Decline and Ball

Eclogue's puzzles tend to stem from a certain cause and effect.  A conversation here, a dvd watched, a book read and "Decline and Ball", our latest puzzle in the Magpie series is no exception.

In May 2011, Logogriph won the Enigma puzzle (entitled 'Perplexing Patio') in the Prospect magazine for which the prize is a recently published book with a mathematical bent.  On this occasion , the book in question was "Perfect Rigour" by Masha Gessen, which narrates the background, build-up and aftermath of Grigori Perelman's proof of the Poincare Conjecture, one of seven Millennium problems for which the Clay Mathematics Institute offered a $1 million dollar reward for verifiable proofs.  To date, it is the only one to be proven.  Like Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem - this is the sort of work that really should be far more widely known (though not necessarily understood), but will hopefully have had an engaging appeal with the Magpie fraternity.

The conjecture states:

"Every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere."

As Wikipedia helpfully describes:

"For compact 2-dimensional surfaces without boundary, if every loop can be continuously tightened to a point, then the surface is topologically homeomorphic to a 2-sphere (usually just called a sphere). The Poincaré conjecture asserts that the same is true for 3-dimensional spaces"

There have been various crosswords in recent times on mathematical feats or impossibilities (Mash's Listener Salver winner based on the Klein Bottle, being the most recent that springs to mind),  so this seemed appropriate fodder, but needed to be reduced to a more accessible form.  The idea of using a circular diagram as a torus to illustrate the general conjecture was always going to be a good starting point, as was adding the complexity of running lights around the grid entry.   Subsequently, a similar mechanism was used in the construction of "Seasons Greetings IV by Eclogue" which appeared on the Crossword Centre website in December 2012.

Logogriph had trouble with the variety of possible published spellings for Mr Perelman's given name, before settling on using the Anglicised equivalent of Gregory.  This was never designed to be a mathematically tortuous exercise, but one which marked an extraordinary feat of cerebral dexterity and of boundary pushing by a complex character growing up through an ever-changing Communist regime.

At heart, Eclogue can only admire the achievement and the principles which Grigoriy Perelman  (building on the Ricci flow work of Richard Hamilton) showed in refusing the $1m dollar prize fund which went with the proof. 

Even for the numero-phobe, the "Perfect Rigour" book is an excellent read, not least for the extremely positive portrayal of maths teaching in communist Russia, which demonstrates the great importance placed upon the subject as well as the merits of stretching the most able students. 

Our puzzle was undoubtedly far simpler than that faced by Hamilton and Perelman, but hopefully no less 'beautiful' or 'enjoyable'.  "Decline and Ball" appeared in Issue 123 of Magpie published in March 2013 as a Grade D (the toughest grade thus far given to an Eclogue puzzle by Magpie).

