EV1706
Impact by Ifor
Setter’s Blog
Dropped letters give RAFFAELLO MAGIOTTI who some claim described the CARTESIAN DIVER; pinching its container has caused it to sink by two rows, displacing four cells.
I enjoy setting myself the task of moving the contents of cells in the endgame while preserving real words, so the notion of a Cartesian Diver came fairly readily. A little research provided both the title, based on the alternative “bottle imp” description, and Magiotti, whose name length conveniently allowed itself to be derived from unaffected across entries; I do prefer to tell solvers specifically which clues have been gimmicked. Beyond that there’s little to add – construction, testing, submission and editorial discussion proceeded in the usual way – bar one interesting point. Originally the right-hand of the two columns after pinching was to read TUTSAN / DIVERS; but the editor’s solution (or perhaps one of his two solutions – I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d spotted both) was that given: TUT / SANDIVERS. Remarkable, I thought, that such a constrained grid construction could result in an ambiguity; and not only that, but a “better” solution in that DIVER was more effectively hidden in a longer word. Solvers who wondered why they were told, apparently superfluously, that the new entries were all of different lengths may now see the necessity for it.
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A full review of this puzzle can be seen over on fifteensquared.
This is just to report that I did indeed (eventually) see the necessity for the stipulation about the five new words being of different lengths. I first went with TUTSAN and DIVERS in the second of the two columns, but they (with CERISE) made three words of the same length. I left the grid in that state for a few days before I resolved to justify the setter’s instruction, and I duly found what the intended solution had to be. I missed the phrase ‘cartesian diver’ at the time of solving (despite having revealed Raffaello Magiotti’s name and identified the 7×2 block that had to be moved) and had to complete my understanding of this experiment after reading the blog on fifteensquared.
Thanks, Alan. I suspect that without the stipulation most solvers would have selected TUTSAN / DIVERS as I originally intended, as I knew of TUTSAN and so deliberately seeded the grid with it, but not SANDIVERS.