A stunning double puzzle using a novel device (and a misleading pseudonym)
The special instructions read as follows:
The puzzle is a safe. Solvers must reveal its contents using four dials, applying each to a quarter of the clues. Dial by dial in clue order, certain letters give a property of 23 cells to be highlighted:
Dial 1 clues: extra letter indicated by wordplay
Dial 2 clues: first letter of an extra word
Dial 3 clues: letter omitted by wordplay
Dial 4 clues (normal): clue’s first letter
There has been considerable ingenuity from setters in the Genius series in recent months. Last month we had the 3D puzzle from Pangakupu, and in April we had the two-stage puzzle from KGB. This puzzle had hidden depths. First, it was necessary to solve and classify the clues. It wasn’t always obvious which category any particular clue belonged to, and my initial list of letters comprising the four dials gave a somewhat garbled message. I have set out below a list of the clues classified by dial, with the key letters spelled out. Eventually, with some reverse engineering, the message became clear: CONTAINS AMELETTE RASTODAY SCRYPTIC. Adjusting the spacing, this reads: CONTAIN SAME LETTER AS TODAY’S CRYPTIC.
The Genius is always published on the first Monday of the month; the Guardian Cryptic for Monday 6 July was by a new setter, Caius, instead of Vulcan as had been expected. It transpired that this was not a coincidence, and indeed I suspect that Caius and Soup are one and the same. I hadn’t solved that puzzle but downloaded the grid and proceeded (with help from Eileen’s blog) to fill it in. My first thought was that perhaps both puzzles used exactly the same letters, but that wasn’t the case. It then occurred to me to overlay one grid on the other and see whether there were any duplications. Given that the two puzzles used different grids, there were not too many pairs of cells to check, and a pattern (shown highlighted in the grid below) began to appear. The following items, which might be concealed in a safe, emerged: DAGGER, FAKE ID, DIAMOND RING.
Dial 1 clues (extra letter indicated by wordplay):
11 ac: C
25 ac: O
28 ac: N
31 ac: T
2 dn: A
8 dn: I
20 dn: N
24 dn: S
Dial 2 clues (first letter of an extra word):
1 ac: A
13 ac: M
21 ac: E
29 ac: L
1 dn: E
9 dn: T
16 dn: T
22 dn: E
Dial 3 clues (letter omitted by wordplay):
5 ac: R
12 ac: A
15 ac: S
19 ac: T
6 dn: O
7 dn: D
18 dn: A
23 dn: Y
Dial 4 clues (normal – clue’s first letter):
10 ac: S
14 ac: C
27 ac: R
30 ac: Y
3 dn: P
4 dn: T
17 dn: I
26 dn: C
Many congratulations to Soup on coming up with what seems like a completely novel puzzle and also executing it so well.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | HOLOGRAM |
Almost limitlessly whole, with zero mass, as is Arnold Rimmer (8)
|
| (w)HOL(e) 0 GRAM (zero mass). A Dial 2 clue, with Almost being the extra word. For those unfamiliar with the name, it’s a reference to the cult BBC sci-fi comedy, Red Dwarf. | ||
| 5 | RAFFIA |
Fellow welcomed by criminals lacking basis of moral fibre (6)
|
| F(ellow) inside (m)AFIA. This is a Dial 3 clue, with the initial R omitted by the wordplay. I wasn’t entirely happy with “basis of moral” being used to indicate the initial “m” which is discarded. | ||
| 10 | MANGANESE |
Style of art seen after sculpting metal (9)
|
| MANGA (style of art) *SEEN. A Dial 4 (normal) clue. | ||
| 11 | RACKS |
Rents shelves (5)
|
| (c)RACKS (rents). A Dial 1 type of clue, with the wordplay indicating the extra C. | ||
| 12 | EATABLE |
In the end, people want a kebab which’ll be possible to swallow (7)
|
| Last (“in the end”) letters of peoplE wanT A kebaB which’lL bE, with an extra A omitted from the wordplay. A Dial 3 clue. | ||
| 13 | TRODDEN |
Trampled and thumped mercilessly in the head by two short men (7)
|
| T(humped) ROD DEN (two short men). The extra word to be omitted is “mercilessly”. | ||
| 14 | DIOXIDE |
Chinese No. 1 visiting electronic component compound (7)
|
| XI (Chinese Premier Xi Jinping) inside DIODE (electronic component). A normal clue. | ||
| 15 | SINGED |
Burned some King Edwards (6)
|
