For St Agnes

Published in the January 2012 edition of The Magpie this puzzle was originally thought of as being suitable as an offering for the Christmas 2011 puzzle on the Crossword Centre. SGIII would have been its working title but in the event SGIII became something else and this became For St Agnes. Having expanded and improved the grid it was hoped it might be suitable for submission to The Magpie.  Ultimately, the editorial team there identified a further connection with St Agnes Day which occurs in January, providing suitable thematic timing also.

The subject matter: St Agnes's flower, the snowflake, of the genus Leucojum.

Jumbles in the entries led to 9 squares in the grid being comprised only of the letters SNOWFLAKE, these squares forming a 3x3 Sudoku pattern within the grid in which no letter of SNOWFLAKE was duplicated in any row or column of the Sudoku. A nod to the commonly held idea that no two snowflakes share an identical pattern.

Part of the reason for the change in setting priority on this puzzle was, as Logogriph found with increasing exasperation, the grid was an absolute swine.  There were a number of features that were to be retained - namely that the 'aisles' between the 3x3 Sudoku matrices were to contain real words rather than jumbles.  It was slightly ironic that ROSEWALL (a tennis player of yesteryear) attracted so much comment, given that this was not the original entry and the only one changed by the Editorial team.  It is only when a setter sits down and tries to work an idea through, that he concludes he's made a serious error of judgement and that what seemed like a good idea, is in fact potentially more trouble than it's worth.  The ability to come up with even jumbles using some combination of SNOWFLAKE, while maintaining both the Sudoku pattern required as well as grid symmetry is to put it mildly, somewhat difficult, and should only be undertaken when there's a Q in the month.   Logogriph let out a newly commissioned eulogy to St Agnes as a workable grid finally sat in front of him.  However, as we all know that's only half the story and little did Eclipse suspect that the task would prove just as tricky for the clue-writing.

Each clue held an extraneous word, the first and last letters of which formed two interwoven messages. One described the Sudoku nature of the puzzle and the other gave two descriptions of the word snowflake, both paraphrased from Chambers.

And finally the January connection: the feast day of St Agnes is commonly given as the 21st of January.

Given the huge amount of effort that went into this one, it was gratifying that the audience was suitably appreciative, as detailed below.

The feedback:

For St Agnes by Eclogue

I solved many of the clues in the top of the grid and noticed that there seemed to be a few Ks, but no more that one per row or column which made me think of sudoku. Then it wasn't too hard to guess the extra words in the clues leading to Leucojum and SNOWFLAKE.

I ended up trawling through Wikipedia's list of male tennis players (I would have gone through the females too if I hadn't found a suitable name among the males) to find ROSEWALL and determing the vital uchecked letter. I had been previously wondered if "became hostile" was SAW RED. I could have gotten his name from his appearance in the pre-match ceremony of the Australian Open men's singles final which was conveniently played just before the end of the month.

This was definitely this much gentler than the previous Magpie "Sudoku" puzzles, since the puzzle didn't just lead the solver to a Sudoku puzzle that was then required to be solved (well, it technically did, since the barred of cells and two possibilities for the jumbles in 42a and 37d were resolved by the Sudoku puzzle, but this is a trivial problem).

Patron saint of Sudoku? Winter precipitation? Loved this one, Eclogue. I particularly remember how solving the ‘inner puzzle’ assisted me complete the actual crossword, which presumably it’s supposed to do, with the whole jumbling thing going on. Cool – in more ways than one.

A triumph of grid-filling. Well done Eclogue!

Big fluke I solved this when I did: I'd done all except a couple of clues and was still wondering how the N/Ls would resolve in 37/42. While perusing Bradford for some other puzzle, I was turning a few pages when (on p 644 6th ed) 'St Agnes flower' leapt out (having nothing above, below or to the right of it), under the heading SNOWFAKE with Leucojum as the other entry. I later found 'St Agnes...' in Chambers would have provided teh same, but would I have looked it up? Can't say. With such heavy grid constraint, even with jumbles, a good effort to get so many unjumbles in. A very neat version of Su Doku.

Thoroughly enjoyable and an excellent puzzle at the end to show the symmetry of the positions in the grid and the different flakes.

Interesting concept, suitably picked for a warm January!

Not submitted because didn't quite finish. Virtually completed the grid and got both interlaced instructions.
Really enjoyed the challenge and just regret not starting at the beginning of January.

Thank you -- I liked this very much, and was surprised that it was possible to make a puzzle with this sort of Latin square in it. It might have been the Magpie Puzzle of the month.

