For Qaos’ Genius 220, we are told that: “With 12 solutions our Inspector’s coding is the wrong way round. His mistakes in these 12 cases need to be reversed before entry in the grid.”
Hmmm…with hindsight, I should have spent more time thinking about the ‘Inspector’, but I briefly wondered what Inspector ‘Clue-seau’ might be doing in a Genius puzzle, then got on with the solving.
Whenever mistakes/changes to entries are flagged up, I tend to fill my solutions in on a split basis – Across letters to the top right of the cell, down letters in the bottom left. This avoids clashing with the clue numbers, and helps to highlight where clashes occur, when I usually circle the whole cell. Obviously it helps to have a printed off working copy, ideally enlarged, and a pencil/eraser to do this, before transcribing to a cleaner copy, if something needs to be posted/scanned for submission.
Also, when clashes are expected, a lot of cold solving may need to be done, as crossing letters may not be trustworthy!
I made fairly steady progress in filling the grid, and at some point along the way I realised that most/all of the longer entries seemed to match each other on crossing, whereas a lot of the 4- and 5-letter entries seemed to clash with those longer entries. So I made a decision to ‘trust’ all the longer entries, which gave me a ‘framework’ of correct cells, and left the 12 shorter entries as the ones that might need changing – which fitted in with the preamble.
This in turn led to some sort of pattern emerging, as the clashes seemed to be consistent – the O of OSSA clashed with the S of SASH WINDOW, and the S of OSSA clashed with the O of OVERLOOKED – so S and O seemed to be interchangeable. The T of EMIT clashed with the E of EVEN STEVEN, and the T of RATTY clashed with the E of MILESTONES.
Continuing this line of enquiry, in a bumbling Clouseau-esque fashion, and with some educated guesses once enough letters were in place, I eventually ended up with the following:
S <–> O
T <–> E
M <–> I
N <–> A
R <–> K
Y <–> L
U <–> G
These substitutions allowed me to complete the grid – and submit my answers, if I so wished – and I might have left it there if I wasn’t on blogging duty. But the ‘Inspector’ was preying on my mind…No C, so it couldn’t be Clouseau, but I tried to see what MAIGRET might become when de-coded, or ENIGMA, or several other maybe relevant words that could be anagrammised from these 14 letters, but nothing obvious sprang to mind…
Until I hit upon Inspector Morse (of course! I was never really a big fan of the books/TV series, but I know they have multiple cruciverbal connections, so I should have got there earlier). And some simple inspection of the Morse code for these letters shows that they are the reverse of each other: S = DOT-DOT-DOT and O = DASH-DASH-DASH. T = DASH and E = DOT, etc.
And there you have it – swapping the dots for dashes, and vice versa, in each letter leads from the 12 shorter clued solutions to the corresponding ‘correct’ entries:
A remarkably clever device – and yet remarkably simple at the same time, once found! And now that I had it all explained I could submit my entry with a clear conscience. (I had it all wrapped up by the end of the Tuesday after the Monday of publication, but only because I gave it quite a lot of attention on that first day…)
It was interesting that reversing the codes of EMIT gave TIME, i.e. the reverse of the word as well. I wonder if maybe that was the way in to the idea for Qaos? It doesn’t apply to any of the other words, so maybe not.
