Friday, December 26, 2008

Re-solved

listener4011002

Hope everyone overindulged yesterday and are feeling as good as I am this morning!

I was looking forward to a bash at this, since Listener 3806, "New Year's Revolution" was one of my extremely rare solves a few years ago and a really fun puzzle to boot. And I've been on a bit of a roll lately, so let's see what I can make of Conflict Resolution.

Lots of clashes, symmetrically places (one of the first things that struck me was the extra symmetry of the grid, we have 90 degree symmetry as well as 180). 12 normal clues, 12 with misprints in definition, 12 with misprints in wordplay (we are going for the symmetry), and a method for resolving clashes.

Clues time: I did pretty well the first time around and spotted some clashes quickly. Since there's only 12 clashes, and no more than one per word, confidently write in the rest of the letters. I found the bottom half of the grid easier than the top here, my first clash was 31ac SA,LI,CLAW (misspelling of sEx appeal) and 22 down (CANULA, anagram, misspelling of Narrow tube). Now if the 90 degree thing comes into play, then there is a clash where 17ac (LEAN-TO, misspelling of Power failing) meets 14d (which I didn't know), where 10ac (didn't know) meets 3 down (YOU BET, misspelling of undeNiably), and where 24ac (OPINED, misspelling sAid ones piece) meets 9d (LEASOWED, anagram with misspelling of leo Sawed).

This is looking probable, and means I only have two other clashes to find... NANNYISH at 1ac and ETHYLENE at 4d means there's one where 15d meets 18ac, 33ac meets 16d, 8d meets 21ac, and my last clash is 29a IMP,AWN (misprint of Hock), meets 26d (AMIE, misprint of uS).

At this point I had a mostly full grid, and the correct letters gave

S-MOF---SHESANDMISP--NTS. Sum of clashes and misprints! Seeing the message got most of the last clues, and at this point I had the grid above.

OK, let's add up the clashes and misprints. And to make sure there's no mistakes, let's do it in a spiral-bound notebook

listener4011003

The message looks like it's going to be MOVE ALL WORDS. It's a jigsaw! That's why things are so symmetrical, to keep the clashing/crossing pattern so close. Time for a fresh grid and a completion of the jigsaw...

listener4011001

The starting point here was the top right corner, looking for a four-letter word where the first two letters were also the first letters of six-letter words and then the last letter was the first letter of an eight-letter words came down to two possibilities, but once I saw where NACHOS could fit with AECIUM, ROSETREE and SAHIBA, I took the plunge and was done... almost.

I still had an empty entry at 19down (now at 27 across), and with no help from the movement (since anything that was unchecked before remains unchecked now). I don't have Collins, but they have a 9-day free trial on their website - no end of googling possible combinations gave me a suitable word, so I took the plunge on the trial and found ZILPAH. Sorry to take advantage of your generosity there, Collins.

Fun puzzle, Kea, and even better, a victory for George and a very late charge at the end of the year, might be able to end on a new high! Current tally: George 25, Listener 22. Current streak, George 4! And with only three puzzles left in the year I'm guaranteed at least a tie, woohooo!

Friday, December 19, 2008

Euclid's calculator-button mashing

listener4010_1

We're on to the last numerical puzzle of the year, and it's something I haven't seen before, a circular numerical puzzle. Aedites has given us one circular puzzle this year (the first circular I had ever solved), and after my boast earlier in the year that I can usually do numerical puzzles, I have only finished one of the three (and I didn't get Big Holes either).

First thing, I thought something had gone wrong with my printer when it spewed page after page and most of them looked blank. When I print off the Listener, I usually limit it to two pages (I print on American letter size paper, so it's a bit shorter than A4), but since numericals typically have fewer clues, I didn't bother. And here come the pages!

All entries are 5-digit integers who only have single prime factors 2-79, no factors repeated. Intriguing... trying to do them from memory, I write down the primes from 2-79 and completely miss 41. I'm off to a great start...

Each clue is the common factors, if there are none, there's no clue. Intriguing... so next step is to write out the list of definite factors for each letter and each number. This may not give all the factors (in fact in 24 and C it appears there's no factors in common with anything), but it gives some juicy starting points. I know some have six factors...

