A blank grid with no bars or numbers – and one of the longest preambles for a while…is Artix going to be playing games with our heads?
That preamble in full:
The two thematic players (to be deduced) have decided upon a rematch and chosen to
play ANOTHER GAME. Each clue contains an additional word that must be removed before
solving; the first and fourth letters of these words (read as a pair in either order) spell out
the rules. Five answers are too short for the space allotted in brackets; in each case, the
grid entry is formed by the answer followed by three empty cells. Clue numbers and bars
(which would display 180° symmetry) must not be entered. Once the game has been
played, solvers must highlight 21 cells showing two more recent match players as well as
an old champion who, in Artix’s opinion, might have beaten them all (although probably not
1ac in the game actually played). Chambers Dictionary (2011) is recommended, but does
not include one commonly used mathematical phrase.
I was gently chided (or chid?) for describing my last EV blog as ‘a bit of a slog’, and I have to admit my heart sank a bit on seeing the blank grid and anticipating the jigsaw fitting to come, especially when there are unclued thematics and blank spaces to be deduced – a bit like starting a jigsaw knowing there are a couple of pieces missing!
But, as it turned out, a bit of application and lateral thinking got me at least to ‘base camp’ of this Everest of a puzzle in reasonable time…even if it took a while to make the final push to the summit…
A little reconnaissance of the word lengths and that 180-degree symmetry is always a good idea before diving into solving a jigsaw – to try and get a mental image of where things might go. Two 12-letter thematics at 1A and 1D – at least we know where those missing pieces go – and they are matched by 12s at 8D and 36. The 7 and 4 at 9A and 11A probably make up the second row, and the 8 and 4 at 12A and 13A are probably row three… and this is where I hit lucky early on…
I had Bob HOPE at 6D and SHEEN at 5D – then EPHA at 13 – so maybe the E and P of EPHA intersect with the first E of SHEEN and the P of HOPE. So I pencilled those in and things proceeded reasonably smoothly from there.
On the lateral thinking front – all that talk of ‘players’ and ‘re-matches’ – as well as as ‘recent match players’, and an ‘old champion’ who ‘might have beaten them all’, did have me wondering if there was a chess theme. And as the crossing letters for 1A and 1D started to build up I soon figured that they could be BOBBY FISCHER and BORIS SPASSKY – two famous Cold War-era protagonists over the 64 squares.
So, if chess is the original game played, what is the ‘other’ game referred to by the title? I also came to realise that the three empty cells were all in the bottom right corner, and initially wondered if there would be a little game of ‘noughts and crosses’/tic-tac-toe in that 3×3 square…if only it had been that simple!
So I had a pretty nearly completed grid, and some blanks bottom right – but no idea yet what this other game would be
In the meantime the ‘first and fourth letters’ of the extra words started to take shape – I could see ‘Imagine big squares…’ and ‘…play…’ and, eventually ‘…moving blank square to…’, but the last few letter combinations seemed to be gobbledy-gook. Then ‘Imagine big squares are lettered a too…’ – that doesn’t make sense…?!
It took much blank staring and a couple of re-visits before the penny dropped, with a bit of punctuation:
“IMAGINE BIG SQUARES ARE LETTERED ‘A’ TO ‘O’. PLAY BY MOVING BLANK SQUARE TO K-O-N-M-I-J-F-E-A-B-C-G-H-D”.
The ‘other game’ is one of those sliding puzzles with a missing piece, and the blank square moves from bottom right to top right, shifting all the other pieces along the way. My first effort at this was to cut my pencilled-in grid into 16 squares and do this manually.
And the end-game? Hidden in the completed grid are three other chess players – Magnus CARLSEN, Vishwanath ANAND, and José Raúl CAPABLANCA. Check!:
By this point I felt as though I had climbed the Everest of puzzles – and was left gasping for air – ‘What the…?’, ‘Why the…?’, ‘How the…?’.
WHY? As a solver/metaphorical climber I, and you probably, solved it ‘because it was there’, to paraphrase Hillary & Tenzing. (And in my case, because it was my turn to blog it!) As to HOW? – how something like this came to creation amongst the shifting tectonic plates of Artix’s imagination – only he or she can maybe enlighten us?
A masterpiece of the EV genre – maybe not the hardest initial solve, although those pesky extra words took some winkling out, but certainly one of the most ingenious constructions/devices/dénouements I have come across.
