A musical challenge for this month’s Genius.
The preamble read: “With 16 clues their wordplay leads to a solution where two letters require noted substitutions before entry in the grid. Their definitions have also been swapped around”.
It seemed pretty clear that we were likely to be dealing with the sol-fa notation: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti (or te). This indeed proved to be the case, but it took me much longer than it should to work out that the 16 clues affected by the substitutions were the across clues. I was also misled by the assumption that definitions would be exchanged between pairs of clues, but that was soon obviously wrong. One difficulty was that the clues had no definition for their original answer before amendment; another was the error in the clue at 25 across (although I can’t really pretend that it held me up for long). 1 across was my first entry to the thematic clues, as I could see how WINDMILLS could thematically be altered to WINDFALLS, with “jackpots” providing the definition. But after that it was slow progress. I found some of the down clues (which I knew to be normal) quite challenging, although there is nothing unfair.
I am not sufficiently musical to know whether the omitted notes (or their substitutes) can form a recognisable tune if read in clue order, although I doubt it.
For the purposes of the blog I have first given the original unamended answer and the wordplay leading to it, followed by the number of the clue to which the definition in this clue refers.
Many thanks to Qaos for an absorbing challenge.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | WINDFALLS |
Dirty minds will go astray (9)
|
| WINDMILLS; *(MINDS WILL). 19 ac. | ||
| 6 | MISO |
I’m tipsy on wines (4)
|
| MIRE; I’M (rev) RE. 26 ac. | ||
| 8 | MIXTURES |
Hopeless writing sure annoyed (8)
|
| TEXTURES; TEXT *SURE. 27 ac. | ||
| 9 | TEDIUM |
Cricket match splits total jackpots (6)
|
| SODIUM; ODI (One Day International: a cricket match) inside SUM. 1 ac. | ||
| 10 | REBELS |
Exclusive party with English lords on vacation (6)
|
| LABELS; LAB (party) E L(ord)S. 11 ac. | ||
| 11 | RAREFIED |
Computer memory provided fantastic idea: remove a cover (8)
|
| RAMIFIED; RAM IF(provided) *IDE(a). 25 ac. | ||
| 12 | CENSOR |
Church books the Queen hated (6)
|
| CENTER; CE (Church) NT (New Testament) ER (Queen). No indication of the American spelling. 15 ac. | ||
| 15 | DETESTED |
Indeed, fine spray removes hair (8)
|
| DEMISTED; MIST in DEED. 21 ac. | ||
| 16 | FRESHEST |
Set to get excited after moment of boredom (8)
|
| FLASHEST; FLASH (moment), *SET. 9 ac. | ||
| 19 | SOILED |
Newest agent in trouble? Just the opposite (6)
|
| FAILED; AIL in FED (Federal agent). 16 ac. | ||
| 21 | EPILATES |
In Jeep, I do test drive with examiner (8)
|
| EPIDOTES; hidden in “Jeep I do test”. 12 ac. | ||
| 22 | FAFFED |
Blends of ground decaf coffee from Fuji finally drunk (6)
|
| MIFFED; anagram of final letters. 8 ac. | ||
| 24 | DOCTOR |
Wild cat caged by strong men, revolutionaries (6)
|
| FACTOR; *CAT inside F(strong) OR (other ranks, men). 10 ac (not 26 across, as that is defined by “wines” at 6 ac). | ||
| 25 | LAMINATE |
Batter made into paste (8)
|
| DOMINATE; *MADE INTO. I suspect that there was a late change here, as my copy of the puzzle had “Dwarf made into paste”, which didn’t make a lot of sense. 6 ac. | ||
| 26 | REDS |
Headers of football act decisively, some dithered (4)
|
| FADS; initial letters. 22 ac. | ||
| 27 | DESPERATE |
Medic breaks road speed (9)
|
| DESPERADO; *ROAD SPEED. 24 ac. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | WRITE |
Record just on the radio (5)
|
| Sounds like “right” (just). | ||
| 2 | NATTERS |
Chats new affairs after divorcing male (7)
|
| N(ew) (m)ATTERS. | ||
| 3 | FIRES |
Mirror provided 20% reflection with small lights (5)
|
| IF (rev, “mirrored”) RE (20% of REflection) S(mall). I spent a lot of time trying to justify FAIRY (lights). | ||
| 4 | LUSTRED |
Desire wine having splendour (7)
|
| LUST RED. | ||
| 5 | SATURATES |
Completely fills square bottomless vessel one time in rising waters (9)
|
| T (-square) UR(n) A (one) T(ime) all inside SEAS (rev). | ||
| 6 | MID-OFFS |
1,001 tips for fielders (3-4)
|
| MI (1,001) DOFFS (tips). | ||
| 7 | SAUCER EYE |
Large round viewer is witchcraft, according to Noddy Holder? (6,3)
|
| Sounds like how Noddy Holder (who comes from Walsall in the Black Country) might say “sorcery”. | ||
| 13 | EUROPHOBE |
Little Englander, perhaps travelling up old street in Paris with barrel in forlorn hope (9)
|
| O(ld) RUE (French for street) (all rev), B(arrel) inside *HOPE | ||
| 14 | RE-ENTERED |
When recalled, does hiding key get moved in again? (2-7)
|
| ENTER (key on computer keyboard) inside DEER (does) (rev). Very clever use of “does”. | ||
| 17 | SALUTES |
Tributes to soldiers saving instrument (7)
|
| SA (ving) LUTES. | ||
| 18 | TUSSLES |
Tory minister not right to join the French battles (7)
|
| (Liz) T(r)USS, LES. Fortunately for Qaos, if not for the rest of us, Liz Truss was still in the Cabinet when the puzzle appeared. | ||
| 20 | INFANTA |
Princess elected by loud American suppressing worker (7)
|
| IN (elected) F(loud) ANT (worker) A(merican). | ||
| 22 | FEMME |
Nice men in charge get wife from abroad (5)
|
| MM (Messieurs, or men from Nice) inside FEE (charge). | ||
| 23 | ETTLE |
In Scotland, aim to compromise — sterling’s banned (5)
|
| (s)ETTLE. |
Thanks bridgesong and Qaos.
