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Every month, on the first Monday, the Guardian Crossword website runs a Genius Crossword. Yesterday I printed off the December edition, No. 78 by Brummie, and was surprised to see no special instructions -- just a regular cryptic. I was getting along quite well (maybe too wellwhen it became clear that at least one of the solutions was actually the opposite of the answer suggested by the clue:
25a Original image, say, possessed by aboriginal (8) which is clearly N(EG)ATIVE
Except the crossing solutions give me P and S at letters 1 and 3, suggesting that the answer is POSITIVE. This is the kind of thing that the Genius compiler gets up to, but with fair warning in the special instructions. I went back to the website to see if any instructions had been added overnight, only to find that the whole puzzle has disappeared, with the November edition back in its place! Nice to see that, even in the digital age, you can rely on The Grauniad to cock up!

I had the same difficulty with the December Genius puzzle yesterday - it took a while for the penny to drop. I did complete it, and submitted it, but with the uneasy feelingthat I may have missed some of the "opposites". There really should have been some indication of how many to look for - I felt this particularly with the 4-letter words.

I emailed the editor just after posting here, but no reply so far...

I see they have now replaced the December puzzle - with an explanation, but so far no apology. We should get a prize for trying!

About 30 years ago, they printed the wrong grid with the Saturday Prize crossword, but apologised on the Monday and said that it would be possible to construct the grid from the solutions. I sweated blood to get it finished and, feeling very pleased with myself, thought I may as well send it in -- I don't usually bother, but I figured that there must be a decent chance of winning. When they gave the solution and announced the winners it turned out that there'd been an even higher number of entries than usual!

It jusr goes to show that we love a good challenge. I don't think there's much to beat the satisfaction and glow from having completed a really difficult puzzle.

I know what you mean -- I get a perverse pleasure if my first sweep through the clues doesn't yield a single answer!