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 - 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.

Incompatible - Setters' Blog and Solvers' Comments

It is strange how ideas are born. In the case of Incompatible it was as the result of a loss of communication in an IM chat between Logogriph and Eclipse when each lost sight of the other due to some minor electronic glitch. Once the momentary lapse was restored the talk turned to disappearing acts, invisible ink, the Magic Circle and illusionists. Inevitably the subject of crossword themes came up with mention of past puzzles and their unusual submission requirements. Soon the discussion began to weigh up the possibilities of a new twist on the subject for a potential puzzle and although the topic in hand began to dwindle away at this point it was not forgotten by Logogriph.

By the end of November he had constructed not one but two inter-related grids along with a list of extraneous words to be slotted in to the still unwritten clues. The concept of getting to a 'hole' could not be delivered too quickly to the solver, as that would almost certainly allow them to remove the intervening stages - so it was always going to be necessary to have some part-solve grid either by code or substitution.  The other feature to be incorporated, (which was somewhat dampened down in the editing process) was the INCOMPATIBLE feature, namely that initially, the unclued lights had NOTHING in common.  This in turn hinted to solvers to a circular message in the grid which encompassed the 4 isolated squares.  Filling in two identical grids with different words and different constraints is tricky to say the least, but it can be done - it was always going to be marginally easier to use the unclued lights a second time for the final message, than the try for a second circular phrase as well - while that leaves the isolated squares unfilled second time around, it seemed appropriate that even at this stage, they were little 'nothings'.  We wondered about some of the words that had to be used - is there really a plural for SMORGASBORD, as well as the provision of the letters of the unclued lights second time around, but having settled upon the second grid, it was over to Eclipse for the somewhat tougher challenge of realising Logogriph's theory (comparison with James Patterson's current "book-writing" methods are probably fair at this juncture!).  Cue Eclipse.

Using the time-honoured  technique of stop-start Eclipse proceeded to take over a month to come up with the list of clues. Part of the problem was trying to juggle two lists of words - one, the normal list of words to be clued and the other the list of words each of which would become incorporated into the body of a clue as an extraneous word to be identified and removed by the solver in stage one. In this task it became difficult to keep track of which words had been earmarked for which clue; or more specifically which words hadn't! The solution was to move both sets of words onto a single page each aligned to an outer edge leaving acres of blank lined space in between for writing the actual clues. As the extraneous words were used up they would be crossed out with the stroke of a pencil. A change of heart would see them reinstated with the judicious use of an eraser. Simple!

With the clues finally written there came a short spell of editorial amendments and we were ready to submit the finished article for publication. With the final requirement of the solver being so unusual - i.e. submit a hole in the paper and nothing else! - it was felt that this would appeal to the Magpie's sense of the unusual if not the downright whacky, so off it went for their perusal.

The original 2nd message ended THIS HOLE AS YOUR ENTRY, which became MAIL HOLE AS YOUR ENTRY through the Magpie editing process - MAIL being the only real word that could still produce a valid grid with all the other prevailing alternatives. And with that we had an acceptance - in the truest sense of the phrase, "nothing ventured, nothing gained!"

Hope you enjoyed it - and judging by the comments below, many of you did!

Those who managed to go the 'hole' hog commented through the Magpie as follows:-

• Loved this puzzle, shades of Dimitry's New Year Resolution; I've been hoping to see a similar jigsaw resolution ever since and here it was. Entertaining but not too difficult - agree with C.
  
• Very good indeed, this, if only for its novelty, and could almost have been the Magpie puzzle. No chance of guessing the result here without following all the steps: a good mystery tour from start to finish. In 27a 'Jonathan' seems to mean 'American', but the justification's lost on me.
• An excellent idea, although I wonder if the extra words might have been chosen and ordered more carefully to introduce some red herrings, perhaps in their initial letters. I thought the clues were probably only 'B'-grade and were a little disappointing, although the constraints of the specific extra words must have made them hard to write. The final submission was very satisfying.
• It's always nice to have a puzzle with a solution is easily checked on the entry form, even if I was a little miffed that I couldn't actually produce a hole in my electronic entry.
• I enjoyed this one. The extra words, viewed as a whole, seem very eccentric until the first instruction is revealed, generating a whole new puzzle. Buy one get one free! But I was a little nervous about my solution. I couldn't find anything to go in the blank squares in the second grid, and I know all too well that loose ends like this can mean I haven't understood something crucial.
• I love this type of crossword - the one whose hidden message asks you to do something different.
  But the extra twist in this case - to cut out the entire grid - was genius ! My girlfriend cannot understand why I'll spend days on a crossword and then be happy when the end result requires me to post in a hole in a piece of paper !!!
• Nice grade C with some clever clues and well-disguised redundant words, especially when one considers that the setter had to use the actual entries for the second grid and not just words with suitable initials, for example. 
• There’s an uncomfortable feeling of having been a complete twit when one sends in a blank grid as instructed. Surely they can’t mean it? How will they know I’ve got it all right?
  But to fill a grid in, erase it all and fill it in again differently and then cut it out and throw it away takes a real effort of will.
• Brilliant!
• I suppose a puzzle cannot be truly minimalist if the solver has to do some work before submission. Eclogue must though have now established an unbreakable record for marking time.
• I'm looking forward to kicking myself when I see what Yogi's Car was up to. Enjoyed up till then. Thanks Eclogue
• I became rather frustrated, and even irritated, by Incompatible by Eclogue. I completely failed to get my head around all the ‘incompatible’ stuff. Right at the beginning I could not see how the seven unclued entries could be described as being incompatible. The preamble didn’t state that they were incompatible with anything else so they must be incompatible as a set. However, all seven words have similar meanings so, in terms of meanings are consistent/compatible and I could not identify any other obvious characteristic by which they could be described as incompatible as a set. I did complete the puzzle, with a refilled grid, but I had no confidence in what was required to be submitted. Perhaps my ageing brain is incompatibe with Magpies – I’ll give it another month and see! 
• An example of what I at least regard as the perfect crossword: challenging clues, penny-drops, further work, but all the time being led through the maze by comprehensible means, rather than the ususal Magpie Great Leap Forward or Guess-what-I'm-thinking. How will the e-mailers send a hole? Should be easy to check. 
• Got the message - refilled the grid then lost it. Hope I remembered the instruction correctly...
  Just redid it - a bit ambiguous?
• Well it saves checking the entries on the submission page!
• Hmm. This sort of endgame produces a serious bout of nervousness, as I try to convince myself that I really do need to follow the instructions literally. It worked with the lone S in Pointer's Hiding-Places, so it had better work here!
• Loved it! Step by little step, all became clear.
• Bags of originality and inventiveness here, going one better than the previous variations on "submit a blank grid" that I've seen. Lovely idea to use superfluous words to generate an alternative grid and great to see a new way of coding an instruction. My only minor issue was with the choice of title and preamble wording - I was left with a vague feeling that there must be a nuance of "incompatible" that doesn't seem covered by the Chambers definition. But that didn't stop this being a top quality puzzle.
• The instruction in the first grid was clear enough and the second grid came together easily. The second instruction also appeared to be unambiguous. However if I have misunderstood this instruction, my submission will look pretty silly. The incompatibility has produced the ultimate in minimalist solutions (I hope!).
• Ha Ha! I don't think we can ever have a more minimalist return.  I haven't seen James over the summer, but I'd like to know how he's going to comply with the instructions on his electronic entry!
• The idea of mailing a hole is somewhat curious; I hope it is what is required.