Y = f a r t n l (heh, fart)
17 = f t w n k u (heh, ftw)

A bit of poking and prodding on the calculator shows that there has to be 2, 3, 5 present to have six prime factors and still be a five-digit integer. So several pieces of good news... f, t and n have to be 2, 3, and 5. Anything with these three factors is going to end in 0 (multiple of 30), so I can confidently write in a 0 at the end of anything that has f, n, t as factors. Which is only T and Y (and 17-21 that cross Y), and 30. Three whole numbers in the grid!

Now 19 doesn't have f as a factor - so f has to be 3 (otherwise it couldn't end in 0). One of n and t is 2, the other is 5.

So let's see - the five digits of Y...

first digit crosses 1-4 which have n but not t
second digit crosses 5-8 which has neither n nor t
third digit crosses 9-12 which has t but not n
fourth digit crosses 13-16 which has neither n nor t
fifth digit is 0

So look for combinations of those last three factors that give a number that goes...

even - odd - five - odd - zero

or

five - odd - even - odd - zero

30 x 7, 13, 19 gives 51870, but that won't work as 30 x 11, 23, 29 is out of range for 17

30 x 11, 13, 19 gives 81510 for Y, so that makes 17 30 x 7, 17, 23 = 82110 and we have our first two full numbers in!

This means n is 2 and t is 5, so any entry with t in it ends in 5. l a and r are 11, 13, 19 and w, k u are 7, 17 and 19.

Z now looks like -50-5 and has factors l,a,r (don't know what they are but know what they come to as a product), t and k, so 13585,w means w = 7 and the entry is 95095.

And we are off! Most of these were filled by getting the known factors and looking for multiples that worked with the numbers that I knew. I only used the "cross-checking" of making sure the remaining factors didn't cross a few times, notably in getting C (factors of 29, 31, 37).

This was a single-sitting solve, rare for me. Didn't check the time, but it clocked in at a few hours of hunting and pecking. I didn't use a spreadsheet, but I used one of those dinky old calculators that will repeat the last function if you press equals. I'm glad it printed on four sheets, I actually needed to spill over to a fifth to get all of my notes in. Here's how things looked at the end...

listener4010_2

What looked like a daunting prospect turned out to be a pretty nice exercise in logic and patience - I had fun with this one. And a victory to George! With just a few crosswords left in the year I've stuck my neck out again, one more completion guarantees me at least a draw.

Current tally: George 24, Listener 22. Current streak: George 3.

If you're doing the holiday thing, have a safe and drunk one! I'll be in Houston next Friday, I'll have internet so I should be able to do the blog, but I may not have any images up, taking the scanner on the plane sounds like a bad idea.

Blog extra: two things

  • Listen with Others has a new site, a new look, and some new bloggers. Are they taking a leaf out of my book by blogging failures? Not yet, but I'll be curious to see how it goes. I may submit a more "Listen With Others-y" style blog for a puzzle in the future, I might have to make a lot of it up...
"Sunday, 3pm, in Lear Jet passing over the FA Cup final while drinking 2003 Brunello de Montalcino. Solved the first 18 clues without thinking, looks like Bastrad's giving us an easy week. Put it down so I could get an eight-handed massage. Next morning, in conversation with the Aga Khan, he reminded me that TIA can be a Spanish aunt, so 8 across has to be 'whaT I Ate last night gave me the runs'. From there it was brisk solving remembering that letters from the names of the Pakistani openers from the 1980 (Taslim Arif and Sadiq Mohammad) went into the Playfair backwards, revealing, as I had suspected all along that alternate letters in the perimeter read 'If enough alcohol you do sup, rest assured you will throw up', and allowing MONK D'WALLY D'HONK to appear in the opposite diagonal. All finished in time for port on the deck of the QE 2".

I love Listen With Others - check it out!

  • Congratulations to Gordius for getting a Sarah Palin reference in today's Guardian crossword. I haven't laughed so hard at a clue in months.
OK, now to work on the blog for 4010.

