Pangakupu provides December’s Genius
The preamble: Nine answers are modified to give associated entries. Nine other clues each contain one redundant word – in clue order these give a quotation missing its last word. The quotation’s author can be found straddling a black square.
We adopted our usual tactic with puzzles such as this – take note of the preamble and dive in to solve some clues in the hope of finding out how nine answers might be modified, and to identify any redundant words.
We started well with 1ac and 4d, which didn’t need any modifications. 6ac was a write-in as BIER, but we couldn’t sort out 7 or 8d. Our next one in was 10ac, where we initially assumed that ‘a’ might be a poetical term for ‘are’ – poets are known to abbreviate common words to fit the rhythm of a poem, but we couldn’t find any evidence for this particular abbreviation – so we decided that POETS must be the first redundant word. We carried on through the clues and gradually identified more redundant words and began to identify the clues where the answer has to be modified – where the wordplay and definition lead to an answer that doesn’t fit with the crossing letters.
With some electronic help, we eventually established that the quotation is:
POETS HAVE BEEN MYSTERIOUSLY SILENT ON THE SUBJECT OF…… – given by the extra words in 10ac, 13ac, 21ac, 26ac, 1d, 7d, 8d, 20d and 25d – highlighted in bold in the parsings below. The final word is CHEESE and the quotation’s author is G K CHESTERTON.
We finally realised that the various answers that wouldn’t fit with the crossing letters are all anagrams of different types of cheese – so BIER at 6ac becomes BRIE, STERNUM at 11ac becomes MUNSTER, which fit with the answers to 7 and 8d.
We ended up reverse-solving 3d when we realised that ILCHESTER cheese would fit with the crossers (two of which are also cheeses) and looked up an anagram to find TELECHIRS – a word which fitted the definition and wordplay, but which we had never come across before.
ILCHESTER at 3d and TONE at 25d provide the author’s name.
ACROSS
An anagram (‘ruined’) of BY A PRIEST round (‘introducing’) T (first letter or ‘bit’ of topaz)
First letters (‘at the outset’) of Brings In Every Relative = BIER (structure in funeral), an anagram of BRIE
A (‘are’ – the metric measure of land area) in or ‘enthralled by’ NUN (religious woman) + CES (French for ‘these’)
UM (indication of hesitation) after STERN (tail) = STERNUM (bone), an anagram of MUNSTER
CO (company, firm) MET (assembled = COMET (historic aircraft), an anagram of COMTE
I ‘entering’ END (last) + HOVE (British resort) + N (first letter or ‘heading’ of next)
RIO (Brazilian) TACT (diplomacy) = RIOT ACT (warning to demonstrators), an anagram of RICOTTA
A reversal (‘returning’) of DETAiLS (squads) missing or ‘quashing’ ‘i’ (independence)
A reversal (‘withdrawn’) of ATE (irritated): ETA being Estimated Time of Arrival
A reversal (‘upsetting’) of REP (salesman) in (‘aboard’) BUS (public transport)
We had some difficulty parsing this one – we think it must be: NO (never) MAD (wandering – in the sense of being disordered in the mind or delirious) I C (see)
PRAcTICAL (reasonable) round or ‘imprisoning’ I (one), but missing or ‘taking off’ ‘c’ (first letter or ‘head’ of captain)
AM (American) with UND (‘and’ in German) ‘up front’
I (one) C (caught) after or ‘applied to’ ORGAN (skin?)
A reversal (‘backed’) of GUT (corporation) + BOT (program) round or ‘securing’ A
ATE (put away) after F (female) = FATE (lot), an anagram of FETA
CAMP (exaggerated) AN EROS (emblem of love) = CAMPANEROS (bellbirds), an anagram of MASCARPONE
BANKS (sides) round CARD (eccentric)
PALM (award, as in Palm d’Or) round or ‘drawing in’ S (soprano)
ELEC (electricity) in THIRSk (Yorkshire town) missing the last letter or ‘not quite’ = TELECHIRS (remote-controlled robots), an anagram of ILCHESTER
An anagram (jumbled) of SETS + ERA (time) E (last or ‘final’ letter of use)
A R (first or ‘initial’ letter of rocket) ‘crashing’ into MOON (satellite) = MAROON (type of rocket), an anagram of ROMANO
An anagram (‘distributed’) of DATA VOTER
Hidden (‘in’) and reversed (‘turning up’) in AbaddoN OR NEtherworld
INC (including) H (first letter or ‘start’ of hem)
COP (get) Y (last letter or ‘end’ of frisky) RIGHT (OK)
G (good) LIE (story) round RUM (eccentric) B (British) + R (Republican) = GRUMBLIER (more likely to complain) , an anagram of LIMBURGER
D (dead) with an anagram (‘crumbling’) of TREE round or ‘home to’ a reversal (‘climbing’) of MICE (vermin)
ANAL (obsessive) + a reversal (‘upset’) of CITY (town)
AC AC (accounts – ‘bills’) I A (first letters ‘at the outset’ of in action)
PROF (professor – ‘academic’) with O (nothing) ‘added in’
Hidden (‘used’) on motTO NEwcastle
DUO (two people) MO (second)
I started entering the answers as I solved the clues, hoping it would become clear what needed to happen when some answers didn’t fit together. When I worked out RIOT ACT, I wondered if the enumeration (7) should be (4,3) or if it was an indication that this answer should be modified, but it was only when I got to the down clues and worked out TESSERAE that I saw it was an anagram of RICOTTA and I could see BRIE, COMTE and FETA were anagrams of other answers I had entered, but I noticed that FETA only required changing the unchecked letters, so I didn’t enter it until I had solved all of the clues and found there were only eight other cheeses.
