Imperator

10 comments on “Imperator”

1. Seeing that thread title, I thought for a moment you were writing about today’s prize puzzle, Anax!
2. If this puzzle appeared as a Mephisto it would be rated as on the easy side. I’ve finished both it and today’s Mephisto 2518 this morning and would rate them as about equal difficulty.

   The puzzle can’t be solved without using Chambers. For example COND at 1A (where I felt “used to know” would have been better), CRUE and CRUIVE at 2D. There is some building of an unknown word from wordplay, 21A for example but perhaps not as much as is usual in Mephisto. At 6D the word “in” strikes me as padding and in bar crosswords “in” usually signifies “i”

   There is clever definition and good wordplay as is the norm for an Anex puzzle. 5d and 8D for example are very good.

   I think people who already do bar crosswords would want something harder than this if solving on a regular basis. For people starting to learn who can already do the daily cryptic and want to extend their reach I think it could be valuable. To that extent you may have asked the wrong people to comment!!!

   1. Many thanks Jim – very valuable comments.

      My apologies for 2A where “know” is just a typo, should have been “knew”. Obviously the spellchecker wasn’t going to pick it up so I failed to spot it. I class “knew” as one of those always-wrong keyboard words; no matter how often you type it you always end up typing the wrong thing!

      Interestingly, of three detailed responses so far the difficulty has been rated as sub-Mephisto, equal to – and even way beyond i.e. Piemag standard!

      1. Let’s see if we can tie down the level of difficulty (because I think that is important to you in market positioning of the crossword?)

         First, it contains about the same “obscurity count” as today’s Mephisto in terms of answers and parts of wordplay. Both contain quite a bit less obscurity than the Mephisto 2517 that I’ve just blogged (read it for yourself and have a count up). I rated 2517 average and one contributor has suggested it was a bit harder than that.

         Second, I solved it from top left down and across to bottom right with no gaps left to fill in subsequently and I did that in under an hour. The same is true of Mephisto 2518. Both events suggest an easier than average Mephisto.

         This puzzle was made easier than it might otherwise have been by the fact that 1D was neat but easy as were the long 19A, 33A and 12D – all easy anagrams. 18D is a definition giveaway (helicopter in 8 letters!)
         In bar crosswords with their high interlocking count this generosity leads to easier solving.

         In view of this to suggest it is of Piemag level is hard to justify. I can only think your contributor is not accustomed to your style of clue and so found your cunning difficult to decipher.

         To put it at below Mephisto standard is to do it an injustice. There are a lot of very nice well constructed clues that need a bit of teasing out and where experience definitely helps.

3. Having solved today’s Mephisto for the same comparison, the Imperator puzzle took me about twice as long, trying to do both without looking anything up and failing by a couple of clues in each case. (Though not the CRUIVE that Jimbo reckoned was impossible without C – I managed to guess that crue was a possible old version of crew – possibly by a memory of of clue/clew.) Temper this assessment by the fact that I’ve probably seen a few hundred Mike Laws puzzles and only a few dozen Anax ones – so yours are likely to be slower.

   I think the enterprise is worth pursuing, especially if you can restrict the obscure words to ones that can be clued in an interesting way. There are some times in barred puzzles when definitions lifted from Chambers, fair as they are, seem a bit dull.

   A few quibbles: at 22D, “An exotic” seems rather a vague def for TAMANU. Looking up the tacamahac you can get from it suggests something like “source of gum”. At 9D, I can’t justify the ‘s in “monkey’s” – the clue really means :Monkey (that) “clever he’s using” boxes. And at 28A, the normal rule in barred puzzles seems to be that tricks like fish = “f is h” are OK in an answer but not in the clue text. If you’re preparing people for tougher barred grid puzzles, you probably need to follow the same rules.

   1. Mind-reader!
      22D – I had considered “source of gum” and only shied away because, as the wordplay hides well, adding what is effectively a cryptic def might be a step too far. But that’s based on my opinion; your experience as a solver is more important here.
      9D – Can I say “Oh ***”? My error. Originally I’d used “string” instead of “boxes” and decided I liked the latter more; forgot to change the indicator. Kicks self.
      28A – Well, interestingly I opted to go with this because of a Listener clue from years (and years!) ago:
      Bastioned fort of Pendragon (drat!) (8)
      The answer was PENTAGON and the wordplay leaps at you once you know the answer. I wasn’t 100% happy with “fish!” but allowed myself to rely on precedent.
   2. On the CRUIVE question I should have made it clear that I was trying to say that what I understand to be your target audience might well not be able to solve it without C. We had a classic example of this with M2517 where from experience I knew “dor=mockery” but new solvers would be unlikely to have that knowledge.

      Thanks for mentioning the “fish” issue. I had meant to raise that and forgot. I completely agree with your comments.

4. Again, I’m pretty late so no-one might catch my comments. I did the revised version, after reading the comments, so got help with CRUIVE in particular.

   I’m not a regular Azed or Mephisto solver (partly because the Mephisto inevitably prints poorly), and this felt to me quite a bit easier, possibly due to easier vocabulary. I used an anagram solver to get MISPERSUADED when stuck and filled it in ok after that.

   Don’t understand PICKET. For example, looking up AVUA for tree (guava, maybe?) then GRAEP for fruit before GENIP felt pretty Azed-y.

   1. A rather garbled comment, which I forgot to sign. Will
      1. PICKET
         “One striking” = def
         PICK = feature above all others
         E.T. = in space (extraterrestrial)

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