Friday, December 12, 2008

A dangerous crossword!

listener4009

Franc is back! The setter of the first crossword I made a blog for here in the battle. And a round grid, which used to terrify me, but I've had a bit more luck on them this year, with good efforts on Babes and Squaring the Circle, but made a real mess out of Past Times.

Extra words in clues, first letters giving names. Jumbles, inwards, outwards, a name in the middle ring (an inventor with 12 letters - Thomas Edison came to mind). Second ring has others on the bill - is it an inventor who is on money? Ernest Rutherford is on New Zealand money, but he's a scientist, not an inventor. Let's try some clues.

The "wordplay only" clues in the second ring gave the game away pretty quickly... 2 is C,LOW,N, 6 is L(ION)S, and 3 is FIREATER (FIR,TREE,A)*,R. So it's something to do with a circus or a sideshow. Barnum/Bailey/Ringling? Let's try the radial clues.

I made a long slow slog of these clues...

I could often get two or three in each set, but not the fourth - finally I saw 33-36 (TALENT, S(LATE)R, JE(ST)ER, P(UR)EST and although all four have an S and a T, there wasn't two with the S at the start or the end, so I confidently had one letter entered in the grid, a T

Similarly, from 9-12, I had CH,ORAL, L(A,H)ORE, and BORE,AL - so there has to be an L in the center ring.

from 13-16 I had ESCHAR, CHEATS (yay, anagrams!) and INFECT (insect with F for S), so it had to be an E or a C.

From 5-8 I had SAMSHU, HAUL(M)S, and UL,TR,AS which meant either a U or an S...

Hmmm.... (U,S),L,(E,C).....T. Could the first name be JULES (The only one I knew from 1-4 at the time was SWARAJ, and it was very tempting to have J be the common letters).

Googling "circus" and "jules" gave JULES LEOTARD, who made his debut at the Napoleon Circus in Paris, and from the words I knew, I could fit JULES LEOTARD in the middle circle.

Now for the funny part - I had spent days agonizing over clues one at a time... I can't recall a puzzle I've spent longer to crack (I know this is being naughty, but there's one upcoming one that is taking a similar amount of time). I was so excited at seeing that Jules fit that I leapt out of the chair awkwardly and pinched something in my back and was in pain for hours.

Having seen the theme, it was piecing through the rest of the words to the finish. The exrta words kind of helped - I didn't know many of the last 8 answers straight away, but seeing HOUDINI as a possibility helped.

Victory to George! And I've got my nose in front again. Current tally: George 23, Listener 22. Current streak, George 2.

My DVD of this is broken, alas... when I think circuses, I think of the Marx Brothers film "At The Circus". Here's Groucho singing "Lydia The Tattooed Lady"



And here's me as a part of a circus sideshow from a burlesque show last St. Patrick's Day

Dr. Paddy O'Furniture

See you for some numerology next week!

Friday, December 5, 2008

Knit where?

listener4008001

After my embarrassment of the last two weeks, I'm really eager to get one right... is this the week?

149 is a new setter, so I don't really know what to expect, but I was expecting a preamble. I actually thought that there was going to be a correction that included a preamble, but there wasn't, there was a two-letter correction of the title. Hmmm...

I guess it's some sort of knitting pattern, which could mean changing letters around, moving them up and down. Some of the clues has asterisks, is that where something is cast off? Jumbled? Am I overthinking this?

Cold solving time... 1ac is VALET,A so the answer has the same number of letters as the grid entry. 11 is C,LOW,NS with an appropriately creepy surface. 12 is MOUSER (O in MUSER), 15 is CANT, 16 is TRITON... so far some pretty accessable clues. Do the downs fit with them? No sirree... 1 is DEC,ODES which doesn't match any crossing letters, yikes! 2 is A,L,ARMS which matches a few letters, 3 is FOR,INT which also matches two letters.

This is becoming a mess, and what can the p and k mean?

I cold solved as many clues as I could, and filled in the grid with all the words I was "sure" of, putting the across answers in the top and the down on the side. That gave me almost the grid that you see at the start of the entry. There were some match-ups, and a few promising features...