Many thanks to Qaos for an interesting and entertaining diversion – I know a lot more about Morse code now, as well! I hope I haven’t missed anything else, and that all is clear above and below…
| ACROSS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/Parsing |
|
| 1 | SASH WINDOW | It gets to turn during show’s opening (4,6) | opening / SA (sex appeal, ‘it’) + SH_OW around WIND (to turn) |
|
| 6 | EMIT / TIME | Issue with brief introduction missing (4) | issue / ( |
|
| 9 | OVERLOOKED | Was cryptic clue ignored? (10) | ignored / A cryptic clue for ‘was’ could be ‘saw’ (looked) over , or OVERLOOKED |
|
| 10 | UNIT / GAME | Out of shape female’s missing one (4) | one / UN( |
|
| 12 | VIDEO DIARIES | Work I advertised with Oscar and Ian initially, not Troy, for day-to-day records (5,7) | day-to-day records / anag, i.e. work, of I ADVER(T)ISED + O (Oscar) + I (Ian, initially), excluding T (not Troy) |
|
| 15 | OLIVEBACK | American bird reverses vehicle into green Buick’s boot (9) | American bird / OLIVE (green) + BAC (cab, vehicle, reversing) + K (rear letter, or boot, of buicK) |
|
| 17 | MANAT / INANE | Around morning, take back brown Caucasian bread (5) | Caucasian bread (currency unit in Azerbaijan/Turkmenistan) / MA (am, morning, around) + NAT (tan, brown, taken back) |
|
| 18 | RATTY / KNEEL | Angry sailor flipped over hull of yacht (5) | angry / RAT (tar, sailor, flipped) + TY (outer letters, or hull, of YachT, over) |
|
| 19 | ROYAL BLUE | A shade of all euro money ultimately is laundered outside Britain (5,4) | a shade / ROYAL _LU (anag, i.e. laundered, of ALL EURO + Y (ultimate letter of moneY), around B (Britain) |
|
| 20 | ALTERCATIONS | Changes about carbon results in disagreements (12) | disagreements / ALTER_ATIONS (changes) around C (Carbon) |
|
| 24 | UNAU / GANG | You caught Greek character eating a sloth (4) | a sloth / U (homophone, i.e. caught, U can sound like YOU) + N_U (Greek letter) around (eating) A |
|
| 25 | MANAGERIAL | Administrative fellow, one in a large building (10) | administrative / MAN (fellow) + AGER_AL (anag, i.e. building, of A LARGE) around I (one) |
|
| 26 | KNOT / RASE | Speed 10 is 1,000 over 100 (4) | speed 10 (unit, from 10A) / K (kilo, prefix indicating one thousand) + NOT (ton, a score or total of 100, over) |
|
| 27 | BED OF NAILS | Difficult situation with plot — nothing goes wrong around noon (3,2,5) | difficult situation / BED (plot) + O (zero, nothing) + F_AILS (goes wrong) around N (noon) |
|
| DOWN | ||||
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/Parsing |
|
| 1 | OSSA / SOON | Like very upright bones (4) | bones / AS (like) + SO (very), all reversed, or upright = OSSA |
|
| 2 | OTTO / SEES | Fragrant oil to be applied both ways (4) | fragrant oil / TO both ways can give OT+TO = OTTO |
|
| 3 | WELL I DECLARE | Spring first cleared out? Fancy that! (4,1,7) | fancy that! / WELL (spring) + I (one, or first?) + DECLARE (anag, i.e. out, of CLEARED) |
|
| 4 | ASSOT / NOOSE | Become obsessed with a throwback? (5) | become obsessed / A + SSOT (toss, or throw, back) |
|
| 5 | OKEY-DOKEY | Fine department protected by two old guides (4-5) | fine / O (old) + KEY (guide) + D (department) + O (old) + KEY (guide), i.e. O + KEY twice, around (protecting) D |
|
| 7 | IMAGINABLE | Incredibly big animal on top of Everest — that’s possible? (10) | that’s possible / IMAGINABL (anag, i.e. incredibly, of BIG ANIMAL) + E (top letter of Everest) |
|
| 8 | EVEN-STEVEN | Woman and man in the news: it’s neck and neck (4-6) | neck-and-neck / EVE (woman’s name) + N_N (news, new twice) around STEVE (man’s name) |
|
| 11 | MAGIC LANTERN | Ace learnt about nuclear projector (5,7) | projector / MAGIC (ace) + LANTER (anag, i.e. about, of LEARNT) + N (nuclear) |
|
| 13 | ROCK BADGER | Naughty dog finally sits in chair with African mammal (4,6) | African mammal / ROCK_ER (chair) around BAD (naughty) + G (final letter of doG) |
|
| 14 | MILESTONES | First part of jazz musician’s sounds are significant events (10) | significant events / MILES (first part of Miles Davis’ name) + TONES (sounds) |
|
| 16 | ARREARAGE | An expensive car’s repair shop replacing bonnet for earl in debt (9) | debt / A + RR (Rolls Royce, expensive car) + ( |
|
| 21 | MINUS / IMAGO | Take away meals ingested, primarily by students (5) | take away / MI (primary letters of Meals Ingested) + NUS (National Union of Students) |
|
| 22 | IMAM / MINI | I’m a Muslim leader (4) | &lit? / IM + A + M (leading letter of Muslim) |
|
| 23 | TYRO / ELKS | Novice climbs inside ivory tower (4) | novice / reversed hidden word, i.e. climbs inside, in ‘ivORY Tower’ |
|
Wow! I looked at this but assumed that ‘coding the wrong way wrong ‘ merely meant ‘reverse’. So by chance TIME and EMIT in top right we’re correct. So EVEN fitted but after that I was going nowhere slowly. I clearly need to raise my game to attempt these crosswords! Thanks Qaos of course, but many thanks mc_rapper67 for such a comprehensive and educational blog.