However did we survive before Su Doku?

Prettily wintry. Slow progress to start, with the jumbles making the long intertwined messages hold out for longer than I'd expected, but soon enough the snowflake dropped.

A nice idea. I assume no two snowflakes are the same, though I haven't checked. I don't normally like jumbles, but was impressed by this one.

By far the most satisfying of the Sudoko themed crosswords I have ever done.

Puzzle of the issue.Enjoyed tremendously and the thematic elements blended well.

Is this 3D Sudoku?

Pleasing. There were several steps in the discovery of the theme and how it was to be applied. Had to use
Google to understand the title. Disappointed that, while doing so, I came across a plea for help in solving the puzzle!!

In the end I quite liked this but I didn't feel that way half way through when I was slowly - very slowly - getting individual clues, providing short answers and not much feedback. Then I picked out a key word from the interwoven phrases (I already had PUZZLE AND SQUARE, not forgetting CLUMP, but they weren't helpful) and juggled a few things to fit. Knowing the words to be removed made solving the rest somewhat easier but the realisation that there was a sudoku hiding in there made filling the remainder of the grid fairly straightforward and left but a couple of clues to complete - and understand as best I could. Finally I had to satisfy myself that there were, indeed, 25 answers entered normally and it took me some time to realise that "IN LOVE" was actually entered normally as I had entered the individual letters logically and not as words. All I now wonder is why we were told that 25, rather than just 'some' answers had to entered normally.

I am not very familiar with Eclogue but couldn't fault much. I would never have got from LID to TILE (in 11d), however, without knowing both and knowing that there had to be a connection. FILS and SELF also strained my understanding, but it wasn't important in the end - the complete puzzle, and that is what matters at the end, left no other options.

A clever idea, reasonably well executed and correctly graded, but who was St Agnes or, more to the point, what had she to do with snowflakes or snowdrops?

A classic C! And great fun.

A reminder of my one and only Listener prize - a bottle of bubbly for a sudoku of ROAST DUCK.

An excellent puzzle. The construction was impressive although I think it would have been improved if the jumbling had been less random (eg if answers had been jumbled if and only if they intersected the su doku arrangement, or something similar to keep the number of normal entries reasonable). Despite noticing the "coincidental" large number of W's and K's it took me until the grid was almost complete, and the messages obtained, before fully realising what was going on. The clues were pretty good (though I didn't like "quick" as an anagram indicator in 1ac) and fun to solve although I felt too many of the extra words stuck out a mile - nonetheless, the 'interweaving' meant that the messages didn't appear until the majority of the clues were solved. The last to fall were AWEEL, SKEGS and finally ROSEWALL, a name I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know. But for a few minor imperfections this would have rated as the best of the issue.
Fine piece of construction, which eventually rescued me from an error. Most enjoyable, congratulations Eclogue.

Quite a tough C as crosswords with jumbles are likely to be. Clues were straightforward so the puzzle made slow but steady progress.

A nice idea, but curiously unsatisfying for the work involved in bringing this to a conclusion. I'm not sure if the nine SNOWFLAKE squares are meant to look like a snowflake, but I'm not sure that they do!

Some clues were made very hard by the absence of usage indicators, which I thought were now meant to be used in all Magpie clues. For instance, AWEEL at 29ac is Scottish, and KEN at 33ac is South African. There were more examples.

6dn appears to be ambiguous, as once SLOW is removed, the clue simply reads 'Beat up game with clubs', so the UP could relate to either FLOG or GOLF. It doesn't really matter as the entry is jumbled, but either word could be an answer to the clue. For that matter, the word SLOW is not the best choice of superfluous word, as 'slow game with clubs' could well be a description of golf!

Other minor quibbles - at 20dn, FENS is plural, but the definition (marshland) is singular. More importantly, at 50ac, LEW is not a diminutive form of LUKE, but of LOUIS/LEWIS, as per Chambers.
A very clever construction by Eclogue. The puzzle itself was not too difficult to solve once I realized the theme was Sudoku.

Seasons Greetings III

Seasons Greetings III

A relationship of sorts appears to have developed between Derek Harrison's Crossword Centre and the Eclogue setting team. With two Christmas crosswords (Seasons Greetings I and II) and an Easter Special (Cross-over) to our credit we ventured to offer a third Christmas puzzle, serially labelled Seasons Greetings III!