27 down, which had an asterisk (and I had no idea what the answer was), read WOOLLY - knitwear, hmmm
28 down also looked like a name, ELSIE
8 down was GULLIVER. If I kept the U, then I could turn it into PULLOVER, another piece of knitwear. Does this mean k means "keep" and p means "change"? Is there a logic to why G becomes P and I becomes O. GP? IO?
If I apply that to 6 down, BRAN could become ARAN. Also 26 SWEATER, 38 JUMPER. And since 27 is all the second letter of across entries (which are "kept"), it is WOOLLY. That leaves 43, which is --R-E-... I guessed at JERSEY.

Time for a new grid...

listener4008002

Putting together all the letters that were "k", I then had to fill some breaks and come back to the unsolved clues. 31 down was not ROLLER as I thought, but BEETLE.

This didn't give me a complete grid - there were some squares that were "p" for both halves or were unchecked and "p". Since it's all real words, I did have to poke around in Chambers word wizards to find the last few letters to go in - I'm not 100% convinced about the upper right corner (New England). If there was a pattern to "p", I'm afraid I've missed it.

But I'm calling this a victory (I know I tried that last week) to George, and tying the battle up going into the last handful of puzzles. Current tally: George 22, Listener 22. Current streak, George 1.

I was trying to think of a song that went along with this one, and for some reason I thought Alexei Sayle had a song about wearing jumpers, but I can't quite trace it. I did find this one, where he (and Marshall and Renwick) predicted the demise of Jonathan Ross almost 20 years ago.



Edit: The much hipper and thinner than I Chris Lancaster in the comments (he's working on a newer betterer Listen With Others site), reminds me that the song was "Where's My Jumper" by the Sultans of Ping.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Tempted to keep it at Tod Dylan...

listener4007

This is a little later than usual because I'm recovering from a rather impressive Thanksgiving feast. Americans know how to do gluttony and I'm more than willing to do my part. And here we go with Songspiel by Dysart, and remember what happened last week with seeing the theme almost straight away and then finding I couldn't finish the puzzle even with the thematic elements in place... well it may have happened again. Quick start, long struggle to a finish.

This appears to be my first puzzle by Dysart - I see in the Listener archives a 2006 puzzle I don't recall attempting. Edit: I had overlooked "Mercury's Whereabouts" earlier this year in which I got absolutely nowhere.

Down clues, misprints in letters in the definition, alternating sequence spelling out a musical piece (nice twist). Answers to be modified... well I guess it's time to work on that musical piece then.

Promising start - look for odd words... 1 down looks like SMOOCHING should be SMOOTHING - can't see the answer yet.
2 down, the wordplay looks like OIMLA or OIDIA, it turns out OIDIA is the plural of a disease of GRAPES
3 down, misprint looks pretty obvious - LESS relaxed, so TEN(=NET<=),SER Already, my set of misprints/original letters would be THE or CEA... so I know the pattern. I put little circles next to the down clues so I know where I'm looking for a letter to change 4 down - TAME looks like its ripe for the altering, not sure what the answer is 5 down - has to be SITTING SAT, making it TES,TEE 7 down - can't see it, but MIME looks awkward 8 down - the misprint looks like it should be "unstimulating to EAT", an anagram search turns up INSULSE And already we have THE TIME... which makes me think it's THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN' - it has the right number of letters, and the song addresses writers, critics, senators, congressmen, fathers and mothers - six groups! So I write the alternating misprints/in my circles. We've already had "lost time" this year so it seems reasonable that we should have some changed time - either the letter T or words meaning time.

So I charged through the down clues and then back to the acrosses and found I was on the right track - an easy place to see was 37 d (WAN,T - LACK) crossing with 37 across (TEENY). Changing the T to the clashing letter made both entries real words. I still had a real struggle to fill in the grid, I wasn't familiar with a lot of these words so it was multiple hunt and peck sessions through Chambers and Bradfords. I made a lot of this hard on mysef, without thinking I wrote in URINARY for 27, thinking that RARY would be a showy plant, where of course it was the much more straightforward ROSE making URINOSE.

The T's on the top row can resolve themselves into BOB DYLAN, and that left a grid with all real words and no Ts.