Wrong way round
Thanks MC, I decided to try a genius after your recent blog on Tramp’s prize where you recommended it.
Had maybe a half filled grid when I made exactly the same mistake as Canberra girl with emit and time. I did think coded the wrong way was a little odd for what I assumed was a simple reversal. But I never expected a cryptic clue in the instructions. Anyway I threw the unfinished grid away. About a week later I was reading an old article about encryption and common key or seed mistakes, that used the phrase ‘wrong way round’ and maybe a sentence or two later the word ‘inspection’. Lightbulb moment so I printed out a fresh grid and started from scratch. Using time and emit as a cipher I soon cracked the rest of it, and counted that as a win for my first genius. 🙂
I briefly looked at the letters I the cipher but couldn’t make anything useful out of them. So it turns out I missed the point completely. 🙁
Thanks Qaos and MC.
This was a very satisfying puzzle to solve from beginning to end. I completely missed the Morse hint until several days after completing the puzzle, which meant that I had the longer and possibly more rewarding task of having to deduce the cipher by working with the data I had from the 12 coded answers and the possible words that could take their place. I was relieved to get all the codes and finally ink in my last (plain) entry ROCK BADGER.
The design and gridfill of this puzzle were excellent, as were the clues. The idea of reversing the dots and the dashes in Morse code to make an alphabetic cipher was a very good one (22 letters of the Morse code alphabet being available for use in this way), and it was well implemented.
Thanks to Qaos and mc_rapper67.
Another really, really clever grid fill and another puzzle which must have taken an age to set even once the idea was there – so thank you Qaos for putting in so much effort on our behalf. I greatly enjoyed this and, like our blogger I noted the OS switch in a couple of places. By a bizarre coincidence I had just embarked on writing out the Morse code alphabet from a mnemonic the day before* so literally had it on a piece of paper next to my laptop as i was staring at this puzzle wondering who the inspector was. Needless to say I guess the theme a little earlier than Qaos might’ve intended!
Thank you mc-rapper for the careful unravelling and -… .-. .- …- — Qaos!
* for the record, you can write out morse code as a binary tree where a step to the left is a dot and to the right is a dash. the levels of the tree are
e t
i a n m
s u r w d k g o
h v f l p j b x c y z q
So you just need a mnemonic to remember the alphabet in that order!
Thanks mc-rapper67 and Qaos.
Inspector took me to Morse straightaway…..’Wrong way around’ indicated, I wrongly assumed, U (dot, dot, dash) when literally reversed to (dash, dot, dot) yielded D in stead of G (dash, dash, dot), which is what Qaos wanted.
With that, I was in wilderness for a day or two, till I saw the error of my ways.
Then I completed it and am quite pleased with myself. This is the second Genius I submitted this year.
Btw, how come winner’s name is not published?
Thanks mc_rapper67.
This became almost three separate puzzles for me. I realised early on that it was the 12 shorter solutions that had to be altered, so I first tackled the longer clues as a normal crossword (albeit with a rather sparse grid). That gave me the letter substitutions for the second set of clues. The final puzzle was working out who the inspector was – which dawned on me the next day (having been sidetracked by Clouseau – so tempting).
Many thanks to Qaos for an entertaining puzzle.
illipu – the winner’s name is shown on the Guardian crossword page, to the left of the “Annotated solutions for Genius …” boxes. It usually takes a while for it to be updated after the closing date.
Thanks Andrew.
I’m afraid I still can’t see it, for the older puzzles though annotated solutions can be seen.
Can you please provide a direct link to a past winner so I can see what the URL looks like 🙁
Thanks for the comments and feedback so far – much appreciated…
– Canberra Girl at #1 – nice to see a new(?) name here – hope you persevere, and that game will raise itself… There are many previous puzzles available on the G website – with annotated solutions there and blogs here, so plenty of training material…
– Blah at #3 – I’m glad to see that someone read my comments on that Grauniad blog and was tempted over to this slightly darker side!…Interesting that both you and TheZed at #5 were dabbling in some serendipitous ‘side reading’ on encryption and Morse code respectively!