The puzzle that appeared was not the original. This had involved a much more intricate grid but difficulties in the design stage forced a rethink, which became increasingly complicated. As a result, Logogriph set the grid to one side and commenced an altogether different idea. Once again a seasonal theme was incorporated into the puzzle. If there is an aim of the Eclogue 'brand' it is to stretch the boundaries somewhat on existing or new ideas, whether it be themes or derivations of them. We have already provided some fairly convincing Christmas cards, a puzzle that involved a web finale and one where the ultimate solution was a hole where the grid once was. Therefore a puzzle that extols the Xmas theme through its nominal collection with Christmas Island seemed relatively modest by the precedent standards, but the idea of a Christmas jigsaw (I'm sure these must've been a tradition in households other than ours) and a little web-based research just moved the difficulty and interest up a level. All solutions were five letters in length and had to be fitted into the grid jig-saw fashion. In the completed grid two geographical names could be discerned in the two main diagonals and a search on the Internet would lead to the correct thematic location...a name of two words to be written beneath the grid for the final submission by solvers.

Derek and an American crossword enthusiast, Frank Pasterczyk, undertook the checking process and once their responses and suggestions had been dealt with Derek very kindly accepted the puzzle for publication as the Crossword Centre's December 2011 crossword. And so it was, in late May 2011, that Seasons Greetings III went into the pipeline to await its publication date.

We were in for a surprise. A few days after publication Derek wrote:
"The Seasons Greetings III is going well but Trevor and I are amazed at the choice of places that are coming with the solutions. So far we have had North carolina, New York, Milawaukee among others. Given that I announced that a "seasonal" puzzle was on its way, we have decided to mark all wrong. I'm not sure about the stats but I guess it's about 50% wrong. I never thought of any other answer when Frank and I tested the puzzle."

Eclogue replied:
"Thanks for this - Google is indeed a very dangerous thing for the unsuspecting crossword solver.

Unknown to us, Silver City and Murray Hill do both appear to be suburbs of Milwaukee, but the two spaces rather than one as well as the festive connotation make this a pretty poor choice. I struggle to justify the other choices, which look like bad guesses.

Google ranks the correct answer for a specific search as 9th (but still first page), Yahoo does not. However, a search in Wikipedia leads only to Christmas Island.

Presumably much of the commentary asks questions like 'why Milwaukee'? or similar, which must surely cause the solution to be doubted.

We may have inadvertently caused a trap, but it is an interesting albeit unanticipated one."

The statistician, Trevor Crowther, agreed:
"For what it's worth I concur with everything said. An 'inadvertent trap' sounds good. I am sorry for Eclogue that this has occurred. I certainly did not see it coming. Nobody has got any clue answer wrong yet. Sloppy searching when people had another month to ponder. Yes, it looks entirely plausible that they were guessing in hope.
I will hold the line and mark everything wrong except C.I. unless otherwise advised.
I do hope this does not detract from what I though was a really neat and fun-to-work-out puzzle."

In the event there were 19 incorrect out of a total of 52 entries - but a large proportion of the feedback was positive:

Seasons Greetings III by Eclogue CC prize puzzle Dec 11 Comments

[Added remarks by Trevor are in red]

There is a Silver Hill (pop est 1146) in North Carolina, and there are roads (for instance in Greensboro NC) called Murray Hill there too. There are neighbourhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with the two names, but the ‘incorrect’ answers do notallow for the puzzle’s festive title. The setters acknowledge that Milwaukee was an ‘unforeseen inadvertent trap’ for those using Google, but note that a Wikipedia search for each of the two ‘features’ would lead to the right answer.

1 This was great fun to solve, many thanks to Eclogue.

2 Thanks to you and Eclogue for an enjoyable puzzle, which was eminently solvable yet required enough fiddling to allow the solver a feeling of satisfaction on completion.

3 A pleasant enough solve, but a bit of a disappointment after the delights of I & II.

4 A great deal of cold solving necessary before one could start to fill the grid, which I don't really like, but some nice clues.

5 Slightly flummoxed by what goes under the grid. The preamble implies a single location while there are two lines. The two diagonals give MURRAY HILL and SILVER CITY - a bit of Googling unearths them as a pair of suburbs of Milwaukee. I spent a lot of time hunting around Oz, as Broken Hill is nicknamed SIlver City, and there was also a Murray Hill in Manhattan (sure to contain, one feels, a casino called Silver City...).

6 This brilliant little puzzle presented a daunting challenge, but it was fun to work out. The Seasons greetings clue (SALTS) should win some kind of prize.

7 Eclogue's seasonal offerings are a welcome regular feature now and this novel puzzle provided much enjoyment. After cold-solving about 80% of the clues, the 5-letter words could be arranged in their correct quadrants to reveal the diagonal features. I certainly envy Eclogue spending Christmas 'Down Under' - my parents have recently returned from a tour and it sounds like a wonderful place to live.

