Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

buzzybee - do the redactions you have make any sense as a whole? I wondered if it might be a quotation but with words like exempli that seems unlikely. I gave up on it last night because it's not necessary for submitting but it's annoying not to have at least the wholly encrypted ones ... I thought perhaps if we all submitted what we were sure of, some pattern might emerge?

You don’t need to know precisely what the intended redactions are, just what letters they generate and then confirm these letters are components of the five characters in the grid based on where they cross (or in two cases give full solutions). In some cases the intended redaction is clear (e.g. 13a, 15a, 22a, 3d) , in some there are several options that could work (e.g. 18d, 24d).

Based on the preamble I think the fully redacted clues are definition only. 5,23 has the right number of words for another related book title that describes the character in question, but I can’t quite make sense of the commas and some word lengths don’t look quite right either.

but what would be the point of creating clues that are wholly redacted if they didn't mean something? It seems that the length of the redactions is clearly related to specific words. And the commas in 5,23 must signify something. I've searched the internet for descriptions of 5/23 but not come up with anything that fits ...

prospero - that’s the conceit of the puzzle though.

All the elements of the clues that relate to those five characters have been redacted

Sorry, it's all too clever for me. I fail to see how the redactions in, say, 13a and 3d have anything to do with the five characters. I've guessed the (reasonably obvious) redaction in 22a and, similarly, can't see why it needed to be redacted.

Did anyone else make the mistake of entering singular form of answer for 24a? Not sure this can be disambiguated without correctly guessing the redactions, unless I'm missing something... I did and it made 5,23 a challenge when it should have been abso-bleeding-lutely obvious.

...I mean, there are two marks even when there's only one

simond9x - mark in the grid the wordplay elements that have been redacted and you will see how it fits together

Oh yes, I see that now - thanks CD. I don't think I have the patience to try and work out all the redactions. I have a full grid, all the names and the initiator. I don't submit so that'll do me.

Simond9x, taking 13a as an example. The word exempli gives a single letter in the solution. That letter crosses with 5d which is the name of one of the characters. That’s the reason it is redacted. Similarly in 3d the redacted word gives a single letter that crosses 15a and is redacted. 22a crosses 23d. The same logic applies throughout.