Guardian Genius No 235 by Karla

16 comments on “Guardian Genius No 235 by Karla”

1. Thanks bridgesong and Karla.
   This was a disappointment – also a DNF as I didn’t have 7d; and had ONE at 19a; so didn’t get the theme.
   I saw LAND, TYNE, PIVOT, ROAD correctly, and PULL ( LUPU), TONER (TOWER)….these errors made this puzzle a bridge too far.

   Some clues were nice: LUNG, GALLUP, DISSOLUTE

2. I took a while to solve 2d since I hadn’t heard of the LUPU Bridge, and I had already found 15 clues with partial wordplay.

   I’m pretty sure the second part of 7d is supposed to be Beau’s brother JEFF.

3. Matthew @2: I’m sure you’re right about Jeff Bridges (“thematically related” rather than just “thematic” was obviously significant, although I completely missed it). And congratulations on your Magpie solving record in 2022.

4. I found the ‘partial wordplay’ device in this puzzle was particularly tricky when only a small part of the answer was clued by the wordplay, and the extreme example at 19a of course had to wait until the theme became apparent. It made for an absorbing experience, as with most puzzles in this series. GALLUP and ORPHEUS held me up the longest (I had not come across Morpheus before).

   The ‘bridge’ theme naturally came to light when I started to highlight the ‘ignored’ letters in the grid. I guessed all along that BEAU would be more likely than MENU to go in the first half of 7d, and when that ‘bridge’ (or rather ‘Bridges’) connection was made JEFF duly went in too.

   I agree the number of clues with some (or all) wordplay ignored was 17, not 15.

   Thanks to Karla and bridgesong.

5. I love the way the Guardian crossword editor clearly thinks the Genius is never hard enough and so has to throw in at least one typo to keep us on our toes – this time the number of altered clues. At least I now know to look out for “ignored” and think about it both ways round i.e. superfluous letters in the clue or unclued letters in the solution.

   I too had Beau and Leaf but was not happy and kept coming back until I finally clocked Jeff. If one submitted “leaf” it is hard to say it is a wrong answer, although Jeff is clearly better.

   Nevertheless, a fun solve that went in surprisingly quickly. I think I picked up the bridge link quite early on but as some of them were obscure and there were many to choose from it was not a case of the whole thing collapsing. Well clued and fair, with plenty of sticky patches – as a Genius should be.

   Thank you Karla and Bridgesong – a pity “song” wasn’t one of the themed words!

6. An enjoyable challenge but l was defeated by 7d, which was too clever for me. I did learn a new journalistic word, standfirst. I thought 19a was fair.

7. My notes had “17? Not including 19A?,” as a comment about the (confusing) instructions. I cottoned on to the “bridge” theme pretty quickly, with a google search for “Lupu” confirming it, and recognizing that the theme “answers” literally bridged the gaps, but I thought I was sunk with 7D, until I was describing the puzzle to a friend on the telephone, saying out loud that the theme was “bridges [plural],” and just like that, I knew what the answer was. Some pretty obscure words, (perhaps harder to avoid with a theme crossword), but all fairly clued, I thought. This was pitched at just about the right level of difficulty for me, but I have unsuccessfully worked on similar Genius puzzles in the past, so I can sympathize with the frustration over a DNF.

   There is another typo in the grid for 23D (correctly parsed in the analysis).

8. Thanks to bridgesong and to all who have commented. BEAU JEFF was indeed my intention. I think I prefer the output of the latter to the former. LUPU was a tad obscure, but deliberately chosen so as not to give the game away too soon in the solve. And I wanted to get the span of TOWER bridge represented, hence the slightly weird grid.

9. Thanks and commiserations bridgesong, I ran up a couple of the same blind alleys as you and found a couple more beside (eg through chance, the first few clues solved led me to think that exactly all across clues used the cunning device) but eventually it all came good and I found it a very enjoyable and rewarding challenge. (In the end, I assumed that as 19a and 7d had no wordplay they could not count towards the 15, but from my limited experience find that special instructions are often harder to parse than the clues themselves.) i chuckled in admiration at the T-OWE-R and then laughed aloud when the Fabulous Baker Boys dawned on me, thanks very much Karla.

10. Cineraria @7: sorry about the typo in the grid, but well spotted! And thanks to Karla for your response.

11. I didn’t get 7d either. I had ‘LEAF’ but nothing for the top half. While I understand the ‘BEAU/JEFF’ bridges link as explained to us, what does ‘see standfirst’ mean, if anything at all?

12. BrianG @11

    In Chambers:
    An introductory paragraph in bigger and/or bolder type summarizing the contents of a newspaper or magazine article.

13. I didn’t really bother counting, not that it made any difference in the end, but given that there are 8 bridges each split over at least 2 clues there must be a minimum of 16 not 15 clues with ignored letters (not counting 19a and 7d).
    I’d never heard of LUPU and it may have been when searching for a list of bridges to check this, that one of the results was for the acting family (including Lloyd, Dorothy and Jordan). So I got there in the end.
    Thanks bridgesong and Karla for dropping in.

14. I rarely complete the Genius and got so close but failed in the end, partly due to the problems mentioned. It doesn’t help that I’ve no idea who Beau or Jeff Bridges are. I spotted several bridges but still can’t see the pattern by which you are supposed to pull them out of the grid. There is a Tone River, and therefore quite possibly a Tone Bridge, making it hard to correct the erroneously unclued “Owe”.

15. Kenmac@12 Thanks. I’ve never heard of that. I was thinking along the lines of (see)C(+3 bridge letters) and S(tand)(+3 bridge letters) which didn’t work.

16. BEAU and LEAF wouldn’t really make sense in the context of the puzzle as a whole. Whereas once you see BEAU and JEFF, it’s perfectly obvious that it’s the intended answer. So stop making excuses, brigesong!

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