The last part... hmmm... that guy who needed the spellchecker SPENSERis in 26 across, so there's the writers taken care of. 39 down GOV is our senators and congressmen gone. ONASSIS is there at 14, I assume that's the mother. 19 or 18 could be our fathers, so I hope I'm right in saying there's no critic represented in the grid - my missing group.

I'm not 100% on that final step, so I might have to correct the tally in the comments, but for now I'm calling this a win for George - current tally George 22, Listener 21, current streak George 1.

I'll admit, I'm not much of a Bob Dylan fan... I can't find an online clip of Eric Bogle singing this song, but this guy with a guitar does a pretty decent job (needs help with his microphone levels).

Friday, November 21, 2008

Am I really this dense?

listener4006001

Phi has always stumped me, actually I think this is about the furthest I've gotten on a Phi puzzle, but I read the preamble, looked at the title and the date, and I thought this was going to be an absolute cakewalk.

Halloween is the main reason for anyone to live in the US, and I was hoping for a Halloween themed crossword either October 25 or November 1. And this looked like it - interruptions to the programme, the timing, this has got to be Orson Welles radio verson of H.G. Wells' "The War of The Worlds", and the modification is probably adding an E or subtracting an E. And there's the right number of characters in 11, 17, and 29 for "The War Of The Worlds" (maybe broken up or jumbled, since it says "broadcast" in the preamble). And a clue even jumped out at me - 38 is DOSE, and leave the E off and it will cross with 24 down, ASSO(R)TS, 33 down VET,O and that D is in the title of "The War of the Worlds".

So what went wrong...

I just have to get better at Phi/Sabre/Dipper/Mr Lemon wordplay... I can't wrap my head around a certain style of clue and this appears to be it. I can't for the life of me solve any of the "snippets" even once I've gotten a few checking letters (it just occurred to me that maybe the snippets are jumbles and meant to be entered so?).

Even with the few I've put in the grid here I'm not overly happy with AFFLICTS or FOLIO.

So Fie on you Phi! I'm hoping that I'm barking up completely the wrong tree, but I just have this sinking feeling I've worked out the theme and the clues have just left me in the dust. Victory to the Listener Crossword and the battle is tied!

Current tally: Listener 21, George 21. Current streak, Listener 2

Since I understand Phi is in New Zealand, let's see if we can spot him in a video clip from New Zealand's greatest band ever, Split Enz.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Duck duck goose, mine is cooked!

Warning: this is not correct - it's my grid before the "flight path" changing, which I couldn't work out.

listener4005

My copy of Bradford's arrived last year in the same week that the solution was published to Tea Leaves' last Listener (Band on the Run), so it was one of the first puzzles that I started to get closer to a full grid on. I was looking forward to this, and although I'm really flummoxed by what had to happen at the end, I spent a lot of time having fun here.

OK - double clues, one goes in the grid in pencil (I'm not much of a pencil fan, i was going to do it in pen and then start a fresh one for the second part - though I think it probably means things are going to be erased and the final grid has some blank spaces). There's 38 whopping clues to be solved cold with the answers falling into five groups.

My approach was to solve as many as I could and see if I could get the first grid before moving on to these sets and a hidden message. I'm at my best with normal clues, normal entry (who isn't), so it only took me two sessions to come up with the grid before you. Once I started the grid - with the rather helpful starting point being 5 across (CEDAR, hidden and SET,UP) crossing 7 down (HAG,LET - and a bird fitting with the title, PLAN,E-T) giving only one option, I looked through the clues for the half that fit in the grid.

So, complete grid, and I think I know the five categories - I had found five games (four of which are card games- is CHESS a card game too?), five birds, seven containers, five colors (NANKEEN refers both to the cloth and a color), and four trees/plants.

The title seems to hint that the birds are going to be the group of ten (and two of the clues that I have left to solve have types of birds in them, probably the definitions). So if I eliminate CRANE from the first five extra answers, it looks like I can make NEW by taking the first letter of NANKEEN, then second letter of CEDAR, third letter of PAWPAW... and that's it.

Stuck!

Even knowing that I'm looking for birds, games, colors or trees, there's 12 I can't figure out...

