this tough. Though not helped by confidently entering 1ST1 (EINSTEIN) for 8d and OF10 (OFTEN) for 13a early on! In fact we discarded it in disgust half-way done and half-way through the month, but much later picked it up and managed to grind out the remainder.
There was a rare moment of joy when I was reduced to looking through my 1950s Imperial Reference Dictionary for words beginning IRA – and I found IRACUND. Apart from that, I liked GROO4.
So, a salute to Soup for the innovation, but also in hope that it’s not repeated any time soon 🙂
Bert & Joyce, your comment re UNs made me smile as I’d had the same thought, but somewhat uncharitably as it must have been as tough to compile as to solve.
I thought this was great after initial frustration. I was another who considered Einstein for 8d but, apart from the definition, it didn’t seem to parse.
Thanks Soup for a clever idea and BJ for a good blog.
I had this lying around for half the month with just 8ac to get – finally realised that it wasn’t going to be a word ending in EERS.
There are a lot of “1”s in the completed grid, which I imagine is an indication of the difficulty in setting it. But Soup has used the device of entering symbols into the grid before, so I suspect we may see other variations in the future.
Many thanks to B&J and Soup.
Took me many days, which is surely how it should be. If I got one or two a day I was chuffed, though of course would inevitably persist for another hour or two in the hope of another one. Got there in the end, much to my surprise and delight. Huge thanks to Soup. I wonder who he or she is? And thanks to bertandjoyce.
Thanks for this, B&J; hope others enjoyed it too.
It started out as a puzzle which didn’t use (m)any UN or ONEs but then I started wondering if it would be possible for every clue to be altered – I feel Genius puzzles need to be a window into weirdness rather than just a bit strange. A bit of advanced find-and-replacing got me the word list; I admit to using a grid filler to do ti as I’d never have been able to do it by hand. I did prioritise numbers which weren’t UN but it’s impossible to get by without them – there are just so many more of them compared with all the other numbers.
Robi@3/Bridgesong@1: I made it a rule that I was only allowing the numbers as they were used in counting, so EINSTEIN wouldn’t have worked, but EINSTEINS would have done.
DuncT@4: the only symbols I’ve used before were the elemental ones… no numbers from me in any other puzzle! But I do have a couple of ideas on the go at the moment; they’re proving slippery to get the grid done for.
Oh, and for 13a I’d intended the def to be ‘Frequently appear in’ – I try to eliminate joining words where I can… though having said that I should have lost the ‘is’ in 1ac as well. And if you can find a penny bun on your travels (and be sure it’s a penny bun) they’re very tasty.
Hamish, it was the elemental ones I was referring to, but somebody recently said they were working through the back catalogue of Geniuses so I didn’t want to be accused of giving a spoiler!
I should also have made it clear that I’d be more than happy to see more of this kind. Thanks again.
Chapeau, Mr Soup, this was ingenious and needed a extra special twist of the neurons. It was a DNF for us with 8ac, 17ac, 6d, 14d and 21d eluding us and three others falling into place only at the eleventh hour. We’re still pleased with the achievement and the enjoyment we had getting there and we look forward to the other similar ones in the pipeline.
bridgesong at #1 – good luck – you’ve got an Enigmatist for Genius 205. I had to go for a lie down after reading the preamble – haven’t even looked at the clues yet!…
I do like Soup and his devices do have a ‘sting’ (He does specialise in bees in real life!) but was beaten good and proper. Got enough but thanks b&j clearly two heads trump my poor one.
I looked at this two or three times over the month and enjoyed working on it, but never got more than about half a dozen (I think it was — it’s on another device) but they did include 1ST1, which I kept returning to because I couldn’t see how it parsed (unsurprisingly).
Thanks for the fun, Hamish. I think I would have needed three months or more … and even then, IRACUND? Btw, Flashling says you specialize in bees but I thought it was algae?
Another DNF for me, second in a row. That has not happened for a few years. Sounds as though this month’s is just as tough. Like Tony, I got about 6 or 7 done over two weeks then gave up. Perhaps I should have pushed on.
Thanks to Trifle [Soupe Anglaise] and Bertandjoyce.
Sorry for all the DNFs; that’s obviously not what I want. I’ll try to make the next one a bit easier!
Tony@12: Isn’t ‘iracund’ a relatively known word, opposite of jocund? And yes, I do bees and pollination. I made a video with a friend to explain what we do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fgII_Z2x9c
Gordon@12: This month’s is suprisingly Not Terrifying once you get into it.
Hamish, no, I don’t think it’s as well-known as jocund (certainly I for one knew the latter but not the other) and there certainly aren’t as many related words (although ‘ire’ and ‘irate’ are two that clearly are).
Never thought you’d teach me about the birds and the bees! Where I live the Council has stopped scalping every little bit of green in the town which might give a few insects a bit more of a chance. Not sure if that’s to save the environment or just to save money.
Well I did not finish, but I’m fairly new to Guardian Genius cryptics. Recommended to me by another cryptic fan here in Australia. Caught on to theme early and did ok, but gave in 8 words short. Didn’t help that I had union for confederacy, otherwise 26A would have been easy. We have one notoriously tricky compiler in Oz, but these Genius ones take the cake.
Tony@15: OK, fair! Mowing is probably for cost reasons but it should give all sorts of animals help (insects and other invertebrates -> birds, also small mammals); if you like it, email the public spaces team and tell them so, as the more people who tell them the more they’ll be likely to keep it.
[Hamish, I’m disappointed that you think it’s merely to save money. I hope that’s a not true. I will do as you suggest and communicate encouragement to the Council.]
I’m guessing that work on the creation of this puzzle started with writing a program to scan your Crossword Compiler wordlists for words with embedded numbers (perhaps just English ones at first?) and putting out (outputting?) a list of words with figures substituted, then did a fill using that list. This leads to the fill not distinguishing which language the digits derive from, something I wondered about while trying to solve. (Eg, the ‘1’ where 2dn crosses 10ac stands for ‘un’ in the former and ‘one’ in the latter.)
Yeah, that’s pretty much it, Tony. I knew I wanted all three languages from the start though. I outputted two lists: one with all numbers and one with things which were ones, and preferentially filled with the latter – otherwise as has been noted UN comes up too much. Not distinguishing between the language was important! 🙂
Thanks for the insight, Hamish. Presumably you meant “things that were not ones” as the latter?
Even assuming it’s not ‘to put out’ but ‘to output’, surely the past tense should be ‘output’, not ‘outputted’?
Tony@20: a) yes; b) outpat. Or ‘spat out’ or ‘wrote’ or something else to avoid the question 🙂