Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

...and breathe. Just needed to get free of interruptions and concentrate properly and lo!! (It's one of nature's laws, the more concentration required, the more frequent and more mundane the interruptions).

(I'd guessed 'f' would be relevant).

I assume that Cagey started by encoding the message - as that populates the code grid pretty thoroughly - then used that to fill the grid, then designed the clues. I imagine many puzzles are built backwards from the end-game.

As others have said, an impressive puzzle construction. 👍

Well, the printer’s out of ink, the paper supply is running low but I think I’ve made it to the last part of this puzzle! However, having got the message I’m having difficulty understanding it. Is it possible for someone to give an oblique clue as to how to carry out the last instruction? Thanks in advance.

When I got to where you are, I thought “What’s the point? Surely…..”. But when I started following the instruction, I realised that something was emerging. So, my advice is just go ahead and try it.

After a few false starts with the coding, some unladylike language and a bit of help from my son, I have finally limped over the line. An impressive feat of compiling. I take my hat off to cagey.

furrowedbrow, if you've made an attempt at following the instruction you'll perhaps have four decoded letters already, in a form you've already seen, and be thinking that the next few letters will also be ones you've seen, based on the position of their entry and the way you're moving around the grid. That will lead to nonsense, and the rest of the decode won't work.

Instead, consider carefully which cell is really next after the first four letters have emerged. (I think at this point it's easy to think "but that knocks things out of whack and so can't deliver a real message" -- but it does, and the fact that it does is what makes the construction so astonishing.)

Simply incredible construction, and I enjoyed the gridfill immensely -- it's definitely helpful to enjoy logic puzzles too. I started the fill after getting only a handful of answers, by writing in all the possibilities for vowels, sudoku-style (so for E I wrote in a small 3x2 grid of letters in each of the three cells, for example). Some crossing entries allowed me to erase some of those options; occasionally all the options collapsed into a single encoded letter and I could use it to work backwards (eg I might see the second letter was a G and deduce the relevant letter of the answer couldn't possibly be a vowel, and that would help etc).

Is it just me that sees some ambiguity in the very last step though? The entry of "source"? The conversation here has been about the source of a particular quotation, but I've been considering the source of a noun instead. Rather than the "wrong information" disclaimer being about misattribution, I thought it was because the answer was very much unknown. (Maybe it doesn't matter, since the information would definitely still be wrong!)

Anyway, Cagey, that was wonderful!

Many thanks to both of you who tried to help me. The good news is it worked! What a construction (though I may need to lie in a darkened room for a while after that!).

It occurs to me at this very late stage that if what is written below cannot be marked wrong, how is JEG to know that the message has been discovered and acted upon? After all, an entry which had nothing written underneath couldn't be wrong, and even if the gridfill was correct (and the coded letters don't have to be shown, after all, so the missing ones needn't be visible) it would be possible to be judged correct having failed to negotiate the brilliant last step. Once I've disentangled this conundrum it's back to enumerating pin-dancing angels, alas.

Exactly cockie -- this has me a bit worried. I'm second-guessing the marking: is there an acceptable degree of wrongness? If the source of a quotation is required and I write "soup", that's somehow more wrong than, say, Homer Simpson, who at least is a person with the capability of making an utterance.

So somehow there's an element of guess-what-I'm-thinking here, at least for me, despite a terrific unambiguous penultimate step.

I wondered about this too. I reckon that they just want the name most associated with the quote. However there is doubt expressed on the net whether it is a real or not.