Across
13: Plane might be indicating a tree... C-----
15: The second half of this clue is making my head hurt - I was thinking a game with a girl's name
27: Second half of clue again. Do I just have mental blanks on 10-letter words?
29: SOT/SOP in IOU makes nothing
30: Six letter French girl? Maybe the name of a game
33: There's a bird called a RURU that might fit here
34: I thought this was CRATE originally, but I already have seven containers
35: ----ISA = hollow?

my unknowns come in bunches, which is killing me on trying to find that message

Down
2: I can't wait to find out the answer, because that is an awesome surface... "smack heroin in poison"
6: Is this WHITE?
19: Kite is usually ELANET, it probably is here too but I can't see why
23: If this involved the name of a rugby plater I'm done for, the only two I know are Mel Meninga and Wally Lewis
25: completely stuck, can't even find a likely definition.

Tea Leaves, you have foiled me again! Victory Listener crossword and the race is ever so tight with just a few puzzles to go. Listener 21, George 20. Current streak, Listener 1.

I still think that this has something to do with erasing or moving the names of the birds (though I can't find CRANE in the grid), which made me think of the Peter Gabriel/Laurie Anderson collaboration "Excellent Birds/This is the Picture".



now to go find out what I did wrong...

Friday, November 7, 2008

George AND Signal Boxes AND solved NOT easily AND with a lot of fun along the way = 1

listener4004

This is the third Ploy puzzle I've tried - I got about a half-filled grid on "Travelling Light" and absolutely nowhere on "Pater and Son" (from a time where I'd print out the puzzle and be too bogged down in preambles to get started anywhere). Five elements have associated points, each has to be set appropriately, four thematic words (are they also the elements?), two names, two topics.

After my last few failures, a big sigh of relief that clues are normal! Not only that, but my "please make the first across clue an starter clue so I can get into it" plea has been heard, so we have a straightforward alphabetisation in 1A - So That Electric Points Use Power.

I enjoued the clueuing - Ploy seems to have gone for long surfaces here, which I think is my style of clue (apologies to Pieman, and also to Charybdis from last week). Theres some juicy substitution clues - DELAWARE becoming DE LA MARE at 13 is very nice.

First hint of something up comes with 2D and 17AC. 17 has to be VIOL, and 2 has to be TABOO. Combine that with a memory from earlier this year that a SIRI is a betel and we have clashing Is and Os... which would go with the theme - it's ON(1) or OFF(0) if I'm not mistaken.

I was giving a friend a ride home and talking about my exploits with the crossword when it clicked... I told him about the 1/0 thing and said "I bet those two right next to each other have a B and an LE in them to make BOOLE". After dropping him off, I couldn't wait, I grabbed the crossword and saw it... TABOO|LEAFFALL and there's my fellow George! And looky - two columns along has PUTLOG|I|C and there's Boole's logic. I have an almost full grid, but working from the other end, there's CERCI|R|CUITTLE (I learned along the way from Chambers that those crazy Italians decided NOON should be at 3pm). So there's CIRCUIT, and two more columns in there's PASHA|N|NONIRON (thanks for throwing a chemist a bone by putting LIGNIN at 34). A bit of googling tells me there is such a thing as a SHANNON CIRCUIT. Thematic words done.

But there's still some clashes, and they're in the middle... hmmm....

It took me another two days to see what was going on... the clashes were every second column, and what twigged it for me was seeing NAND in the middle of SYNANDRIUM. And things fell into place... OR, NOT, AND, NAND and NOR are in between the clashing Os and Is. The whole thing is a logic puzzle! Here's how it works...

the 0 from BOOLE is operated on by OR to give 0, making the PUTLOG/SIRI clash 0.

That 0 and the 1 underneath (from CIAO) are operated on by NOT to give 1, setting the PEREIA/OATY (great clue there by the way)

Had to look forward here... there's an AND and a NAND coming up to give me the O in SHANNON. The only way to get 0 in NAND is to give it 1 and 1, so my AND has to be 1 and 1, setting the CIAO/ILIA clash as I, also setting the CAPITOL/INNERS and BLINI/OCREA clash as I.

The NOR has to give the 1 in CIRCUIT making the RORTY/NON-IRON clash 0.

