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3 hours ago
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The question has been howled by other UK newspapers this week in headlines I’ll summarise as: “Can you solve crossword in 30 secs? Only geniuses can!”
Any crossword editor, on seeing the word “crossword” in sidebars and “Most Read” sections, will glow and take a moment picturing happy worldwide solvers themselves glowing over some new puzzle. Is it one of ours?
Only a moment, since the “crossword” usually turns out to be something else, trending and self-replicating on the latest social network; the headlines are tentacles flaying at anyone who didn’t see it first time round.
This time the social network is TikTok, the challenge (unless it’s a deepfake) is from The 1% Club Australia and once again it is not actually a crossword. It is, though, a fine puzzle, which we have recreated below. Ignore any sense of a 30-second timer and you will, after time, savour a perfect penny-drop moment.
(If you’ve read on without solving, what did I just tell you? Go back. Or if you’re incurably impatient, there’s a hint at the end.)
A fine puzzle; irritating to see it described as a crossword, though. As for 30 seconds: most geniuses don’t hurtle into crosswords trying to solve them in any number of seconds. They know the care the setter has put into each clue’s miniature story or image, expecting the solver to carefully unpick its ambiguities (we explain how here).
Also, looking at who gets called a “genius” these days, I think I’d rather be something else. Remember experts?
Most importantly, the sheer joy of this puzzle is in seeing what has been staring you in the face. The time taken by some other people could not be further from the point. Just as last time we issued a statement to the effect that puzzles are not medicine, so is it important to emphasise that they are not competitions – except for our weekly Saturday prize. And the one we call Genius.
At least this time, the “5%” claim means something. In a normal “Only 2% can see it!!” meme, you wonder where you’re supposed to think that ratio has come from. When a fact comes from a TV gameshow, though: I can testify from other jobs I’ve had that no one is more worried about looking like they’ve got it wrong than the makers of quizshows between the 2007 scandals and today. You may never have anticipated a point where gameshows are up there as defenders of truth; we are where we are.
(Hint: there is no decoding, anagramming, finding a sequence or noticing any other pattern.)
PS in our cluing conference for PERCOLATE, the audacity award is Chri5Miller’s for including erbium as an element of “Strain to find metals in crockery”; the runners-up are Epididymis’s optimistic “New design for ace petrol filter” and Harlobarlo’s wince-dodging “Strain is avoided when exercising core with pilates”; the winner is the winningly misleading “Prepare grounds for negotiated parole etc”. Kludos to Wellywearer2 and please leave entries for BACKWARD below, along with any favourite clues or puzzles you’ve spotted.