Magpie's Homage to Decline and Ball

We were delighted to receive the following responses from the Magpie audience:-

• I like circular grids but I got poincare early and wikipedia povided the other two rings so it didn't take long to complete. A very nicely constructed grid.
• After reading the preamble I thought this puzzle would be about Perelman and the Poincaré conjecture, and I was glad that I was right. I had enough problems with getting help from the checking letters, and I think it would have been quite a bit harder without having knowledge of the theme to help place the answers. 
• Having only solved a few clues I worked out which letters of POINCARE occurred in each answer and this was enough to determine how his name would appear in the central ring. After I had a few more answers I tried to work out where things were going in the other rings. GREGORY PERELMAN and CLAY MATHEMATICS INSTITUTE were obvious, but ONE MILLION DOLLARS and HAMILTON less so.
• MILLENNIUM PROBLEMS was pretty easy to see in the clues and then I needed some sort of MORPHISM. I can see that the Wikipedia article says that Hamilton's work involved spaces diffeomorphic to spheres, but I would say at best this property is involved in the answer rather than the question.
• D grade looks right. I ran out of time on this, but thoroughly enjoyed the work I put in.
• I've managed to solve 13 clues only: not enough to get a foothold in the grid. I can see a likely ...OMORPHISM and, at the end, PROBLEMS coming but no help from that.
• No: the notorious Listener torus puzzle left scars.
• This was one of those dam-burst puzzles, little feedback from the grid initially, before the messages made things much easier.  From a personal point of view I would dispute that Tarot cards reveal anything. Also I did wonder why "yoof" rather than youth?  These aside this was a fine treatment of an all but intractable theme.
• Luckily I knew of Perelman and the Poincare Conjecture beforehand: I suspect, once again, that less mathematically inclined solvers will have been at a huge disadvantage here. For me, very satisfying and a perfect justification for the circular/toroidal grid.
• Lovely treatment of an amazing theme - quite a story. Why did he not accept the $1 million and give half to Hamilton?
• Very difficult clues with highly obscure definitions and well-concealed misprints. I may have made an error - or misunderstood a clue; I do not understand how WARMER clues MEANER.
• The dreaded 'viewed as a torus' in the preamble - I can never solve torus problems - I think it's a spatial awareness issue. But hopefully that is a thing of the past having completed this puzzle. I still don't understand the overall concept (and thankfully don't have to) but it was a fascinating subject. The circular grid suited the theme and Eclogue employed a similar trick to their recent Crossword Centre puzzle which I actually found much harder. The biggest surprise in this puzzle was discovering someone turned down $1,000,000 in prize money.
• Surely much better than the month's Magpie puzzle, and certainly more interesting; but what a subject to inflict upon the general reader ... Diffeomorphism, indeed! I had heard that the Conjecture had been proved, but had forgotten and am glad to be reminded.
• Brilliant puzzle. I was more familiar with the theme than many solvers will be, I guess, although 'diffeomorphism' was new to me.
• Took a while for the penny to drop, largely because having solved 25,27,28 and 30 early, I had .H.MI.T.., which I led me to CHEMISTRY ! and a complete red herring. Then thinking about the preamble led me first to Hilbert's problems and eventually to the Poincare conjecture, and that quickly led to all the ring answers. Even so I had to carefully count the different clue types to finally solve 32., which of course had very simple wordplay (for an unfamiliar word)
• Didn't think that this rated a D. More like a B.
• Took a long time to get going - I HATE MISPRINTS! From the 10 answers I had, I worked out DIFFEOMORPHISM and PROBLEM. After some time googling TORUS I stumbled across PERELMAN, HAMILTON and POINCARE. With a couple of guesses to complete the rings I then set about solving all the other clues.
• It all seems to fit but there's a couple of clues that I don't fully understand. However, my answers do fit the entry constraint of four groups of 8.
• A definite D.
• I like circular puzzles but the entry method and grid meant that this was almost entirely a cold solve - indeed even finishing it off was a slow process of considering a lot of options. I wonder whether the third ring from the centre couldnt have been shared between two clue answers.
• Another inspired guess - declined ?mathematical prizes - after a slow cold solve of 14 clues cracked this one open.
• Very enjoyable torus puzzle which took less time to solve than Two Codes by Wan but which was definitely harder to break into. I started at radials 13,14, 16, 17, 18 19 and 20 and worked outwards until deducing millenium and diffeomorphism which speeded up the rest of the solve. PANGEN was my last entry. Very enjoyable, thanks Eclogue.
• Great puzzle. I thought it was unnecessarily cruel to avoid giving the lengths of entries only half of which were known for sure at the outset.

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 IV

Continuing the Seasons Greetings series at the Crossword Centre, Eclogue continues to strive for themes which are off the main-stream, which is no mean feat in the over-crowded jamboree that is the festive season these days.

The premise for this puzzle was the humble and much maligned Brussel Sprout.  Now Logogriph can't speak for anyone else, but he's quite a fan of this humble seasonal veg and was positively ecstatic to find websites dedicated to all things Sprout-like.   The grid was going to have to be circular (a first for Eclogue) and while there was a temptation to require solvers to use an entire green pencil or highlighter in a colour-fest-par-excellence, this was quickly rejected as to do so would have been seriously prejudicial to the rarely encountered purple side of the sprout family.