Most of the rest of the cheeses I discovered by working out the entry and trying to find an anagram which could be the answer to the clue, the hardest being CAMPANEROS and TELECHIRS but I had heard of both words. The only cheese I hadn’t heard of was ILCHESTER and I think it’s unlike the others because it’s the name of a cheese company rather than a particular type of cheese.
The only extra word I wasn’t sure about was ‘have’ because I know some crossword editors would say that it must be an extra word in 13a because in the cryptic reading of the clue ‘I’ means ‘the letter I’ so if ‘have’ is not an extra word, then it should be the third person singular ‘has’, but is the Guardian editorial policy so strict.
Thanks, Bertandjoyce and Pangakupu.
Thanks Pangakupu and Bertandjoyce.
I started solving and had CASH CARDS (about CA silent SH CARDS) for 1d, COMET for 12a, un-parsed RIOT ACT for 14a and NUANCES for 10a. I also had PSALM for 2d that I was not sure of. I could enter only RICOTTA in 14a, in place of RIOT ACT and I assumed it was a modified entry.
Could not enter NUANCES, but SHADOWS as modified entry fits. Considering un-parsed CLERESTORY for 1a created more problems …
I had marked SIDES in 1d as extra word, using SILENT for SH in CASH CARDS.
While RIOT ACT was correct – got from definition – I had no idea about ‘Brazilian diplomacy’ until later.
With words like sides, diplomacy, American, German, criticised, exaggerated etc in the clues, I thought it might be a Kissinger quote. Not so.
Then, I had confirmed extra words POETS (10) HAVE (13) (after parsing EINDHOVEN correctly) BEEN (23) MYSTERIOUSLY (26) SUBJECT (20) and I Googled them together and got the real quote and the author.
So, CHEESE is the theme.
Quickly I changed Comet to COMTE (12), Bier to BRIE (6), FATE to FETA (30) and entered ROMANO confidently in 5d.
Since ‘silent’ was the extra word and not ‘sides’, corrected 1d, as BANK CARDS allowing NUANCES(10) to be entered. Entering BAPTISTERY in 1a, also allowed PSALM (2).
Rest, as they say, followed. 3d LOI. And saw the author in: 3d/25d
Liked these two clues:
– Dodgy company turning up in Abaddon or (the) netherworld
– About 4″ in dead tree crumbling, home to climbing vermin?
Note to self:
considering un-parsed entries wastes more time than the time it may take to parse correctly
I noted at the time that Pangakupu had set the Genius, the IQ (as Phi) and the EV (as Kcit) all in the same week.
I also recalled, for no particular reason, that ILCHESTER and LIMBURGER are given special note in Monty Python’s cheese shop sketch.
“Pray, what is the most popular cheese round these parts?”
“ILCHESTER, sir” … “it’s quite staggeringly popular in the manor, squire!”
… “is it?” …
… “and you haven’t asked me about LIMBURGER, sir” …
It’s a nice quotation, lending itself to a theme which Pangakupu has exploited imaginatively. I was slightly surprised that the quotation is not to be found in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, but it was easily discoverable online. I assume that ILCHESTER, despite being a brand rather than a cheese, was included because it formed part of CHESTERTON, and not because of any Monty Python connection!
Enjoyed this hugely, thanks Pangakupu, and to B&J for the blog.
I was another who had to change FATE at the end to get to the requisite number of cheeses.
Otherwise, a similar process to those who have already posted, checking every entry Caerphilly.
Really enjoyed this one, thanks Pangakupu.
The only clue I couldn’t really understand was 22A but I knew the answer just had to be NOMADIC.
Very satisfying. My notes would be very similar to those already posted by B&J and the previous commenters.
18D was the blocker for me, having got about halfway. I needed some help from my brother to get that one. Once that was in, the rest fell into place nicely.
Thanks Bertandjoyce – I was doubly lucky in that not only were a fair few clues cold-solvable (this is usually where I struggle with these Genius puzzles) but I got ENRON and BIER early on, which gave me a reasonably confident start in what might be going on. Then the same temporary stumbling blocks as others – ILCHESTER last in, had to look up pretty much every aspect bar THIRS(k). A great way to end the solving year, thanks Pangakupu. (and thanks Jay@3 for that link!)