Brings back memories of Mathematics I from University, and a great "ending" to the puzzle... I still had two to fill after all of this, I couldn't quite verify 45, my guess was from the wordplay and it was being used as a screen name so I guess it's right. I'm still calling this one a very fun victory. Good stuff, Ploy - this was well put-together and a lot of fun at the end.

Current tally: George 22, Listener 20 (still tight), Current streak: George 1.

Nothing to do with circuits, but I'm quite excited that Danielson are doing another show in Asheville. They're either the most Christian rock band ever or they're making fun of it all, but no matter what, their shows are hysterically good fun. If you want to know more, check out this clip, and yes, all those people are in the band and they do use acoustic instruments.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Empty, by George

listener4003

No bars, strange numbers, clues in usual order, some misprints in definitions.

Why can I get absolutely nowhere on this crossword? I've stared at it for hours, I've looked up every single word in every single clue in Chambers and Bradfords. I've invented all sorts of misprints and looked them up. I've done everything but cheat...

I can't even get started on this one.

Let's possibly redeem something... we have to guess the name of the setter, so I'm going to presume it's a regular setter. You rarely see someone with more than one puzzle in a year, so let's eliminate all setters going back to October 2007. Probably someone who set last year...

Poat? Maybe... seems to like odd grids. Only set two puzzles in the last three years, so maybe not familiar enough to solvers to use as an identifiable setter.
Arachne? Also not that many crosswords.
Charybdis? Likely contender... set quite a few in the last year but none since "Wot No Lines" (which I couldn't finish, but liked).
Bandmaster? Maybe, but the Bandmaster puzzles I've done have had a lot of clues, and this has very few.
Kea? I hope not, because I really loved "Safe Cracking" and the one with the crazy slanty lines.

So I'm putting my money behind Charybdis, let's see if I can get anything about it.

I am so stuck...

Across...

1. Looks like it might be a misprint definition for "encouraging six", because otherwise wordplay would be hinting at VI,EN, (on?). VIENNESE wouldn't fit a misprint of "encouraging". So maybe EN------. Enticing? Could ON give me TICING?
7. Cut Flower... oh, maybe it's a Dipper puzzle? No idea.
8. Maybe a misprint giving "homelessness"? But can't think of a 4-letter word. American boast cut short for wordplay?
9. If "egg" is "ego" misspelled then I could have N-MO- and something like NO MORE as the miprints. The only word I can think for "operation for birth" is CAESARIAN which isn't 8 letters.
10. FINALLY! ARENA - N gives AREA and a misprinted R.
13. IN out of ORDINARY gives ORDARY which doesn't make any anagrams I can think of.
14. Wordplay looks like NINTH as a hidden word. Nothing that means NINTH seems to fit the definition or a misprint in the definition.
18. Could be long ball? S--- SAIR? SALP?
19. ST-----R? WAYFARER?
21. Anagram of WEST? STEW? WETS?
22. Misprint maybe for "they're trapped"? ORAL in SPAN?

Down
1. EDGAR!! Got one!
2. One of the five-letter muses? Maybe starting with N, that doesn't help
3. I--ICAL? Living woman?
4. A rugby term for error? Don't know any rugby. Wordplay not giving me anything.
5. No idea...
6. EME,US, and we have a misprint of U -bush birds. The grid shape seems to be suggesting this crosses with 1 across, which would mean enticing isn't right. It could go next to EDGAR, I guess.
11. LOSSIER (RISSOLE)*.
12. Making furniture in six letters? CHAIRY?
14. Could be misprint of shunted? -M---?
15. That's an odd surface, I'm sort of running low on inspiration now
16. C(H)ARDS, misprint of R for T in tummy
17. SOMA? That's a wild guess since it's appeared in a Times and a Jumbo lately.

So great... I'm only sure of 5 clues, and I can't really place any of them, but I think 1ac starts EN so I put in EDGAR. Might as well be an empty grid.

Off to check where I failed on this one, but we can stamp it FAIL

Victory Listener crossword and possibly Charybdis. The lead is almost eroded! Current tally Listener 20, George 21. Current streak, Listener 3!

