Enigmatic Variations No. 1512: Special Offer by Brock

12 comments on “Enigmatic Variations No. 1512: Special Offer by Brock”

1. Excellent puzzle and clear blog! thanks!

   The theme emerged fairly early but the main struggle was figuring out the full roster of 21 thematics — if I had understood earlier the import of “other terms…” I could have reverse engineered the missing few – as it was, 30d with repeated “Portugal”, proved to be the hardest to parse even though the answer GAP was clear.

2. I had the same experience as Ilan Caron — I must remember that ‘terms’ can mean ‘ends’ in crosswordese. I needed the blog to figure out parsings of several BOGO clues, notably INRO at 16D, and of GAP. I had so many of my own gaps that I hung on to the printed puzzle until the blog rolled around to refresh my memory. I did wonder if in 18A ‘broadcast on radio’? was needlessly wordy or just misdirection given the presence of anagrams and homophones in puzzles — in this case it was neither one. Maybe the question mark that I just now noticed before I hit ‘send’ was meant to say something different was afoot. Thanks to Brock and Kitty.

3. This was an original and amusing idea which made for a fun puzzle. I failed to note the significance of “other terms apply” – interpreting it as a clever way of stating that other clues were normal. Congrats to Kitty for spotting it, and also for a blog which is almost as entertaining as the puzzle itself!

4. Same experience as everyone else (so far!). I got the ‘two for one’ idea soon enough, although I failed to find a couple of those instances. I wondered why ‘other terms apply’ was there, thinking it must surely not be verbiage like the phrase with ‘strictly’ in it seemed to be, but I missed the point, despite encountering ‘terms’ in this sense quite a lot in crosswords.

   Thanks to Brock and Kitty.

5. A clever and novel idea. I spotted the “two for the price of one” pretty early with “builder” and “Arabian”, but it still took some teasing out to get some of the other duplicates. Like others, I also missed the significance of other terms – a nice idea, which I wish I had appreciated! Some of the duplicates were very cleverly done, eg in gap, dice, opining. Thanks to Brock for a fun puzzle and to Kitty for the blog, especially for the wordplay to Airdrie which eluded me.

6. I would just echo what Stick Insect said about the ‘clever and novel’ two-for-one idea and the cleverness of some of the special clues in particular. Much appreciated.

   I too missed the wordplay of AIRDRIE. I thought all along that ‘broadcast on radio’ had to be AIRD, but then RIE was impossible to explain.

7. Thanks for the comments so far. 🙂

   I’m really quite surprised that the “other terms” passed so many super solvers by. Always read the small print!

   I should probably have confessed my troubles parsing a few clues. Since in most of the special offer clues the repeated elements are used as a discrete part of the wordplay in both cases, I was thrown for a long time by those in which this isn’t the case. Not sure if that makes sense, but I’m talking about 11-16d: LORD, AGA, INRO – and GAP in particular, which was very nearly a gap in the blog!

8. Hi Kitty,

   My thanks for an excellent blog & very well explained. What you’re saying makes perfect sense to me as the original draft (pre test solve) was written with all thematic clues exactly same wordplay for two sections of the clue (in that respect “former English sovereign” refers to KING too, and “tip of Lance?” to ORD). But I had to edit some clues for soundness, such as adding “once” for ORD, and rewriting a previously much weaker clue to INRO… To say nothing of adding clues for the 3-letter entries (see setter’s blog on Big Dave’s website).

   I’m also interested so few solvers seem to have picked up the “Other terms” reference. So far every lady solver I’ve heard from has, but very few men!

9. Big thanks to Kitty for a super blog. I had trouble parsing a few of these so nice to have them cleared up. I particularly enjoyed Gap now you have explained it.

   This is a puzzle device I’ve never seen before. How clever by Brock. Thanks again to blogger and setter. Great stuff.

10. Oh, and I forgot to add. I didn’t pick up on the terms either. Very nicely done

11. I’m afraid I didn’t twig what was going on at all (and I am a pretty assiduous supermarket bargain hunter!), so a DNF and thank goodness it wasn’t my turn to blog… Thanks to Brock for the challenge, and Kitty for the explication…

12. Many thanks again to Kitty and to positive feedback from so many solvers despite not spotting the “other terms”. Many solvers here and elsewhere have mentioned that the idea was novel. I can claim the credit for working out how best to incorporate it into a barred crossword puzzle, but the inspiration was from my friend, Richard Heald, who was looking for a few more examples for puzzles he referred to as “Doublethink” where the answer is made up of two components using the same definition. If you are looking for a simpler more general puzzle books for Christmas, you might like to look up the charity Alan Turing’s Cryptic Codebreaking Puzzle Book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alan-Turing-Cryptic-Codebreaking-Puzzle/dp/1839404914 which includes some of these in the mix.

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