Crossword blog: solving mysteries of ambiguity and coincidence

Many thanks to everyone who attempted last week’s clues without a grid. A recent – remarkable – puzzle from Brendan featured this run of across clues:

17a Same clue as 15 (7)
20a Same clue as 14 (8)
22a Same clue as 12 (6)
23a Same clue as 11 (10)
24a Same clue as 10 (4)
25a Same clue as 9 (5)
26a Same clue as 8 (5,3)

Same clues, each one simultaneously offering two different answers. How often does a clue have these properties? It’s hard to say because once the first entry has been written in a grid, the person testing or solving the puzzle tends to use crossing letters for the remaining clues.

The best way of finding out, it seemed to me, was to ask the finest minds in solving to look at some clues in isolation. As many of you suspected, there was something fishy about the request. As Jacob Busby surmised, the clues were not written by the setters whose names accompanied each set. Despite the nonveiled threats from some among you, I shall be brave and disclose that the clues were created by feeding a few puzzles’ worth of material from each setter into an artificial intelligence engine and asking it to produce more of the same.

I had considered removing the letter counts, but had not anticipated that Guardian solvers might be assiduous enough to discover answers that worked if, say, a “(6)” became a “(5)”. I truly appreciate the herculean capacity among you lot to create sense out of nonsense, and to a lesser extent I’m also impressed with the AI’s flair for creating plausible and intriguing surface readings. Despite the alarm expressed by one of the setters (none of whom are implicated in the exercise; any dudgeon must be directed solely at me), the phenomenon of AI clues that actually work not only seems a long way off, it’s something that holds no appeal to me beyond novelty. A setter is very much an author, and your comments have convinced me more than ever that the relationship with the solver is what keeps us coming back.

As for accidentally ambiguous clues, they are I think rare beasts. Of course there is the even rarer subset: the clue that remains ambiguous even with every crossing letter correctly filled. The last I remember was from 2018, with crossing letters giving __A__Y:

3d Blue vehicle, turning over, last in rally (4)

Online solvers were told they were correct if they turned over a CAR before the last letter in RALLY, for RACY (blue). If you solved on paper, though, and turned over a VAN, you could happily enter NAVY (blue) and consider the puzzle done. These things happen: the Guardian crossword editor Hugh Stephenson wrote of a fateful month in 2012 that featured Paul’s “Misshapen genitals, funny things? (3,5)” (ODD BALLS or TAG LINES?) as well as a remarkable it’s-not-right-but-it-could-be in the Genius puzzle. Happily, the BLUE clue inspired an entire puzzle in this July’s edition of the Magpie magazine that has to be solved to be believed. It was issue 235, you can subscribe here and we’ll be celebrating a Magpie anniversary here soon; there is also a spoiler-addled explanation from setter Twin here.

For now, mea culpas to anyone who now considers me reprehensible and for our next challenge, something different. No single answer this time: what are your clues with two answers that are as close as possible to being equally acceptable?

Cluing competition

So that leaves your clues for GADZOOKS. The audacity award goes to Dcusch for the extended “Blimey! Good translation of Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (not in French)” but a little audacity is often called for with such a ghastly word.

The runners-up are Harlobarlo’s intriguing “Playing kazoo with extremely good sound from the start? Amazing!” and PeterMooreFuller’s evocative “Historical oath taken to heart by brigadier and bazooka marksman”; the winner is the sly “Zoo in Denmark caught in petrol blast!” Kludos to JasCanis.

Please leave entries for the current competition – as well as your non-print finds and picks from the broadsheet cryptics – in the comments, below.

We return to Have His Carcase next week, after which we will try to return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com.

The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop.