We have a new setter today. I can’t find any reference to previous puzzles set by Sauce in the fifteensquared records.
Sauce’s first act was to present us with a fairly fearsome preamble, as follows:
“Solvers must act in keeping with the theme (20, five words) before entering the answers to twelve clues whose wordplay yields an extra letter, not entered in the grid. Arranging these letters to name a familiar symbol, then replacing each by its clue number, gives the theme in code, the digits 0-9 standing for 10 different letters. Eight clashes between other answers must be resolved by discarding the letters of a thematic context, in which 395 links the modified entries (ignoring one hyphen). Final entries are all real words or phrases. Solvers must highlight 17 grid cells to reveal a two-word eponym and a surname, each connected to the theme, and in the cells beneath write the context encoded as above, using the symbol to represent an eleventh letter.”
As normal, I started off solving as many clues as I could and entering them into the grid without any amendment even when I discovered an extra letter in the wordplay. A few of the 12 thematic answers intersected without any adjustment of the answers, so I ploughed on. The clues were clear and the grid built up fairly quickly.
I was confident about 9 of the extra letters that I found, with some other possibilities that I was less confident about. I was also concerned that I didn’t have an extra letter from a clue with a 5 in its number. With a bit of playing about it seemed likely that the letters should be rearranged to form QUESTION MARK which fitted appropriately with the puzzle’s title of Marks
The twelve letters and the clues they came from, in clue order, were:
| Letter | T | R | N | U | Q | K | M | S | E | O | A | I |
| Clue | 16 | 17 | 18 | 20 | 34 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 26 | 33 | 34 |
Rearranging the letters to spell QUESTION MARK we get:
| Letter | Q | U | E | S | T | I | O | N | M | A | R | K |
| Clue | 34 | 20 | 9 | 8 | 16 | 34 | 26 | 18 | 4 | 33 | 17 | 2 |
As a string of digits, this gives us:
34209816342618433172
Looking at this string we can see 342 twice. Experience of barred puzzles ,like this suggest that phrases or themes quite of ten begin with THE so it was worth substituting T for 3, 4 for H and 2 for E throughout which gave:
THE 09816 THE 618HTT17E
When you have a form THE … THE it is likely that there are going to be two small words filling the gap with the second of them possibly being OF, IN, AT or something similar. Given that the theme had five words, that meant that the last nine letters would be one word beginning F, N or T (from OF, IN or AT) with a repeated character at positions 2 and 7. I found two possibilities with that pattern, NIGHT-TIDE and NIGHT-TIME. I knew of a book called The Curious Incident of THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME by Mark Haddon which I hoped was a penny drop moment with the occurrence of Mark in the author’s name. The phrase showed that O would be represented by 9. This is relavant to the 395 in the preamble.
Having deduced all twelve extra letters, a little bit of reverse engineering completed the grid. All the treated entries had been entered without any adjustment beyond omitting the extra letter in the wordplay.
I noted that all this had decoded without the use of a clue with a 5 in its number.
For use later on in the puzzle, the individual letters in the phrase decoded to:
| Digit | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| Letter | D | I | E | T | H | N | M | G | O |
At this point, the grid looked like this.
The full grid had eight clashes between across down entries, as follows:
DAMSONS / RANGER, DIRT / RANGER, HARO / STEPPERS, HEAL / MONEY-BAG, HEAL / DAUGHTER, LETS / LOATHER, YET / TASTY and POET / SCARRY
Looking at the words in the grid, I reckoned we could form at least eighteen new valid words using either of the letters in the clashes, so it wasn’t going to be possible to deduce the thematic eight-letter word by eliminating any of the clashing letters that couldn’t be used across and down. This meant we had to deduce a thematic letter word from an anagram of:
[DR][IA][AO][OE][HM][LD][EO][TS] and [ER]
At this point I typed THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME into Google and got lots of links to articles about Mark Haddon’s book. I tend to look at Wikipedia first – dog_night
I read the article but it didn’t give me any flashes of inspiration about eponyms.
Then I realised I hadn’t made any use of the reference in the preamble to 395 which linked somehow to a thematic context. 395 decodes TO? using the thematic code above. There are twelve three-letter words of this form, but the one that caught my eye and possibly linked to DOG was the word TOR which conjured up a picture of the Hound of the Baskervilles and in my mind. The Wikipedia article had introduced a link between Mark Haddon’s book and Sherlock Holmes although it didn’t mention the Hound of the Baskervilles.
I was clutching at straws so I followed the Sherlock Holmes link to The Adventure of Silver Blaze (Silver Blaze). Finally, I began to see a way forward as this article showed that the Sherlock Holmes story was set on Dartmoor and involved a curious incident of THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME and involved a horse with an eponymous name and a mark [SILVER BLAZE] on its face.
I hadn’t scanned the grid thoroughly until now, but when I did I saw SILVER BLAZE down the Left Right diagonal from cell numbered 3 in the top row to the E of LEYS in the right hand column. HADDON could also be seen running from the cell numbered 21 in column 1 diagonally up right to the N of ALSOON in row 1. This gave us 17 cells. To get HADDON we had to use the H of HEAL rather than the M of MONEY-BAG which told us that there would be an M in the thematic eight-letter word. This reduced the number of valid eight-letter words from the anagram. There were still a few, but one stood out – DARTMOOR, home of TORs- which is the setting for The Adventure of Silver Blaze. Eliminating each of the letters of DARTMOOR from the clashes in the grid revealed seven new words, as follows
15 across – HARE
36 across – YES
6 down – DINGER
21 down – HONEYBAG
22 down – LAUGHTER
27 down LEATHER and
30 down – SCAREY
There are a number of websites that list names of the TORs of DARTMOOR, some list many more than others but this one TOR names shows that all the new words in the grid are names of DARTMOOR TORs. There is no hyphen in HONEYBAG unlike MONEY-BAG in the original answers. Of course, there isn’t a hyphen in the grid for MONEY-BAG but Sauce was clearly trying to nail down every loose end when he wrote the preamble.
Having highlighted SILVER BLAZE and HADDON in the grid, the only thing left to do was fill in the cells beneath the grid. The decoding of THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME above gives us digits for all but one of the letters of DARTMOOR which I take to be the context. The symbol ? (QUESTION MARK) derived from the additional letters in wordplay can be used for the letter A to give 0?537995 as the code for DARTMOOR.
The final grid looked like this.
I can think of three links to the title MARKS. We have MARK Haddon, the eponymous MARK on the horse SILVER BLAZE and the QUESTION MARK symbol. I can’t find a link between MARK and TOR but wouldn’t be surprised if Sauce says there is one.
As mentioned early on, I struggled a bit identifying wordplay with extra letters For example 25a ASCRIBE could have an extra A (A CRIB) especially as I was looking for a clue with a 5 in the number. Also, DIRT could have had an extra E (ER could have been Queen rather than just R [Regina]). In the end, the A clearly came from ALOOFA and the E clearly came from ENEREIDS.
I must admit having solved the puzzle and completed the end-game, I still don’t understand what the initial part of the preamble means when it says ‘Solvers must act in keeping with the theme before entering the answers to twelve clues whose wordplay yields an extra letter, not entered in the grid’. I know that the dog didn’t bark in either story but I don’t see how either of the two main meanings of ‘bark’ affects entering answers in the grid.
The clues were fair. The only one I had to think about parsing properly was RANGER at 6 down where I was fixated on using RANGE for ‘spread’ in the wordplay rather than RAN. Not surprisingly I couldn’t see how the final R alone could be a Mongolian tent.
This was a real challenge, but very satisfying to complete. It must have given Sauce a few headaches creating the grid and the clues so thanks to him / her for the puzzle.