| Hidden in King Edwards; the initial S is omitted in the wordplay. | ||
| 19 | HERETO |
Steel core in lead casing for this object (6)
|
| ET (core of stEel) inside HERO (lead); the T is omitted by the wordplay. | ||
| 21 | DALLIED |
Employer wasted time, passed over everyone (7)
|
| ALL (everyone) inside DIED (passed). “Employer” is the extra word. | ||
| 25 | DESTROY |
__ __ exemplify ‘ruin’? (7)
|
| You have to fill in the blanks to read “Does Troy exemplify ruin”? The O in “does” is the extra letter. | ||
| 27 | AMNESIA |
Remembering a name is tricky with this! (7)
|
| *(A NAME IS). If not an & lit, then at least a semi-& lit. | ||
| 28 | SERAI |
Bad weather in Kent caravan site (5)
|
| SE (South-East, or Kent) RAI(n) (bad weather). The final “n” is the extra letter. | ||
| 29 | OUTNUMBER |
Have more than one rum – but long, not neat (9)
|
| *(ONE RUM BUT). “Long” is the extra word. | ||
| 30 | ADAGES |
Years after Christ’s birth, wise men discovered Proverbs (6)
|
| AD (years after Christ’s birth) (s)AGES (wise men). I thought that “discovered” implied removing letters from both ends of the word, but in fact here it refers only to the initial letter, making this a normal clue. | ||
| 31 | RANDIEST |
Psychic debunker with screen turned on to max (8)
|
| (James) RANDI (famous debunker of fake psychics) (t)EST (screen). The first T in “test” is the extra letter. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | HUMMED |
Stuck moving forward at first, eventually was busily active (6)
|
| GUMMED (stuck) with the first letter (“at first”) moving forward from G to H. “Eventually” is the extra word. | ||
| 2 | LENGTHIER |
Boiling heat? Linger, taking more time (9)
|
| *(HEAT LINGER) with A being the extra letter. | ||
| 3 | GEARBOX |
Punch with seething rage on top part of car (7)
|
| *RAGE, BOX (punch). A normal clue. | ||
| 4 | AXE-HEADS |
Tools to dispose of board (3-5)
|
| A simple charade: AXE (dispose of) HEADS (board). Another normal clue. | ||
| 6 | A PRIORI |
A perfectly reasonable, intrinsically rational inference – from what goes before? (1,6)
|
| Initial letters, with the O being the omitted letter. | ||
| 7 | FACED |
Stood opposite transport café (5)
|
| *CAFE, with D being the letter omitted by the wordplay. | ||
| 8 | ARSENIDE |
Get up, Ed – and, in getting up, reveal poison (8)
|
| AR(i)SE, IN ED (rev – “getting up” in a down clue). The “i” in “arise” is the extra letter. | ||
| 9 | LENTO |
Fast trumpet concerto’s closing slow passage (5)
|
| LENT (fast) (concert)O. “Trumpet” is the extra word. | ||
| 16 | GUESSABLE |
Beau’s legs toned with exercise – no working out needed (9)
|
| *(BEAUS LEGS). “Toned” is the extra word. | ||
| 17 | RHODESIA |
I advanced to south of island in Ian Smith’s land (8)
|
| RHODES (island) followed by I A(dvanced). A normal clue. | ||
| 18 | HAMARTIA |
Travelling up Great North Road by electric vehicle, husband exhibits fatal flaw (8)
|
| H(usband), A1 (Great North Road) TRAM (electric vehicle) (all rev). This was perhaps the most (or only) obscure word in the puzzle. The second A is the letter omitted by the wordplay. | ||
| 20 | TERMITE |
Bird, arachnid and insect (7)
|
| TER(n) (bird), MITE (arachnid). The “n” is the extra letter. | ||
| 22 | LANGUID |
Generation eschewed speech, inward, vacuous, emotionless and lazy (7)
|
| AGE (generation) removed from LANGU(age), ID (InwarD – empty or vacuous). “Emotionless” is the extra word. | ||
| 23 | NYLON |
Thread evenly uncoiling from the end (5)
|
| Alternate (“evenly”) letters in uNcOiLiNg, reversed (“from the end”) with the Y being the letter omitted by the wordplay. | ||
| 24 | CARROT |
They transport compost: it’s dug into the soil (6)
|
| CAR(s) “they transport” ROT (compost); the root of the carrot digs in to the soil. The “s” in “cars” is the extra letter indicated by ther wordplay. | ||
| 26 | SYRIA |
Country east of Cyprus, bright and open to the north (5)
|
| (cypru)S (east, or right-hand side of Cyprus), AIRY (bright and open, rev (to the north in a down clue)). A normal clue. |
Thanks Soup and bridgesong.
After much effort I had: CONTAIN S (gibberish) DAYS CRYPTIC.