Looks like most commenters enjoyed this – and, as I mentioned, and several have alluded to, technically speaking you didn’t have to work out the Morse Code side of things, just the substitutions were enough for submission.
Talking of submissions and winners – cf. ilippu at #6 and #9 – as Andrew mentions, the update of winner’s name is a little haphazard in timing. It is on the main Grauniad crossword page (https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords), under the heading ‘Genius Solutions’, not the Genius-specific page. And it is ephemeral – there doesn’t seem to be any ‘archive’ list of previous winners….even though the ‘annotated solution’ page would be a logical place to put that nugget of information!
(From previous – and fortunate – experience, the process seems to be that they contact the lucky winner by e-mail, presumably to check that they exist, and also to arrange payment of the prize. So I guess that may take some time to work through, and then maybe if they get no response after a reasonable wait they pick another winner…but that is supposition on my part, not any inside knowledge… Anyway, good luck to one and all who solved and submitted this one – may the luckiest person win!)
Thanks mc_wrapper; see 219 winner name; as you say, no way to know past winners.
Thanks mc for the blog. I stared at this for most of Monday and things clicked early on Tuesday so puzzle was finished in the afternoon. I failed to notice the Morse connection, I assumed it was just some kind of quality inspector.
I’ve never learned Morse Code. The only thing I remember is “Eskimos In Straw Hats Ten Miles Off” to represent 1, 2, 3, 4 dots then 1, 2, 3 dashes.
Thanks to Qaos too.
A very ingenious grid fill and a very satisfying puzzle to solve with the extra dimension. We completed the grid but failed on the Morse code link.
Thanks Qaos – best Genius for a while. Thanks to MC for the blog too.
Thanks for your comments, kenmac at #12 and BertandJoyce at #13 – much appreciated, especially kenmac’s mnemonic – which goes part way to providing a mnemonic for TheZed!
ilippu at #11 and various – it seems the Grauniad have been quicker off the mark than usual, and this puzzle’s winner is already announced…
Anyway – onwards and upwards to Genius 221!
Thanks for the comprehensive blog mc_rapper67, I had about half the long clues done within a few days and saw that they fitted together fine in the grid so made the call that only shorter clues needed any manipulation, but had no idea what form that would take and only had about 50% of the “original” answers anyway by the deadline. But I resisted the temptation to come on here, kept plugging away with the remaining clues and last night while running the bath I got hit in the face with a very heavy tea tray just as a bag of pennies dropped on my head, which enabled me to “back-solve” some of the short answers that I had struggled with.
So only completed this a few minutes ago but with a great sense of achievement, now also full of admiration for those who got there without fully realising the trick, and of course in awe of Qaos for the idea, filling the grid with real words that worked with the Morse swap and some fantastic clues to boot (including but certainly not limited to his trademark style for KNOT).
[Thanks also for the Morse mnemonics Thezed and kenmac. I only knew SOS and that S comprises dots because dots are quicker than dashes and it appears twice.]
Gazzh – I’m impressed by your monastic dedication to press on, ignoring the temptations of the blog and the annotated solution!…Also impressed that you can solve a crossword whilst running a bath – I though men couldn’t multi-task (assuming the Gazz part is male (;+>))
Cheers mc_rapper67, I am a typical bloke, in my excitement I did somewhat neglect my bath temperature supervision duties and had to drain a good few litres while topping up with cold, so as to avoid boiling my son!
Just came here today, thinking the deadline was the 5th!
Unlike most others, it seems, the penny dropped for me quite early. OTTO and OSSA jumped out quite quickly. Remembering enough Morse code from Scouting days, and linking that with the Inspector, it dawned that these had ‘dot-for-dash’ equivalences, so that must be the key. The penny dropped whilst lying in the bath, so that’s two of us, Gazzh, for whom hot water played a part…
I think we would have struggled to finish if – like McRapper – we hadn’t had this help, so congrats to him and others who finished it without knowing how it was ‘the wrong way’
Better late than never, Mr Beaver – another ‘eureka’ moment, along with Gazzh… (I tend to find that the paper goes a bit soggy when I try and solve in the bath)…
Totally floored by this one. I realised which were the solutions to be changed very quickly. Considered Inspector Morse, but didn’t get beyond that. Never knew Morse code and swapping dots and dashes just never occurred to me. And then decided life was too short to spend any more time on it. I’m now annoyed with myself for not persevering.
Very clever, thank you Qaos. And thank you mc-rapper67 for making it all clear.