| No | Detail | Letter |
| Across | Extra letters in wordplay shown in fuchsia |
|
| 1 | Likewise working for Spenser, no less readily (6)
ALSOON (Edmund Spenser’s word for ‘as soon’; no less readily) ALSO (likewise) + ON (working) ALSO ON |
|
| 6 | Curses, swallowing such fruit (7)
DAMSONS (rather small, oval, dark-purple plums; fruit) DAMNS (curses) containing (swallowing) + SO (such) DAM (SO) NS |
|
| 11 | One detained by old man beside courtyard (5)
PATIO (courtyard) I (Roman numeral for one) contained in (detained by) (PA [father; old man] + TO [beside]) PA T (I) O |
|
| 12 | Obscenity Queen slipped into earlier lyrics (4)
DIRT (obscenity) R (Regina; Queen) contained in (slipped into) DIT (archaic term [earlier] for the words of a song; earlier lyrics) DI (R) T |
|
| 14 | Source make-up for top artiste (9)
HEADLINER (descriptive of the artiste at the top of the bill) HEAD (source, of a river for example) + LINER (make-up, e.g. eyeLINER) HEAD LINER |
|
| 15 | Announcement of claim brought back in for a hearing (4)
HARO (in the Channel Islands, a cry announcing a claim to legal redress) HARO (reversed [brought back] hidden word in [in] FOR A HEARING) HARO< |
|
| 16 | Passage behind grand maharaja’s throne (4)
GADI (Indian throne; maharajah’s throne) G (grand) + ADIT (opening or passage, especially into a mine) G ADI |
T |
| 17 | Go to get ready (3)
PEP (vigour; go) PREP (PREPare; get ready) PREP |
R |
| 18 | Arts movement rejecting tradition and commercial backing (4)
DADA (short-lived [from 1916 to circa1920] movement in art and literature which sought to abandon all form and throw off all tradition] (AND + AD [ADvertisement; commercial]) all reversed (backing) (DA DA)< |
N |
| 19 | Having digits that go quite hard at the ends (4)
TOED (having digits [toes]) TOED (final letters [at the ends] of each of THAT, GO, QUITE and HARD) T O E D |
|
| 20 | One’s raised independent band of warriors (4)
IMPI (a group of armed southern African native warriors) I’M (one’s) + UP (raised) + I (independent) I’M P I |
U |
| 21 | Restore Cornish mine yielding tungsten (4)
HEAL (restore to health) WHEAL (Cornish word for a mine) excluding (yielding) W (chemical symbol for tungsten [wolfram]) HEAL |
|
| 23 | Lady coming back in regarding upcycled item (6)
REMADE (a thing made over again from the original materials; upcycled item) DAME (lady) reversed (coming back) in (in) RE (with reference to; regarding) R (EMAD<) E |
|
| 25 | Attribute that plagiarist’s work emulates at first (7)
ASCRIBE (attribute) AS (that) + CRIB [plagiarist’s work is a CRIB from someone else’s original work] + E (initial letter of [at first] EMULATES) AS CRIB E |
|
| 28 | Being in the countryside (6)
NATURE (being) NATURE (descriptive of the countryside) double definition NATURE |
|
| 31 | Permits form of bartering (4)
LETS (permits) L.E.T.S. (Local Exchange Trading System, a system in which skills and resources are bartered using a nominal local currency) double definition LETS |
|
| 32 | I almost allowed returning nerves to control breathing (4)
VAGI (cranial nerves, concerned in regulating heartbeat, rhythm of breathing etc) (I + GAVE [granted; allowed] excluding the final letter [almost] E) all reversed (returning) (VAG I)< |
|
| 33 | Hurt, old hunting dog runs off (4)
ACHE (hurt) RACHE (dog that hunts by scent) excluding (off) R (runs) ACHE |
|
| 34 | Hunch about subatomic particles (4)
TAUS (leptons [sub-atomic particles]) SQUAT (hunch) reversed (about) TAUS< |
Q |
| 36 | Even the sound of Iain’s door (3)
YET (even) YET (sounds like [the sound of] YETT [Scottish [Ian] word for a gate or door]) YET |
|
| 37 | Tree-dweller from marshy land? (4)
HYLA (common tree frog; tree-dweller) HYLA (hidden word in [from] MARSHY LAND) HYLA |
|
| 39 | Sheet of wadding that’s beginning to flutter around (4)
BATT (sheet of wadding) BAT (to flutter, especially an eyelid) containing (around) T (first letter of [beginning] THAT) BA (T) T |
|
| 40 | Mounts ridge forming distinctive curved shape (9)
HORSESHOE (a distinctive curved shape) HORSES (mounts) + HOE (promontory or projecting ridge, now only used in place names) HORSE S HOE |
|
| 41 | Pages from darling writer in verse (4)
POET (writer in verse) POPPET (darling) excluding (from) PP (pages) POET |
|
| 42 | Diminutive maidservant losing weight (5)
TEENY (small; diminutive) TWEENY (a between-maid; maidservant) excluding (losing) W (weight) TEENY |
|
| 43 | Praise novel of girl ending in tragedy (7)
GLORIFY (honour; praise) Anagram of (novel) OF GIRL + Y (last letter of [ending in] TRAGEDY) GLORIF* Y |
|
| 44 | Overturned decision originally stipulating hydraulic cement (6)