Only after adding “23cells” as subject to the phrase, I determined it is CONTAIN and S belonged to the next word. Quickly checked the few of the previous week’s puzzles and came up with nothing. Then it had to be today’s, I figured, and looked at Caius puzzle of the same day.
That for so long (until Thursday) the phrase could not be formed because of incorrect selection of letters for Dials 2 and 3, just meant that I had incorrect parsing though the grid was filled (quite shameful).
Then patient comparison of the two grids, yielded the 23 letters – the contents of the safe. Quite satisfying.
I think Caius is none other than Soup himself; it is ironic that Vulcan had to be bumped that day – a setter who also sets as Imogen. Now Soup has two avatars, like Imogen?
When I had the grid mostly completed, I saw the DAGGER and DIAMOND RING ninas before figuring out anything else, which seemed like plausible contents for a “safe.” My solution for the “dials” was also a little garbled, but I managed to infer at least “TODAY’S CRYPTIC,” which, with a little sleuthing, led me back to 30,051. The comment thread on Eileen’s blog includes comments from “Caius,” which were informative. This helped me isolate FAKE ID in the Genius grid, which I do not think I would have intuited otherwise. Finally, I managed to assign the clues to the correct dials, once I had guessed the correct message, so that locked everything into place. (I found isolating the “extra word” in the Dial 2 clues hardest, for some reason.) Incidentally, as an extra check, the dials are divided between four across clue and four down clues each–very tidy, in retrospect.
When I first saw the instructions I was reminded of a puzzle I had solved a few years ago on Derek Harrison’s Crossword Centre which involved the dials of a safe and ultimately revealing its contents and I eventually found that it was Cracking! by Soup, but I didn’t remember that Soup was the setter until I had found it.
I started solving this early in the month and had filled the top-left quarter of the grid and had a few other answers but then I didn’t get back to it until almost the end of the month when I manged to solve enough to make enough sense of the message to realise that 30a needed to be a normal clue, so ‘discovered’ meant to only remove the first letter, and the solution relied on the Guardian Cryptic puzzle from 6 July. Lately I have felt too busy to solve the Guardian weekday puzzles, so I hadn’t solved this one but I didn’t find it too hard to solve at the last minute. I know I could have avoiding solving it by looking at the blog or revealing the solution on the Guardian website but I didn’t want to. It occurred to me afterwards that I could have partially filled the grid for the other puzzle on the website using the letters from this puzzle and then used the Check All button to reveal contents. I also wondered if anyone could have spotted some of the hidden words in the other puzzle and commented on them in that puzzle’s blog without realising their significance, but apparently not.
Thanks, bridgesong and Soup.
Thanks. I found the dial 3 clues easiest to spot but a few I initially thought were dial 4 (entered by definition) turned out to be dial 1. Because I found TODAY I was looking for an anniversary message until I got about 2/3 of the clues and realised I would have to review my parsing which helped me get LETTERS and CRYPTIC.
I didn’t spot the hidden words until I had the grids overlaid.
HAMARTIA was a nho for me that needed checking, SERAI didn’t click for a long time even though I’d thought about ‘caravanserai’ when reading the clue and I had the SE.
LOI was DESTROY, despite being the only plausible answer I had to have everything else in place before being able to parse it. A tricky clue as it requires knowing which type of device to apply to the blanked words.
I agree that this was a stunning puzzle. There’s often a moment of great satisfaction when things fall into place in a Genius puzzle – this was one of the best.
Interesting that Rich@3 mentions finding the dial 3 clues the easiest. The last three clues I solved were all in dial 1, with an extra letter in the word play. I can’t decide if that means I find this clue type inherently more difficult, or if it’s just the way things fell on this occasion.
Many thanks to Soup and bridgesong
Excellent puzzle, many thanks to Hamish/Soup. I noted at the time that in Cambridge (where Hamish is based) Caius is pronounced “keys”. Keys to the safe perhaps?
Thanks to bridgesong for the blog.
Morning, folks. Thank you so much for the kind words, bridgesong – they and your time on the blog much appreciated.
This was a fun one. I had the idea years ago and did a version of this in 1 Across, but I’ve only recently worked it up into something for the newspaper. (And yes, Matthew@3, that was the other safe I did – a different device which I’ve not seen before or since!) I like puzzles with layers of endgame; my particular hope here was that solvers felt they were getting to the end and eventually deciphered the message, then had an ‘oh for god’s sake’ moment when they realised they had to do another puzzle. Giggle. It was pretty easy to set, actually, just identify two grids which didn’t have vast numbers of overlapping letters, then fill them in – for once, no computer program needed. I know it was too hard for some: I wanted this to be a several-session just-on-the-edge-of-possible puzzle. The four different dials made it very hard, I know, and I tried to be as fair as possible with the clueing.