Thanks to Artix – and also to fellow-blogger Kenmac, who spread the joy of the animated GIF grids, which help to cut 1000-or-so words from my already too-long blogs!…
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Length | Extra word 1 & 4 | Entry | Clue (definition underlined, extra word in bold) / Logic/Parsing |
| 1 | (12, two words) | BOBBY FISCHER | Thematic player #1 (12, two words) / Thematic deduction |
|
| 9 | (7) | I M | OVISACS | Leader of operational authority mixing noxious gas capsules (7) / O (first letter of operational) + VISA (authority, to travel) + CS (CS gas, noxious gas, synthesised by Corson & Stoughton) |
| 11 | (4) | A G | LOCO | Crazy great train (4) / double def. – LOCO being slang for mad/crazy, as well as short for locomotive |
| 12 | (8) | I N | ROSACEAE | Family in bed notice separate pages ripped out of trashy space opera (8) / anag (i.e. trashy) of S(P)ACE O(P)ERA – without Ps – pages |
| 13 | (4) | E B | EPHA | Measure used by Sephardi bakers? (4) / hidden word in S-EPHA-rdi |
| 15 | (7) | I G | MICATES | Revolutionary Acmeist supplies geriatric Muscovite, perhaps (7) / anag (i.e. revolutionary) of ACMEIST (to micate being to produce a mica, such as muscovite. |
| 17 | (4) | S Q | SEAL | Enclose seaquarium’s marine mammal (4) / double defn. to enclose, or seal something, and a marine creature. |
| 19 | (6) | U A | INURNS | Preserves for posterity improperly unearthed Norse ruins (6) / anag (i.e. improperly) of N (Norse) + RUINS |
| 20 | (6) | R E | SPRACK | Stretcher’s redesigned after special alert in Birmingham and Bristol (6) / SP (special) + RACK (stretching device, esp. in torture) |
| 22 | (6) | S A | NUMBAT | Australian digger squashes miners strike (6) / NUM (National Union of Mineworkers, in UK) + BAT (hit, or strike, someone or something) |
| 23 | (6) | R E | PEARLY | Explorer crossing large river rich in natural treasure? (6) / PEAR_Y (explorer, Robert Edwin Peary) around (crossing) L (large) |
| 24 | (6) | L E | ENTICE | Employers attract trainee (not apparently right at first) (6) / (APPR)ENTICE – trainee, without APP (apparently) and R (right) |
| 26 | (6) | T T | ARNICA | Medication American unlawfully tested outside of Maine (6) / anag (i.e. unlawfully) of A(ME)RICAN – without ME – Maine |
| 30 | (4) | E R | ODEA | Narcs going rarely after ordinary places of entertainment (4) / O (ordinary) + DEA (US Drug Enforcement Agency, or ‘narcs’) |
| 32 | (7) | E D | SONNETS | Child brings home degenerate rhymes (7) / SON (child) + NETS (brings home, as in earnings, or foraging?!) |
| 33 | (4) | A T | SMEE | Pirate agitating local bird (4) / double defn. – Smee is a pirate in ‘Peter Pan’, and smee is dialect (i.e. local) for a duck |
| 34 | (8) | O O | GIRLS | Retro Romeo in obsolete county knocked off old servants (8) / SL_IG(O) – Irish county, with O (old) knocked off, around R (Romeo) – all returned (retro) |
| 35 | (4) | P L | KIEV | “Visit Ukraine” publicity: that might be right answer in situ here? (4) / &lit-ish partial anagram – anag of VISIT UKRAINE without R (right), A (answer), or IN SITU |
| 36 | (7) | A Y | SOLA | Notes material suitable for lightweight army hats (7) / SO LA (notes in the sol-fa notation) |
| 37 | (12) | B Y | YANKEEDOM | Busy Americans almost pulled on way back (12) / YANKE(D) – pulled, almost, i.e. short of a letter) + EDOM (mode, or way, pulled back) |
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Length | Extra word 1 & 4 | Entry | Clue (definition underlined, extra word in bold) / Logic/Parsing |
| 1 | (12, two words) | BORIS SPASSKY | Thematic player #2 (12, two words) / Thematic deduction |
|
| 2 | (6) | M O | BISMAR | Mainland’s steelyard monopolizing 75% of state’s capital (6) / BISMAR(CK) – three quarters, or 75%, of Bismarck, state capital of North Dakota |
| 3 | (5) | V I | YACCA | Visitors used up deserted Atlantic isle’s wood (5) / AC (AtlantiC deserted by its middle letters) + CAY (island) – all ‘used’ up(wards) |
| 4 | (7) | N G | ISATINE | That gown is stuffed with lustrous indigo by-product (7) / I_E (that is) stuffed with SATIN (lustrous) |
| 5 | (5) | B L | SHEEN | Brilliantly slick female nurse (5) / SHE (female) + EN (Enrolled Nurse) |
| 6 | (4) | A N | HOPE | Vaudevillian agent’s carriage dropping Ollie’s partner (4) / (STAN)HOPE- carriage, without (dropping) Stan (Laurel), Ollie’s (Oliver Hardy’s) partner |
