Metamorphoses by Charybdis
When I’m creating a puzzle I really become the absent-minded professor preoccupied day and night over the minutiae of how to make the puzzle work. But as soon as I’m finished it is like a dream; I let it go completely and often find I have little memory of it apart from the general gist of the theme.
And so it was, when I opened Magpie #59 and saw “Metamorphoses by Charybdis”, that my first reaction was to stare blankly at it and ask myself “Eh? What was that one about?”
The next step was to refresh my memory by solving it myself. I’m glad to report that the theme of 3×3 clouds and their respective creators came back to me quickly but I was also alarmed, almost appalled, by the complexity of the preamble. I know that some solvers like their puzzles a bit over-egged – I am one of them and as a setter I try to offer a good amount of thematic material – but I honestly wondered whether I’d gone way too far this time as the whole puzzle seemed to consist of egg!
I am therefore mighty relieved and very grateful (and not a little amazed) for how well the puzzle has gone down with solvers who provided feedback and indeed voted for it as Magpie puzzle of the year. Tough on solvers who don’t like egg of course (maybe they just wisely stayed clear) but I feel heartened to carry on trying to create high-cholesterol puzzles so thankyou whoever you were. It’s much appreciated.
I don’t think I’d have been able to set Metamorphoses without Sympathy and I certainly wouldn’t be able to reconstruct a meaningful “Setting the Scene” entry. As it is I save a puzzle at its various stages of construction and so am able to do an archaeological reconstruction of the building process. So in response to requests for a write-up here goes:
The idea of a puzzle about clouds had been lurking in my ‘half-baked ideas’ folder for years. I had jotted a few words (Anvil, Mushroom…) that might somehow make the basis of a theme. I also had the quote from Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both sides now”:
Rows and flows of angel hair,
And ice cream castles in the air,
And feather canyons ev’rywhere,
I’ve looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun,
They rain and snow on ev’ryone,
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way.I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall,
I really don’t know clouds at all.
Something about the threeness of Joni Mitchell’s imagery must have struck me. Thinking about clouds I was reminded of the related three-cloud quote from Hamlet:
LORD POLONIUS
My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.
HAMLET
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
LORD POLONIUS
By the mass, and ’tis like a camel, indeed.
HAMLET
Methinks it is like a weasel.
LORD POLONIUS
It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET
Or like a whale?
LORD POLONIUS
Very like a whale.
Being a Modern-Art-up-to-about-1950 nut I was also then able to come up with the three clouds in Rene Magritte’s painting “Threatening Weather” (incidentally, painted at Dali’s home in Port Lligat near Cadaques). A bit of googling reminded me that the image was of (from left to right) a Torso, Tuba and Chair.
It was clear that portraying Magritte’s clouds would be impossible except to have the words themselves hanging in the grid in the correct order, but nothing wrong with that.
So now we had 3 lots of 3 clouds, which was satisfyingly symmetrical and had to be enough for a puzzle without worrying about anvils etc.
There may be setters who have a clear idea of the finished treatment of their puzzle before they start. I’m certainly not like that I’m afraid. I have an idea (e.g. 3×3 clouds) that sets me running and a naïve idea that I’ll be able to cram all that I want into the grid with little problem. Having set myself such a totally unrealistic target, the rest of the time is spent whittling things down in a desperate attempt to ensure that something of the main point of the puzzle’s theme still survives in the final product. I usually find that if I’m obsessive enough (and slow enough too) various coincidences will pop up along the way that help streamline things and, if all goes well, I may end up with something that looks like it had to be cleverly pre-planned in that way from the outset.
For instance, you’d think that, since both Joni Mitchell and Rene Magritte were (4,8) and the theme was clouds which are famous for altering their appearance, the transformation of Joni into René would have been there at the start. But my initial grid (working title simply “Clouds”) begins simply with Joni and Rene occupying top and bottom rows. I then tried more central arrangements, with Torso Tuba and Chair cutting down through Joni Mitchell, and I also tried toying with a cell clash with the C of chair also being the ANGEL of evangelist. (Obviously my first inkling that cramming all the clouds in would be no picnic).