Also rejected, was any linkage to the works of the UK writer, Robert Rankin who regularly included Sprout humour in his earlier books, in particular the 'character' of Barry The Time Sprout, as well as such titles as Sprouts of Wrath and Sprout Mask Replica.  Indeed, Rankin's official fan-site is entitled 'Sproutlore'.  Pure escapism, but probably just a little too obscure for our seasonal conundrum.

That left a puzzle derived from Sprout varieties of which there are indeed many.  The first entry on a Google search of "brussel sprout varieties" yields the following site, which was the source for the thematic material:  Brussel Sprout Varieties

With an even distribution of sprouts through the rings of the grid, it became clear that a 50:50 compilation of inward and outward radials was going to be too tricky to achieve.  This puzzle actually coincided in its construction with a puzzle heading to the Magpie (of which more anon, we hope), which used an even distribution of entry between inward, outward and then two entries which looped through the entry section running off one edge to return to the edge of the same sector, one in each direction.  This seemed an excellent chance to repeat the measure, but even this necessitated the use of a couple of relatively obscure names.

Last year, SG3 caused some comment regarding possible (albeit unlikely) alternative locations for the thematic locations (which were in fact to be found on CHRISTMAS ISLAND).  So, with a hint of devilry, Logogriph included REBELS as a solution which given the method of entry was potentially reversible.  Therefore a correct entry needed solvers to actually count how many of each direction / start point were included in the 32 clue answers, or rely on luck.  Six of the ten incorrects unfortunately relied on the latter which deserted them in the final analysis.  

Each clue contained a misprint and in clue order these spell out a definition of the theme to draw solvers towards our humble vegetable hero.
In the testing stage some difficulty was encountered in the two afore-mentioned proper names, BROLIN, a one-time Swedish International footballer who eventually played for Leeds United and SHUAYB, an admittedly obscure Koranic prophet.   Although Logogriph is an ardent footie-fan (Eclipse probably less so), he was surprised that the nemesis of England's 1992 Euro campaign was not more widely known, particularly given the trail of turnip-emblazoned tabloid journalism that surrounded manager, Graham Taylor in its aftermath.  However, even without this knowledge, both names could be found through searching the Internet and it was eventually agreed all round that the puzzle was 'doable' and was accepted for publication.

In the final analysis, SG4 recorded 36 entries, of which 26 were correct.  The puzzle was set alongside an easier offering from Centrigram which garnered 56 entries of which 50 were correct.  So the sprouts didn't agree with everyone, but judging by the comments received, the challenge (for that is what it most definitely was) was generally enjoyed.

Thank you, as always to all solvers who commented and attempted our challenge.   Maybe, just maybe, there will be an SG5 in 2013 - hopefully, one that won't give additional indigestion!

Happy New Year.

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SOLVERS COMMENTS

1          This was a hard puzzle, made more difficult by the fact that I refused to believe, until the evidence was incontrovertible, that I was working a puzzle about Brussels sprouts.  I was hung up forever on 5, which I have concluded is the most Brit-centric clue ever written. Eventually the "NIL-ORB reversed" wordplay hit me, and copious Googling led to the soccer (yes! soccer, I say!) story.

2          My thanks to Eclipse and Logogriph for a very challenging puzzle.

3          I found this very difficult. Many good clues with some apparent but false misprints. It did not occur to me for a long time that East London could indicate anything but Cockney (the anagram was obvious, but the misprint wasn't), and #5, the last to fall, was baffling for this non-English non-fan of football… The preamble seems to allow, if not require, that the entries that exit the circle re-enter on the other side of the circle (e.g. the remaining letters of 1 go in spoke 17, etc.) but I could not complete the grid this way, so I guess that's not the intent. Also, I was expecting a Christmas theme; apparently the connection is that they're part of the traditional Christmas dinner in the UK (my condolences), but they aren't here, so this was elusive as well. Most of these, at least, are not in Chambers, and they're not all that easy to find on the Internet either; I found only one page that has all of them. Topnotch puzzle.

