Comments on: Guardian 24,740 – Brendan

By: Paul B

Paul B — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:02:28 +0000

I’m afraid I’m stumped too by Derek’s follow-up, but many thanks Neil for hearing me. Having received email once again from a certain source, I don’t know whether it’s as obvious as it seems to me, but I’d meant to say ‘lights’ and not ‘unches’.

And before I get another missive, I shall dumb it down:

‘Unches’ = unchecked (non-intersecting) white squares. ‘Lights’ = the bits you write your answer words into. Opposite of ‘darks’. Probably.

By: Neil

Neil — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:34:46 +0000

#34 – Oh dear! I’m lost again, already. Excuse me Derek, but which one of ‘us’ was “up to speed”, about what?

As my younger son once told me: “for a quite intelligent man, father, you can be really thick, sometimes. (Most of the time, I conclude, since I grew up). But I still resent that “quite”. Always watch out for “Father” instead of “Dad”.

By: Neil

Neil — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:05:27 +0000

So, what do we do this for, fellow saddos? To get our heads sorted? Thank you all for helping me to sort mine. I was struggling to understand, but now I do. And thank you Paul B for getting us wondering. I appreciate your apology, but your contribution made my mind work (and others’ too it seems). It all contributes to staving off senile decay. Or exacerbates it.

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:48:00 +0000

well one of of us was up to speed!

By: Paul B

Paul B — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:11:27 +0000

Well, yes those cities are indeed present in the unches, but that’s not what I meant. Sorry!

I was hoping to explain the cryptic relationship between the key answer and the hidden words (as the blogger hadn’t at the time understood it) but unintentionally I made things much worse. It was a mistake, and I apologise for it.

By: Dagnabit

Dagnabit — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:01:57 +0000

Neil, I think you’ve got it.

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:58:01 +0000

Ahah Dagnabit and Shed! (if you’re still there).

So, as I now understand it, according to Paul B, the cities are to be found in: MSCS; LORIEIY; VFANAEA; NWRSO; BIINU; RULIOUE; OSNSIAS; and NRTE – obviously. All in east Europe or Africa I suppose. I must say I prefer the CAIRO, GENEVA, ROMA etc. sequence.

By: Shed

Shed — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:06:21 +0000

In case anyone’s still reading:

I’d nearly finished this (but still not got INNER CITIES) and was thinking ‘Finally, a Brendan without a theme – and none the worse for that’ – when the penny dropped. Very satisfyingly. With Brendan, I sometimes think ‘could do better if he didn’t try so hard’, but I do think this was quite brilliant.

No one has pointed out that two of the ‘inner cities’ (Roma and Sevilla) are spelled as their natives spell them, not as anglophones normally do. But he understandably drew the line at entering Cairo in Arabic.

I also don’t understand what unches have got to do with anything. The cities are sequences of both checked and unchecked letters as you read across the completed grid.

By: Dagnabit

Dagnabit — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:56:15 +0000

Neil, I may be missing something but comment 24 sounds exactly backward to me. As IanN14 pointed out, the names of several cities appear horizontally among the across entries, especially where the first entry in a row ends and the second begins – such as CAIRO in row 2, GENEVA in row 4, etc. – whereas Paul B seems to be saying that the city names appear vertically among the down entries, made up of various unchecked letters. But I can’t see a single city name rendered this way in the grid.

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:25:32 +0000

Thanks for that Colin B. But I still don’t follow #24, above.

Apologies to all for going so wildly off topic: second para, #25.