This idea was promptly dropped as I must at last have noticed the coincidence of joNiMitchell and reNeMagritte and decided to run with it. I’ve used this idea of one word being replaced by another in a grid a few times now and I like the device (though I find it surprisingly tricky to make it work and suspect I’d never manage at all without computer assistance). I realized it would make a nice denouement for René’s clouds to only appear when Joni transformed into René.
As for Hamlet, I realized that there was a beguiling overlap of common letters in WHALE, WEASEL and CAMEL and this was just asking for a rather cheeky three-way version of the aforementioned ‘one word being replaced by another’ trick. Not only might this be fun for both me and (hopefully) the solver; it would also save on space in the grid which was going to be important.
So the next step was to get this Hamlet corner of the grid to work (working clear of the Magritte area).
At this stage I still intended to also cram all of Joni’s rather lengthy cloud descriptions into the grid (the following obviously being more to give me an idea of the space needed than a serious attempt at a fill):
Note that Torso is a bit too far over to the left of the grid at this point. The next stage was to hoik it (with René/Joni) one cell up and to the right.
At this stage the title changed to Shape-shifters. I also had to have a BIG rethink about Joni’s clouds as it was unrealistic to get them all in the grid (especially as the metamorphosis of Joni into René would severely limit the down words in all but the top left of the grid.
I then realized that Elsinore, somehow to be engineered as appearing at 32 (Act 3, Scene 2) could do double duty as an (ice cream) CASTLE and an indicator of the Hamlet reference. Nice. Go with that.
So, if Coupe (for instance) Elsinore could indicate ice cream castle, what might indicate ‘feather canyon’? Bradford’s to the rescue to come up with a list of feathers (choose the feather words that have other associations for preference of course) and canyons (ditto).
And there (oh seek and ye shall find!) is cañada which could also indicate Joni’s country (as a clue to her identity). Looking good.
Here is a grid well on the way to enabling the change of Joni to René. (Note I’d managed to get Elsinore at the desired ‘32’ spot. I had to make sure that didn’t change. For instance you can spot a potential ELSA in the 10th row of the final grid. She might have made the unching fairer but she had to go or solvers would have turned in vain to Hamlet Act 3 Scene 3!)):
[Click on the image to see it full-size]
I had yet to fit LURE (a feather) into the 11th row, right hand side (using the L option on offer in 27d) as a match for the Canada canyon.
I then changed the title to Metamorphoses (with nicely misleading Ovid overtones I thought) and filled the rest of the grid as best I could.
When I finish a grid I usually feel ‘job over’ as clues can usually be done piecemeal. Not so for this puzzle as the clues had to be crammed with a confusing panoply of extras to indicate all the loose ends:
The ‘rows and flows of angel hair’ which never made it to the grid were suggested by strings of jumbled ‘angelhair’ (which ought to be in Across clues to emphasise that ‘down’ in the preamble was a ‘red herring feather’ (if such a thing can exist!)).
The ‘feather canyons’ were appropriately ‘everywhere’, including in clues and the preamble itself.
René’s identity needed to be indicated by extra letters (for Belgium which nicely mirrored the Canada clue – Magritte being the third most famous Belgian of course after Tintin and Poirot, and they weren’t even real)
René’s painting needed to be indicated by the redundant ‘threatening weather’ in one clue.
Phew! Quite a job getting all that in.
You might think that ‘On Cloud Nine’ would have been in my mind from the beginning for a puzzle where the theme was Nine Clouds. Bizarrely it only occurred to me during the test solving process (for which I am deeply indebted to Ploy who had to suffer a considerably more obscure version of the preamble if you can believe such a thing is possible).
I’d have loved to have retitled the puzzle ‘On Cloud Nine’, the perfect title, but of course it would have given the game away. Fortunately, and very much as an afterthought, (probably a consequence of solving a Tea Leaves puzzle!) the final dingbat FIX/C (On C, LOUD NINE) occurred to me and we were done.
Final grid:
[Click on the image to see it full size]