4          Was I being particularly slow, or was this a brute? I laboured for quite some time until I scrambled two segments together. I then very luckily guessed from L and U that the centre had to be Brussels, and my 'Bubb' had to be part of 'bubble' then did a search on sprouts and bubble and found a list of varieties, a few of which slotted into the grid (Bedford Fillbasket for sure managed to fix a lot of letters!).  From there, it was a question of part stumbling, part solving, part back-solving and I finally got there - I think. The last to fall was that accursed gypsies clue - I might have twigged it much sooner had it read 'gypsies heard ..' etc but for ages I just could not see how the wordplay related to faughs.

Anyway, I found this one hell of a workout, and Eclogue really tested my solving ability and patience, Very satisfying to finish, and once again an enjoyable seasonal test. Many thanks Eclogue, I look forward to being beaten up again next year.

5          This was a toughie but I really enjoyed it. I even like the subject matter!

6          Thanks and Season’s Greetings to Eclogue, whose puzzles are always a welcome challenge at Christmas. This was the hardest Greeting so far, and there were times when I thought it might go the same way as the Brussels sprouts on the children’s dinner plates. The theme was fun, and fell out quite early when I googled Royal Marvel, but it still took a long time to finish, with some devious misprints and definitions. The last clues to be solved were 1 to 4.

7          Much more of a challenge. Initially I misunderstood the preamble and thought that entries going beyond the rim or centre should continue on the opposite side, eg 26 at 10, till I realised this could not possibly work. With slightly more than half the clues solved, I was stuck for some time. Eventually I realised that the innermost ring could be Brussels and the great oracle Google came to my rescue to find varieties of Brussels Sprouts and let me fill the first and third rings. Anyway thanks to Eclogue for a stiff workout and for managing to incorporate both an Islamic prophet and a Swedish footballer into a crossword, and now I await an opportunity to show my knowledge that Bedford Fillbasket is a variety of sprouts.

8          Congratulations to Eclogue - this was very tough!  Caught as a homophone indicator? Amazing.

9          I quite enjoyed this, but the rather loose clueing has left me unsure of some of the entries.

10        Seasons Greetings was much more of a challenge, I really thought I would never solve it (and I'm still uncertain about a couple of the entries). I am much better informed than before about Brussels sprouts. My wife, who grows them, had not heard of any of the varieties, so could not help. I found 5 a problem, knowing nothing at all about football. Again, no clue really stands out, though 17 and 21 were elegant and tricky.

11         Rather hard to get through as there was limited ability to research sprout varieties (I jotted down eight from a website earlyish on, only to find seven unused - there are oodles and no one site seems to give more than a smallish percentage) and hence limited feedback from the grid.

12        It has taken me all week and was very difficult for one not acquainted with sprouts.

13        You either love or hate them, and I'm in the love club. That was a tough challenge to find the different varieties as without them I'd have struggled on a few clues.

14        Unlike previous Eclogues, we found the clues to be really tough, not helped by a few dodgy definitions and the unmentioned clashes . However, we got there in the end  [Unfortunately for this solver, there were no clashes - Eclogue]

15        This was a VERY tough puzzle I thought - probably the hardest of the year. The clues were difficult with some of the misprints very tricky to spot, plus the thematic material was not a message (as I expected) and completely (apart from Brussels) unfamiliar to me.   Still overall it was an enjoyable challenge…

16        I found this a real challenge and was nearly defeated before I really got going. There were some excellent and devious clues and the theme only became apparent at a relatively late stage. I particularly enjoyed the way that some of the misprints were disguised with some "red herrings".

17        Eclogue’s offering was a real challenge, as anticipated, involving an awful lot of cold solving until Brussels revealed its festering self in the central ring. I remain uncertain whether I really wanted to know as much as I now do about the varieties of sprouts I might continue to avoid. Still, an excellent puzzle, which kept me well occupied on a lengthy train journey.

18        …  struggled at the beginning with trying to cross over the middle to a quadrant on the other side.

19        Phew! One which I concluded with a sense of relief, or even release from torture, rather than fulfilment. The clues were very difficult and the thematic information very hard to find. Time and again I came across what looked like definitive lists of sprout types which still did not contain the ones I needed. Still, we complain if puzzles are too easy so thanks for a mighty challenge. (Pity about the misprint, Kinshasha, in clue 23).

