NEWS peak
When I reduced working to four days a week, I planned to try my hand at compiling. This was my second attempt. The theme for the first is still bouncing around in my head and I hope one day a suitable puzzle will reach an audience.
I had the original idea for ‘Eraser Required’ (the working title for Smith’s One) around November 2010. I wanted to celebrate a great novel, 1984, using the two pillars of its society, doublethink and Newspeak. I also knew I wanted solvers to somehow erase Oldspeak and leave only Newspeak words. On re-reading the novel, I came upon the description of the Ministry of Truth, with the three slogans of the party on the side of a pyramidal structure. This seemed like a possibility to exploit the theme. I tried words circling the layers of the pyramid but nothing really worked. Obviously each slogan would have to appear on a different face and I thought I might as well try to include Ministry of Truth too. I even tried to have N,S,E,W in some form at the apex so I would have a NEWS peak to the pyramid.
At some stage in trial grids, I drew the diagonals and noticed an even number of cells on each side. Because of a game (called Doublethink) invented by some friends a long time ago, I knew that doublethink had no repeating letters and thought it would make an excellent Playfair code word. I have always thought it is a shame that after discovering the key to a Playfair code square, the story ends, and so I decided I wanted a puzzle where the Playfair key must be used again and preferably was integral to the grid. So I set about encoding and decoding the slogans to see if there were any potential words produced. There were, but I couldn’t get a symmetrical fit. It was then I hit upon the idea of having the words read L to R on each face. I was now able to find the basis of two grids with symmetrical entries but one of them had a lot of barred off cells in the outermost rows and columns; plus, in both, I would have to use Minitrue instead of Ministry of Truth which was a slight disappointment but still a newspeak word. One problem was that the grid was going to be quite large at 16×16 which would limit where the puzzle could appear if it ever got that far. NEWS peak was also abandoned.
I swiftly found filling the rest of the grid impossible but hit upon the idea of the solver having to construct the diagonals rather than be given them in the grid. If only I had known how difficult such a grid is to construct where the words have to read in both directions! However it had the advantage of the Carte Blanche appearing to be 14 x 14. It took a long time and lots of failures to come up with a grid. I had little choice about my Playfair words and when I came to check how to deduce the key, I couldn’t do it (except with online tools). Plus I had two four letter words with 2 unches. With a heavy heart I set about improving the grid. I ended up changing between one half and two-thirds of the entries but improved it so that the worst checking was now 2 unches in two five-letter words. Not ideal but I thought I could give those words simpler clues and crucially, the Playfair key could now be deduced without aids.
Now I needed a preamble and message telling solvers what to do without giving the game away. I decided to use misprints in clues which were thematically justified because Winston Smith’s job in the Ministry of Truth was to erase the past by correcting misprints, to which there are numerous references in the novel. Finding an example Playfair key that fitted the theme took a while and it was more luck than inspiration that I hit upon WORKPLACE. And still more luck discovering BOOK SHOP to explain how to encode words. My test solver gave me very positive feedback and advice and suggested Magpie or Listener but I decided against the latter because of size. It finally went off to the editors in mid-March 2011.
A word on the title, which the editors and one solver thought to be weak. My original title was weaker still and I have my test solver to thank for Smith’s One. It has two interpretations. Smith is a workplace ie Smith is One; and Minitrue is Smith’s workplace ie Smith’s One. No-one could come up with a better title so it stayed. On the plus side, once solvers had discovered doublethink as the key it provided confirmation of the theme before any of the admittedly arduous encoding. But please bear in mind that in doing it, solvers were effectively using doublethink to erase Oldspeak and leave only Newspeak, one of the principles I wished to embody in the puzzle.
Finally, thank you for all the feedback I received from solvers on this puzzle. I urge everyone to write something about a puzzle after solving, even if it is only a few words. All the comments were immensely useful and enlightening to me. Setting is a solitary affair and such feedback is the only opportunity to discover what solvers really think and want from a puzzle.