Ear, Nose and Throat II – A Setter’s Tale
Observant Magpie solvers will have noted a number of similarities with Listener 4125 most notably the clueing style and title. A blog for The Listener puzzle appears on the Listen With Others site. In that blog I explained my reasons for the puzzle going to The Listener as opposed to The Magpie. However as I’d sort of promised the puzzle to The Magpie I felt a tad guilty and so decided to do something along similar lines for him/her!
In the original, the title did double duty in that it was not only descriptive ( OK Roddy I know it’s not technically Number Theory but with setters’ licence it’s close and it is a good title! ) but also cryptic as well. This time I wanted the title to do triple duty by using the word elementary in the descriptive sense but also cryptic in two ways – chemical, as in the original and something else to do with elements.
I sat down and soon had a list of four or five ideas and chose the classical view of the elements. The others on my list I won’t reveal as I may use them at a later date! The original was a 9×9 grid which was a bit of a give away in that it was fully Sudoku compliant. Therefore I opted for a smaller grid and 7×7 fitted the bill nicely. I wanted the puzzle to be easier than the original given that the dénouement was a bit harder.
Choosing the properties to use was great fun and as the original didn’t have repeated digits which was used in a negative sense or palindromes I wanted to use them with the former this time being used in a positive sense.
I started by putting in the entries to be deduced and built round that. Writing the clues was a bit harder ( but not that much! ) than the original as this time I could choose the remaining entries. In the original I had the grid already filled in.
All in all I really enjoyed setting this puzzle and if it went down well then there’s a lot more in the pipeline!!