8 Thanks to Eclogue – great fun.

9 Very good puzzle, mostly common words, but the jigsaw aspect kept it from being trivial. And a nice ending that I did not see coming.

10 Eclogue created another Christmasterpiece!!

11 I enjoyed this puzzle very much. Please pass my thanks to Eclogue

12 This was fun. Happy Christmas!

13 Thanks to you and Eclogue for another Seasonal teaser. I submit an answer in which I am not totally confident. I think my grid fill is ok, but can only unearth Milwaukee as the location - it definitely is one correct conclusion, but I am not sure whether it will be the correct conclusion as there may well be Murray Hills and Silver Cities elsewhere.

Again this was a thoroughly testing, and by now traditional, challenge from Eclogue - thanks to them. It was a struggle to cold solve a good proportion of the clues, capped by the test of slotting them all into the correct places.

14 I sailed past Christmas Island once and to be honest it did not look a great holiday destination! I only hope Eclogue likes phosphate mines.

15 Merry Christmas Eclogue and thanks for a tough challenge.

16 A nice obscure location!

17 I started well and thought it wouldn't take long, but then about halfway I slowed down and after that it took ages! I almost gave up several times, mainly because of the need to cold solve all of the clues, but managed to keep going. I enjoyed the format, although no crossing letters meant it was a slog!

18 Eclogue had me stumped for some time. I think I got there in the end; congratulations to him for an interesting (and taxing) puzzle. I almost gave up with OTTEY!

19 I found this puzzle very enjoyable - a lot of cold solving but the clues were fairly straightforward. A quick search of Wikipedia confirmed Christmas Island as the destination.

20 Thanks to Eclogue for an entertaining puzzle with a nice denouement. I have to say puzzles where practically every clue has to be solved unchecked aren’t my favourite, but the clues were well written and most of them could be solved without a reference to hand, so I could carry it around with me and solve it on the go. It took a bit of persistence to find the thematic link, but nothing wrong with that. I liked the clue to OCTAL, but wasn’t sure about ESMEE, and the OTTEY definition was a little loose.

21 I thought that loved = ESMEE was a slightly dubious definition, and I still can't rationalise the wordplay for RURAL. Otherwise a very enjoyable puzzle - both the clue solving and the jigsaw at the end.

22 My thanks to the setter as I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, though it took me far longer than it should have. I think it would be fair to say that perseverance rather than skill got me there in the end.

23 I had Silver City and Murray Hill but was unaware of any location in which they both feature, so was reluctantly going to put New York as a best guess, fully aware that a good crossword should not leave doubt for a successful solver. I then finally took heed of the title and did a seasonal search with North Pole, Santa and such just in case, and came up with Christmas Island. I'm surprised and quite impressed that Google doesn't hit this one directly. Well spotted Eclogue.

24 Spent ages trying to justify Ottey until I discovered her on Wikipedia. Rosso is not in Chambers but an Italian adjective. I suppose you can talk about a glass of rosso rather like a glass of vino. Also needed the internet to find Christmas Island and the two features. There is a city called Murray Hill in New Mexico but no real mention anywhere of Silver City unless you pair it with Christmas Island. Apart from that, it was fun putting the words together! Just the final justification took a bit of time.

25 A very enjoyable Christmas Crossword. Many thanks, Eclogue.

26 This was very challenging and not sure if New York is the required location. Murray Hill and Silver City are certainly in NY on Google map. [Murray Hill yes, but I can’t see a Silver City in NY]

27 I had some gaps and some wrong answers, but in trying to force things into the required pattern I saw the correct answers emerging - most pleasing. The only thing I'm not happy about now is the location - after much googling it looks as though we could be in Manhattan or some other part of New York, but a more satisfactory answer seems to be Milwaukee, or if you require two words I'll put Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Regrettably, unlike the fictional premise SG3 was built upon, Eclogue actually spent Christmas in dear old blighty - maybe next year? And what odds for an SG4 to continue the series - Logogriph continues to spin increasingly tangential advent grids which are clued into coherence by the ever-patient Eclipse, so you never know. There are after all, only 11 Crossword Centre puzzles till Christmas.....!

Seasons Greetings III - the solution

CHRISTMAS ISLAND

The diagonals read MURRAY HILL and SILVER CITY, the highest point and part of the settlements on CHRISTMAS ISLAND.