The Answer is 5

Eclogue's first foray into the world of hard copy was aimed at the Independent's Inquisitor series. An initial tentative query was met with an encouraging response and so off went the puzzle for consideration. After a few months the news was good. The Answer is 5 would be accepted for publication in the Independent Magazine..but first a few editorial amendments. A brief and amicable exchange of emails between editor and setters followed and a number of agreed tweaks were made. The puzzle was set for publication.

If anyone ever managed to work out Logogriph's taste in movies, music and books, he would have to strive a lot harder for themes for crosswords.  However, that not looking likely in the near future, he can sit back, turn the DVD player on and settle down to a world of possibilities.   For this puzzle, it was a boxed set of Clint Eastwood's DIRTY HARRY movies.

Like most good thematic puzzle ideas, "The Answer is 5" was born through a fairly simple set of coincidences.  It is the two juxtaposed iconic scenes from Dirty Harry that set the ball rolling - the first occurs when Harry Callahan sees a bank robbery in progress:-

"I know what you’re thinking: "Did he fire six shots, or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well do ya, punk?"

In this instance, the answer is 6 as Harry produces a dry click on the next trigger pull after the apprehended robber asks 'I gotta know'.  However, in the final scene against the primary villain Scorpio.... the Answer is 5.

So, we've got a good premise for a before-and-after puzzle, where some form of modification is required from the initial grid-fill to the final one.  Next we have the useful facts that CLINT EASTWOOD and HARRY CALLAHAN both have 13 letters, so that looks promising and finally how many Dirty Harry films were there... the Answer is 5.  I think I can see a theme running here.

So the trick is going to be to construct a grid that has CLINT EASTWOOD initially at 5 (probably down, and probably central) which converts to his on-screen alter-ego.  Real words, before and after is an expected pre-requisite these days and this looks achievable even with 12 of the 13 words needing to be changed.  Magpie solvers will have seen that a similar mechanism was used in DEAF by ECLOGUE, where a perpendicular RAY BRADBURY sandwiched between a C and an N in converted into a thematic CONFLAGRATION.  These two puzzles were constructed in close proximity time-wise, so the techniques used were very familiar, primarily sorting out the central spine and words that convert around it first, while building the outskirts thereafter trying to maximise the average letter length as we go.

Unfortunately, during the trial and error construction, it became obvious that 1 across was not going to stretch to the 6 cells necessary to enable the central spine to be numbered 5, hence why the starting and opposing corner cells were removed.

In setting up the clue list, Eclogue looked to construct a question (for use as misprints or similar mechanism) to which the answer was indeed 5, and the number of Harry films was the obvious choice.  The question ultimately became "How many films with five down as lead character have there been?", but this necessitated an H at 5 down, which was almost certainly going to be unclued.  Again, a coincidence comes to the rescue in that H of course begins the character name.

For those unfamiliar with the films, it was still felt too much of a leap of faith to go from CLINT to HARRY without some additional encouragement, therefore a thematic component, primarily the names of the films themselves was to be included in the clue to every 5th solution - ultimately ending with SCORPIO to mirror the first film.  We needn't have worried though as the almost annual recycling of the series by Channel 5 coincided with publication, plus the fact that all of the film titles also appeared in a temporally adjacent episode of the BBC 1 quiz show Pointless.  As I say, coincidences everywhere!

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Published by the Independent on 17 November 2012, this puzzle was originally submitted in March

Eclogue would like to thank John Henderson and Jane Teather for all their help and assistance in bringing their inaugural Inquisitor puzzle to fruition and to all solvers who have commented throughout the internet.

Logogriph will now hope for lots of boxed sets in his Christmas stocking along the lines of 'themes we'd like to see please....' (well, he can hope!)

Deaf (alias Hollow)

This began life in October 2010 as a prospective submission to the Magpie. Its theme would be difficult to detect and so the approach would be to make the clues hide their hidden message as well as possible. Corrections to misprints would spell out the message but these would be confined to each clue's wordplay rather than its definition. Clues were presented in their normal order but did not refer to the enumeration of letters. The grid was presented as an asymmetric Carte Blanche with no bars and no numbers, bars being required in solutions.