Agree that knowing the device didn’t make it any the easier, but very satisfying.
If I may, the blog is confusing (to me). For instance, when at 11a, you got ramified changed to rarefied, it’s better to show its definition ‘exclusive’ is found in 10a, rather than pointing out the buried definition ‘cover’ in 11a and where to find its answer ( in 25a) Too much to chase after.
Needed parsing for 7d. Thanks.
Ilippu @1: I’m sorry about the confusion. Puzzles like this do present a challenge to the blogger! Your suggestion is probably a better way of doing things, but I’m afraid that I’m not going to rewrite the blog now.
For the purposes of the blog I have first given the original unamended answer and the wordplay leading to it, followed by the number of the clue where its definition maybe found
This change will close each across entry.
Forgive, if I am being presumptuous.
Just saw your response. I understand. Thanks for the blog.
In all this, I must say again, Qaos is Genius :-).
Btw, I was baffled by ‘dwarf’ in 25a, but I ignored it. When the correction came in, I thought it was a great clue!
The original version of 25 could be a normal clue for DOMINATE with “dwarf” as the definition and “paste” the anagram indicator. I wonder if the corrected version was in fact the actual original, and the compiler (or editor) made a late edit, forgetting the swapped definitions.
Many thanks to Qaos and bridgesong
That was quite hard going but enjoyable and I ended up with a lot of lines connecting answers to definitions on my piece of paper. I’ve no idea how you would attempt this on an app!!
Dwarf was also baffling until I read the Guardian comments (I think it was) by chance.
I couldn’t find ‘s’ for sterling in Chambers 2014 but it’s probably out there on the web somewhere.
Thanks for the blog bridgesong and hats off to Qaos.
We usually wait until half-way through the month before tackling the Genius – which turned out to be a good move – as 25a had been corrected by then!
An early gamble that the 16 ‘specials’ were the 16 acrosses paid off, and like Bridgesong, we guessed that Do, Re, Ni etc were involved, but were held up for a while by using TI instead of TE.
21a was our way in as the wordplay cried out for a hidden answer, so we made good progress, although the last half-dozen or so seemed to take a while to figure out. REDS was a nice red-herring, intended or not, as noted above,
Thanks to Qaos and Bridgesong!
Mr Beaver @9: yes, REDS could have been defined either by “wines” or by “revolutionaries” from 24ac (but that was needed for REBELS at 10, so it had to be “wines”).
This was yet another original and interesting challenge, and like the previous one by Qaos (no. 220) it used a kind of code. Back then it was the Morse code; this time it was the tonic sol-fa musical scale.
I expected to get more answers to normal clues first, but in fact my first three to solve were MID-OFFS, RAMIFIED and CENTER. It was obvious that the last two of these were not defined in their own clues. Remembering the word ‘noted’ in the preamble, I could see how those two answers could be changed to RAREFIED (or RATIFIED) and CENSOR, and I quite quickly found ‘examiner’ in another clue which could define CENSOR.
Qaos went about the redistribution of definitions well, giving us “I’m tipsy on wines” and “Batter made into paste”, to pick just two of the gems.
Not being told that the special clues consisted of all the Across clues seemed a bit strange, but it turned out to be an interesting fact to discover at the end.
From time to time I have queries with the preambles to Genius puzzles, and this is another such occasion. It was not made clear that the definitions in the special clues refer to their entries and not their solutions.
Thanks to Qaos and bridgesong.