Painting by Numbers by Logogriph
Inspiration for puzzles comes from many sources – whether it be a sidelong glance in a reference book, or a more determined review of thematic material – mine simply came from a Christmas shopping trip. Any solver who has ever visited Winchester (my home city) may have turned off the high street at the Butter Cross, walked between the two pasty shops (or into them, in my case), and emerged between two cafes / restaurants on the way to the cathedral. The cul-de-sac here is marked by bollards, and these have been decoratively painted in various styles, one of which (if you haven’t guessed by now), is in the style of Mondrian.
The rectilinear pattern is undoubtedly ‘crossword-friendly’, so from this seed of inspiration came the task of finding a composition that worked, without being too obvious. The internet helped, but it was ultimately “Sister Wendy’s History of Painting” that offered up the Diamond painting that was to become the subject of the puzzle. The positioning of MONDRIAN himself in the puzzle was almost pre-determined by the red block, and the resultant combination of letters in black looked very promising, particularly as they still permitted such as E,S and T to be used elsewhere.
While I might have set out with the original intention of providing symmetry, this soon became beyond me, as the average light length fell and the unch count rose to intolerable levels. Ultimately, this puzzle is under- rather than over-unched and is almost certainly the easier for that. What I gave away in symmetry though, I was determined to replace with a pangram that ensured that the only letters that were not accounted for in the message, were those in ultimately blank squares.
From there the setting proved constrained (by the colour code), but achievable, and the clueing based on inter-twining messages from the ends of redundant words offered a small amount of potential diversion. Although about a fortnight in the construction, I eventually had everything nicely printed up ready to go…. and while my fingers hovered over send, I forced myself one last check…. only to discover that my scan of Sister Wendy’s version of the Diamond (which I used as the template for the working copy of this puzzle) had distorted the colours in the bottom from black to blue. Aarggh! What followed was a necessary re-write of several lights. ESSAY became E+TSAR, ELIA became ELEA, NESTLED to NETTLED, and TUNA for TINY – panic over, oxygen mask away, job done.
Solver’s comments are always greatly appreciated, and they were very positive towards this puzzle. The suggestions of grading erred more towards a B than an A, but was generally accepted as reasonable. For those who found DIRE+SIS too strained, apologies (on behalf of the Chambers phonetics department at least!), and to the solver who looks forward to seeing my attempt at a Jackson Pollock work…. well, I fear they may be in for a long wait. Thanks to all.