Finally, on 20th December, the puzzle was submitted to the Magpie for approval. Given that the checker would have to find time over the Christmas holiday to assess the submission the response was very swift indeed; rejection out of hand on a number of points not considered by Eclogue.

And so it was set aside for  quite a while until it could be resuscitated for resubmission. In the end it was a complete re-write while retaining the core theme - the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Originally the intermediate grid featured the word BIBLIOTHECA occupying most of the main NW-SE diagonal and changing the letters of this allowed the word CONFLAGRATION to be seen along the whole of that diagonal. The central G of this allowed the novel's main protagonist MONTAG to be seen on a minor SW-NE diagonal.

The re-write required a new grid and thus a new set of clues. It would no longer be a carte blanche and would be symmetrical this time (the asymmetry of the original being a major sticking point). This time the name of the author himself would appear in the intermediate grid, along the central column. Again all these letters would be replaced to allow the word CONFLAGRATION to appear in its place and again MONTAG would link up with the central G.

The new improved HOLLOW was duly sent in April 2012 off for consideration by the Magpie and this time there was no rapid rejection, much to Eclogue's relief. Indeed, it was accepted for publication after some customary adjustments and re-writes and was scheduled to appear in the September 2012 edition of the Magpie. The original significance of the title HOLLOW was that HOLLOW is a synonym for DEAF which in turn may represent 451F in alphanumeric transliteration. This HOLLOW to DEAF link was deemed a step too far and so the word HOLLOW was dropped and the word DEAF was then used as the title.


Some feedback has been received, with thanks from Eclogue:

Obviously the preamble is deliberately written so as to not require 14d to be changed to a real word, but I didn't really notice this until after I had worked out what it should be changed to. I worked out what the title meant after I had finished solving. The clue to 19a requires the F of FELLOWS to be changed to a Y, and then the endgame requires the Y to be changed back to an F. I think that this is a slight weakness in the puzzle, but complaining about it is probably unreasonable. At least it is the only across entry crossing 14d that is clued in this way.

Grid fill not too hard; heard of the book and author but haven't read it, and not being e-connected, had to find someone who was familiar with the details. Didn't need him to work out 14 down changes, but he knew the name (after I mentioned a few possibilities from gridsearch). == Luckily most of the early clues I solved intersected 14, so I got Ray Bradbury quite quickly. I dug out my copy of F451 - it was even older than I expected, a 1960 Corgi paperback priced at 2s6d (Do you understand this 'old coinage'?)

Very neatly worked, getting round the problem of differing lengths in Ray Bradbury and conflagration.

Enjoyable if none too difficult. The theme came fairly quickly although the full message took a little longer to appear, and working out the changes was a slow process until realisation dawned. I didn't understand the reference to Jonathan at 13a, but it didn't much matter.

A famous book - except I remember trying to read it 20-odd years ago and getting bored. Maybe, now I'm older and .... er, wiser ? .... it would make more sense.

Good fun, although I was unsure of one or two clues.

I don't understand the relevance of the title, but everything else has fitted together beautifully. It's a good thing I send in the solution electronically, though, because all of my paper has just gone up in flames. Must the heating down a notch.

I enjoyed this puzzle very much and admired the misprints being confined to definitions. I'll be interested to find out why it is called Deaf.

In flagrante, if correct, needs explanation of all the crossing words being real. Spotted the theme pretty quick but the title, Deaf, 451f, came late on. Another enjoyable challenge from Eclogue.

This was mostly a very good set of clues with highly impressive misprints (much better than the norm where all the misprinted words are very short); 'Leftiness' and 'crocks' were two of my favourites (and I loved 'Western Highlands' in 43dn!). A few quibbles: 25ac was faulty ('...must involve... gives...'), 'pay' means 'apply tar to' (not just 'apply tar') in 16ac, I didn't like 'may be' in 1ac or 'was' in 44ac and in 45ac I'm not sure 'essentially' is fair to indicate a hidden word except when centrally located. Remembering a previous Magpie puzzle involving this author helped, but I needed Google for the protagonist. Excellent title!

A most enjoyable puzzle about a well-known theme.