ACROSS

SLIFE; anag ELF IS

ALARM; LAR(K) in AM

SISAL; hidden

TOFUS; anag UP SOFT less P

ALL-UP; ALL + UP

RURAL; (C)RURAL

STAVE; T in SAVE

IRONS; hidden

ESMEE; E + SMEE

ASSAM; rev MASSA

SASSY; ASS in SALLY less ALL

REALM; hidden

TITHE; anag I (one) + TENTH less N

OCTAL; composite anag CHOCOLATES less CHOSE

ROILS; R + OILS

SLITS; L in SITS

SLEET; LEE in ST

SALTS; T for VE in SALVES

LISPS; anag SLIPS

OTTEY; rev YET TO; def. is nickname

DOWN

LILTS; LT in LIS

ISLAM; anag CLAIMS less C

FAUVE; F for M in MAUVE

ELPEE; anag PEEL + E

ATRIA; rev

LOURS; LO + UR + S

AFROS; hidden

RUANA; U in anag ARAN

AIOLI; AI + anag OIL

STIES; anag SITES

SHLEP; H in SLEP(T)

YESTS; S in rev STEY

ROSSO; SS in ROO

ECLAT; EC(City) + LAT

ATILT; AT + IL +T

LATTE; T in LATE

Seasons Greetings II

Following the successes of Seasons Greetings on the Crossword Centre in December 2009 and its Easter follow-up, Cross-over in April 2010, Derek Harrison broadly hinted that another seasonal offering from Eclogue would be received favourably. And so it was that sometime in late May 2010 it was decided to compose another Christmas-themed crossword, also called Seasons Greetings. Logogriph got to work on a grid which was to be populated by entries subject to the Letters Latent type clue and constructed in such a way that highlighting vowels in a central square spelled out the letters XMAS and letters omitted from the entries gravitated to the perimeter to read "Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the new-born king." The final twist was to reverse the word TO in the perimeter so that the four corners, instead of spelling LENT (the wrong season!) spelt NOEL.

Next, the task of writing the clues fell to Eclipse. As well as the requirement that they be of the Letters Latent type it was also necessary to provide a misprint in the definition part of each clue in order that the corrections to the misprints provide a necessary instruction with regard to the highlighting and shading requirements. With no real deadline to adhere to Eclipse went at this task with all the speed of a Christmas pudding being cooked. After two months and a fair few re-writes a list of clues was finally ready for Logogriph's perusal. A spot of fine tuning saw a couple of last-minute problems resolved and with that Eclogue deemed the puzzle ready for submission.

So off to the Crossword Centre went the latest Seasons Greetings for consideration. within a couple of days the verdict from the checkers, Derek and Frank, was good. Seasons Greetings would be acceptable for publication without any further editing. Excellent news - but Derek went further, saying it reminded him of an Apex puzzle. Praise indeed.

But what did the punters think - well, 24 made it over the finish line and made the following comments:-

- Apologies for leaving my submission to the eleventh hour - I think that indicates this was a stiff challenge from Eclogue, and one that was certainly worth the effort for the endgame. I did struggle at first with the letters latent, and I think that if I hadn't struck lucky with the first three letters I entered at the top (ARK) enabling me to guess the entire perimeter, then I may not have got much further. With the extra help the latent letters gave I was able to make progress and was delighted to see the Seasonal Message appear with the highlighting of all vowels and letter Ys in the central 10x10 section.

- Wonderful puzzle. Thank you.

- Thank you for an enjoyable contest.

- Thanks for this. I like a hard puzzle, but with the LL and misprint in every clue I thought for a while it might defeat me. Very clever construction.

- Misprints AND letters latent - are you a sadist or something!! Add to that some (to my mind) very tough clues and you have a surefire recipe for indigestion at Christmas! This took HOURS and HOURS of slog. And why highlight AND shade? Do you think we have nothing better to do? (I bet it was just to get a message of the right length!).

- Still haven't solved all of it (27 across - cascara? - that seems to be the only possible answer, but why?) but I have had ENOUGH already!

- Happy new year and all that. Must go back and find my life. (Only kidding - I think).

- Good fun – and a bit harder than some recent ones. Many thanks.

- Brilliant grid construction.

- This took much longer than it should have done - an excellent thing in these snowy times.

- I enjoyed this puzzle. It seemed terribly hard at the beginning, but once I got going I continued swiftly to the end apart from a few struggles with some of the very short words with convoluted clues.

- I enjoyed this fairly challenging puzzle and wish you and Eclogue a Happy Christmas.

- Some fiendishly difficult cluing until the plot began to unthicken.