| 7 | (9) | K S | ECHINACEA | Herbal remedy supplementing sick Eastern republic with 10 mostly (9) / E (Eastern) + CHINA (republic) + CEA (most of CEAS, answer at 10D) |
| 8 | (12) | Q U | ROADSTEAD | Anchorage men capsized at sea with two dead: that’s uniquely tragic (12) / RO (OR, other ranks, men, in the army, capsized) + anag (tragic) of AT SEA + DD (‘dead’, twice) |
| 10 | (4) | A R | CEAS | Stop abortion. No termination. Enough said (4) / CEAS(E) – stop – without its last letter – CEAS being a variation of ‘sessa’ – Shakespearean interjection for ‘enough said’ |
| 14 | (9) | E T | PEPEROMIA | Plants record in three dodgy emporia (9) / anag (i.e. dodgy) of EMPORIA, around EP (extended play vinyl record) |
| 16 | (5, two words) | O L | SUM TO | Labour’s total up most hilariously when party’s leader quit (5, two words) / anag (i.e. hilariously) of U(P) MOST, without P (first letter of party, quitting) |
| 18 | (5) | K O | LARIS | After defections from both sides, Kirov polarised bits of Georgia (5) / middle letters (both sides defecting) of (PO)LARIS(ED) – the lari being a monetary unit (bit) in Georgia. |
| 21 | (7) | N M | KYANISE | Spending pound, sneakily supply means to protect wood from rot (7) / anag (i.e. supply, as in flexibly) of SNEAKI(L)Y, without (spending) L (pound) |
| 25 | (6) | I J | IDS | Vicious junior after Head’s sent down members of school (6) / SID (Vicious, punk rocker) with head (first letter) sent down to the end |
| 27 | (5) | F E | COGUE | Foreign vessel’s getting stick about reversing speed (5) / C_UE (‘stick’ used in snooker or billiards) around OG (go, or speed, reversing) |
| 28 | (4) | A B | INRO | Box arab during riot, losing it occasionally (4) / IN (during) + RO (occasional letters of RiOt) |
| 29 | (5) | C G | JELLO | NY grocer’s dessert is maybe donut after work? (5) / JELL (gel, begin to work, or come together) + O (donut) |
| 31 | (4) | H D | DEEN | Rising poverty row in hard Elizabethan times (4) / DEEN (din, noise, Spenserian, or Elizabethan) = NEED (poverty) rising |
Great blog, MC_Rapper, and impressive stuff with the animated grid!
I enjoyed Another Game more than just about any other puzzle I have solved in the past couple of years. My solving experience precisely mirrored yours, in that I was able to postulate the position of the thematic entries strsightaway, got entries in the grid quickly, but then slowed down when I tried to decipher the letter string at the end of the thematic message.
Great work by Artix – although I suspect that Anand could probably see off Fischer, Spassky and Capablanca with ease, so don’t necessarily agree with the setter’s assessment of their relative abilities!
For myself, I’m sure I would never have been able to crack this without the inspired/ lucky guess at the two unclued players. It just came to me, for some reason, and I was able to build the grid around them. I may have had a little bit of help in deciphering the endgame if it comes to that but it was still a terrific puzzle and the sort of idea that I can barely imagine coming up with, let alone making work. Wow, Artix.
This was tough but well worth the effort. I kicked myself for not getting the players earlier as I followed that contest very closely at the time, but I kept on thinking about tennis. I never knew Fischer was interested in sliding block puzzles and something of an expert. I used a spreadsheet to move the blocks around and, being a subscriber, I was able to print out a clean copy for the final version (I don’t like using pencils).
I suppose there’s also been a great deal of thought gone into the construction of the final grid to ensure that other possible chess names don’t appear. In particular he’d have had to avoid Mikhail TAL, whose name almost appears a couple of times! He got absolutely creamed by Fischer in 1972, but still an awesome player, and not the only fairly short name in chess to avoid. Just adds that extra touch of skill in making this puzzle.
This was doubly worth the effort as I have just seen that I have won it this week. Thank you very much!
Hi mc_rapper, thanks for the name check. I printed the puzzle but didn’t even attempt it. I guessed Fischer and Spassky but that was about all 🙁 I have a tendency to run away from jigsaw type puzzles (except, as you alluded to, when it’s my week to blog.)
Great job with the animated grid, they are quite satisfying when you have “slogged” 😉 to put them together.