TERRAS (earthy volcanic tuff used as a hydraulic cement) ARRÊT (judgement of a tribunal; decision) reversed (overturned) + S (first letter of [originally] STIPULATING) TERRA< S |
|
| Down | ||
| 1 | Page in article covered garden pest (5)
APHID (small homopterous insect that sucks plant juices; garden pest) P (page) contained in (in) (A + HID [covered]) A (P) HID |
|
| 2 | Circle defending Wordsworth, for example (4)
LAER (in South Africa, a defensive ring of ox-wagons; circle defending) LAKER (a Lake Poet of whom William Wordsworth [1770 – 1850] was an example) LAER |
K |
| 3 | Almost pierce special coating put on handsaws (7)
STADDAS (combmaker’s double-bladed handsaws) (STAB [pierce] excluding the final letter [almost] B + S [special]) containing (coating) ADD (put on) ST (ADD) A S |
|
| 4 | Recalled an expression for fungal spores (5)
OIDIA (fungal spores) (A + IDIOM [expressed]) all reversed (recalled) (OIDI A)< |
M |
| 5 | Sounds surprised to pick up literally spherical grains of stone (7)
OOLITHS (tiny spherical grains of stone) OOHS (sounds surprised) containing (to pick up) LIT (literally) OO (LIT) HS |
|
| 6 | Park officer spread tent made in Mongolia (6)
RANGER (park officer) RAN (spread) + GER (another name for a yurt [Mongolian tent]) RAN GER |
|
| 7 | No longer declare region deserted (5)
AREAD (obsolete [no longer] word meaning ‘declare’) AREA (region) + D (deserted) AREA D |
|
| 8 | Roan horse left behind me after split (8)
SCHIMMEL (roan horse) SCHISM (split) + ME + L (left) SCHIM ME L |
S |
| 9 | Nymphs unruffled about gods being overthrown (7)
NEREIDS (sea nymphs) (SERENE [calm; unruffled] containing [about] DI [plural of DEUS, gods]) all reversed (being overthrown) (NERE (ID) S)< |
E |
| 10 | Exercise machines having presets reconfigured, doubling pressure (8)
STEPPERS (exercise machine – I can’t find a definition in a dictionary but the internet has pictures of exercise STEPPERS) Anagram of (reconfigured) PRESET and P (pressure. giving a doubling of pressure in the anagram) STEPPERS* |
|
| 12 | Separate from ogre entering sharp decline (7)
DIVORCE (separate from) ORC (a form of monster or ogre) contained in (entering) DIVE (sharp decline) DIV (ORC) E |
|
| 13 | Type of soft leather, apparently one in the ascendancy (5)
NAPPA (type of soft leather) (APP [apparently] + AN [one]) all reversed (in the ascendancy [down entry]) (NA PPA)< |
|
| 21 | What interests me, including a purse perhaps (8, 2 words)
MONEY-BAG (a type of purse) MY BAG (again, not in the usual dictionaries, but it is an informal phrase descriptive of something that interests me) containing (including) ONE (a) M (ONE) Y BAG |
|
| 22 | Anything in French from Resistance woman (8)
DAUGHTER (a woman) (AUGHT [anything] contained in [in] DE [French for ‘from’]) + R (resistance) D (AUGHT) E R |
|
| 23 | Most productive start to initiative with Church in support (7)
RICHEST (most productive) (I [first letter of {start to} INITIATIVE] + CH [Church]) contained in (in) REST (a support) R (I CH) EST |
|
| 24 | Miser keeping meat in salt, mostly (7)
SAVE-ALL (miser) SALT excluding the final letter (mostly) T containing (keeping) VEAL (type of meat) SA (VE AL) L |
|
| 26 | Pressed to check drug patented in France (7)
BREVETÉ (French for ‘patented’) BORE (pressed, as in the pressure bore down on him) + VET (check) + E (ecstasy; drug) BRE VET E |
O |
| 27 | One abhorring look directed towards this woman (7)
LOATHER (one who dislikes something intensely; one abhorring something) LO (look) + AT (directed towards) + HER (that woman) LO AT HER |
|
| 29 | Savoury hot snack – none’s wasted (5)
TASTY (savoury) TOASTY (warm; hot) excluding (wasted) O (character representing zero / nothing) TASTY |
|
| 30 | Sun bear showing signs of injury (6)
SCARRY (with SCARs, showing signs of injury) S (sun) + CARRY (bear) S CARRY |
|
| 33 | Detached top of Ashanti gourd (5)
ALOOF (with a haughty air; apart; detached) A + LOOFA (gourd) A LOOF |
A |
| 34 | Tries a refurbished weapon for police? (5)
TASER (police weapon for stunning suspected criminals) Anagram of (refurbished) TRIES A TASER* |
I |
| 35 | Southern meadows providing reeds for weavers (5)
SLEYS (a weaver’s reed) S (Southern) + LEYS (meadows) S LEYS |
|
| 38 | Animals guarding new patch, maybe (4)
ZONA (patch, strip or band) ZOA (structurally unified creatures; animals) containing (guarding) N (new) ZO (N) A |
A fearsome preamble and a lot going on but I enjoyed the challenge that ensued with the various thematic elements bouncing all over the place. With regards to the start of the preamble, not only did the dog not bark, the dog did nothing (according to Holmes’ inspector).