Nobody’s mentioned the clue for DESTROY, which I thought was particularly neat, but thought I’d be pulled up here for it. I also liked GUESSABLE and OUTNUMBER. DIOXIDE is a horrible word to clue.
It was very interesting to see the reaction to ‘Caius’ (which was indeed me) – I was trying to write a Monday puzzle, which I don’t usually do, and it looks like I got most of the way there but with a few raised eyebrows. Jay@6: That was indeed the reason for the pseudonym; Caius to the safe, innit. (I told this to Boatman and got an ‘Oh for heaven’s sake’ for my trouble…) In hindsight, though, I wish I’d given the grid to Vulcan, as that would have been an even neater disguise.
The only other thing I wish I’d done is disguised the contents more so they were just not spottable in a way that Cineraria@2 did – I believe someone did spot them in the Caius puzzle and posted about it here, then had their comment swiftly redacted (thanks, Eileen and RobT who spotted it!).
So, thanks all – Bridgesong for the blog, my amazing testers Andie (in the mountains of the USA) and Dave (London) who pull me up on all the things I hope they won’t notice but do, the lovely people on the crosswordsolver.org forum who give people just the right level of hints (but no spoilers) and of course all of you who solved it and/or comment. Back soon, I hope.
PS HAMARTIA is mentioned in the poem which was printed in the order of service at Araucaria’s funeral (at which I sang as part of a quartet from Cambridge). It was written by Mary Holtby, his sister.
He understands the meaning of Hamartia and Hendiadys,
Can name the Tribes of Israel and inform you what a Naiad is,
He soars above our dullness like a gleaming helicopter, a
Magician, or an eagle, or those curious Lepidoptera,
Which gaily cruise the continents, though storm winds seem implacable
And only by the experts can their enterprise be trackable.
As one who scarcely has the skill to trace a parallelogram
And from the dear familiar ounce has never learned to tell a gramme
I can’t decide if knowing him is pleasanter or scarier –
The man a famous critic calls ‘The Mighty Araucaria’
my particular hope here was that solvers felt they were getting to the end and eventually deciphered the message, then had an ‘oh for god’s sake’ moment when they realised they had to do another puzzle.
This was my first attempt to solve a Genius, and I can confirm this 🙂 In truth I spent some time trying to find a solution based on some sort of anagram of “today’s cryptic”, not quite believing that I could be being asked to solve a whole extra puzzle instead when I’d expected to be minutes from completion.
I hope they’re all as fun as that one was, many thanks Soup.
DuncT@5 I found the omitted letters easiest to classify because it was clear the clue wasn’t normal and I think there’s less latitude to disguise an omission than an addition as in dials 1 & 2, especially as most clues are going to be ‘non-Ximinean’ to fit the instructions.
Absolutely brilliant – I thoroughly enjoyed it – thanks Soup!
Very clever. I thought there was something off with that Monday puzzle when it was published in that it was quite a bit more difficult then we would expect from our regular Monday setters. Glad the mystery was answered.
I filled the grid but obviously made a mistake with the alterations as my 4 dials had different numbers of letters. Could work out ‘today’s cryptic’ then just tried everything until some words came out. I will go back over it later and see where my errors were.
Great work as both a crossword and act of coordination.
An incredible work! Many on the Crossword Help Forum have rated it as the best ever.
That took me all month. A few misclassified to begin with (26D I had as missing “S” in wordplay at first). Eventually worked backwards from extrapolating what I had into a sensible message. Another backwards step in filling in some missing cells from the other cryptic. I can’t imagine how one goes about constructing one of these.
Just magnificent — many thanks Hamish.
(and to bridgesong for the expert dissection, of course)
A truly brilliant piece of setting – Hamish/Soup (from Downing College, I understand) gets better and better. Indeed, as bridgesong says, this is comparable to the KGB 3D and the double puzzle from Pangakapu, all three of which were near DNFs for someone who believes they have managed all 278 … So I think they are getting harder – with, in this case and the extra May puzzle, some imaginative work from the editor. I feel we all need a pat on the back for persevering and getting there in the end, but a big slap for bridgesong – and a hammerblow for Hamish …
I have never posted on this site before, but I am emerging from the shadows to join in the celebration of this remarkable tour de force.
Yes, some of the clues were hard to categorize in their respective “dials”, but that hint of frustration just made the final coming-together all the more satisfying.
Thank you Hamish/Soup/Caius for this/these expertly crafted puzzle/puzzles. One (or two) of my all-time favorites.
Aw, thanks folks, this means a lot.