What a puzzle! And I missed the third mark, the blaze on the horse’s head.
Duncan: In the text you have 0?537995 (correct) but under the grid you have 0?837995. A second small point: there is no hyphen in MONEY BAG – the omitted hyphen comes from HONEY-BAG (Chambers) but HONEYBAG Tor.
And I agree with Phil K @1, though I find the instruction to do nothing a bit mischievous.
Maybe more later when I get my breath back.
Fiendishly complicated! But I got almost everything – missing the surname, somewhat ironic as I know the Haddon book far better than the Sherlock Holmes story. My only real quibble is that the opening instruction is that “Solvers must act in keeping with the theme” which I presume one is supposed to interpret as ‘do nothing’, like THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME. But it’s something of a stretch to refer to that phrase as “the theme”… the theme of the puzzle could be defined as the Holmes story, the tors or Dartmoor, but that phrase? – not so much. It would have made more sense saying “… in keeping with a thematic character” or similar. In a puzzle this complicated, it’s crucial that the preamble is as precise as possible.
But overall, a magnificent achievement and very satisfying when pennies dropped. Thanks both.
Rob T: the theme is literally “The Dog in the Night-Time”. I laughed out loud when I got the point! From The Adventure of Silver Blaze:
Inspector Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.
TonyG – I think that’s what the setter wants us to take as “the theme”, and I found the exact same quote as you, but in practical terms that really isn’t “the theme” of the puzzle… it’s a phrase used in the story upon which the puzzle is based. I concede that this is perhaps a pedantic and subjective distinction, but it’s a distinction I made nonetheless 🙂
HolyGhost@2
Thanks – grid updated
RobT: “the theme (20, five words)”. No ambiguity there!
Bert noticed SILVER BLAZE which gave us a start. It took us a while to realise that we may be looking for HADDON somewhere in the grid despite reading (and listening to) the book, not forgetting seeing the superb play.
The TORS took a bit of finding – one in particular but we cannot remember which one.
Lots to enjoy and puzzle over.
Thanks to Duncan and Sauce.
As I suspected from the preamble, this fell firmly into the “life is too short” group of Inquisitors. I solved most of the clues, and identified most of the extra letters and clashes, but that was emphatically not good enough to identity the familiar symbol or make further progress. Congratulations to all who finished it, to Duncan for an exhaustive blog, and to Sauce for the time that must have been spent setting the thing!
wow! quite a tour (tor?) de force. I got as far indeed as Dartmoor Tors but fell at the last hurdle wrt finding actual names thereof.
Nothing elementary about this puzzle, which took a few sessions to crack but was ultimately very satisfying. Spotting Silver Blaze and Haddon in the grid got me going, and once Question Mark emerged from the extra letters it was fairly plain sailing through the code. Thanks to the Sherlock element, the thematic context revealed itself fairly readily. But I missed Haro – and consequently Hare Tor – so only 9/10 marks for me this week. Thanks to Sauce for stretching my synapses and to Duncan for an excellent blog.
I enjoyed this a lot but I’m still not sure I understand that first bit of the preamble. Is it just a joke, an instruction that isn’t an instruction because it says do nothing? At the time I thought it meant don’t enter any other clues before the 12 with extra letters, for some reason that would emerge later, but clearly it didn’t and anyway I’d already disobeyed it. It’s weird, but then so is an endgame where you encode something instead of decoding it, so I felt it fitted. But I still don’t think I get it.
For me, things went in the opposite order to what Duncan reports in his blog: Question Mark, Silver Blaze, Mark Haddon (the breakthrough), thematic phrase, crack the code, the ‘context’ & so which of the clashing letters to retain, and then later the 7 tors. Finally resolved the use of the fact that the dog did nothing – so neither should we. (Rather impish, I thought.)
Thanks to the veteran blogger, Duncan, and to the hitherto unknown setter, Sauce – welcome.