Friday, October 24, 2008

All the Henrys I know except Clay, Matisse and Thoreau

listener4002

First thing that struck me after printing off Listener 4002: A Process of Induction by Emkay was the grid. That's a very nice-looking grid, blank perimeter, criss-crossing of three long answers, the word in the middle meaning that it's pretty neatly blocked off into four quarters. I didn't weigh in on the discussion in the Crossword Club, but I have an aesthetic fondness for symmetric grids.

According to the Listener site, Emkay's last puzzle was in 2005, when I wasn't regularly attempting the Listener, and I don't recall that last puzzle, so here's a new setter for me.

The preamble suggests a plan of attack - the long answers are to be entered normally, as are any words that don't touch the perimeter. So let's start with those...

I "cheated" almost straight away... the definition for 15ac sounded like it should be ------SPHERIC... tropospheric isn't the right number of letters, nor is ionospheric or mesospheric. THERMOSPHERIC is, and I coudn't make it match the wordplay, but a search on ------SPHERIC on word wizards turned up CHROMOSPHERIC, which would fit the wordplay as R in C,Ho,Mo,S,P,H,Er,I,C (a degree in Inorganic Chemistry occasionally comes in handy). 35ac is an anagram - CAUTION,THREAT turning into AUTHENTICATOR, and 3D is HORSE,CHESTNUT. Thanks for the three starter clues, Emkay, we're off!

I'd like to stay I stuck with the game plan of filling in the normal entry clues, but since I got the first three I looked at, I decided to barge in and solve as many as I could, and when there were jumbles, write the letters on the side of the grid and eliminate checking letters. The clues were a mix of very tricky and pretty easy - here's my favorites...

6A - DR(ONG)OS(s) - cute little bird, and Australian term of insult
18A - ELD,EST
20A - CLEANER (anagram of LAWRENCE-W)
5D - ORRA - hidden reversed in wheelbARROw
23D - EELS - every fourth letter is a new one for me
31D (deva)STATE - the sort of clue I used to miss a lot, taking a small word away from a long word

After two sessions of solving, I had a pretty decent-looking grid, but still a lot of blanks across that centre, it looked like -O---H-E-R-. Putting that into Word Wizards (I relied a lot on Word Wizards for this one), suggested HOORAH HENRY, and this dropping was too big for a penny - the brick dropped. Are the perimeters Henrys? Look a the first one... FOR,D. We're on to something... if they're Henry's, that (9,two words) would be THE EIGHTH... E in HE in TIGHT,H (nice wordplay, Emkay). Further confirmation, anagram of virgin gives me IRVING.

I wrote down all the Henrys I knew... Clay, Matisse, Thoreau, Purcell, Mancini and tried to retrofit them into the perimeter clues. There's MANCI,NI, and PUR(e)CELL (and places to put them). A wikipedia and google search of Henrys gave me TH(I)E,R,RY as a soccer-playing Henry. That left me with two 4-letter Henry's to find. I thought the mild cheese one was C(LA)Y, but a google search of Cyprus cheese turned up HALLOUMI, and that Henry Hall was a 17th century poet. Finally putting in HENRY -O-D suggested Henry Wood (concert leader), so I presume the bird is a woodchuck without the chuck or something like that.

This was a lot of fun to solve! The Henrys were fun, and trickily clued, and I enjoyed doing the research to finish this off. There was a real sense of playfulness that resonated with me here. And I managed to get the theme and the answer pretty readily after some slogging.

Victory to George! Current tally - George 22, Listener 18. Current streak, George 2.

Finding Henry Theirry reminded me of an hysterical track by Cassetteboy on their most recent CD, "Carry On Breathing". Warning - while this is technically safe for work, you may not want to play it with sensitive ears present.



Until next week - comments welcome!

Friday, October 17, 2008

Amo = something you fire from a gun, Amat = something you sit on, Amamus = a pregnant rodent

listener4001

"Normal" blog resumes, with 4000 stashed away for a snowy week. We have a crossword with an interesting shaped grid by Alban, a kind of a tribute crossword. It appears Alban's last puzzle was in 2002, and was all German words. the one before that was all French, before that more German.

So armed with that little bit of foreknowledge about Alban and the title, I think we're up against some Latin. The first across I could see the wordplay to (12ac - LUC(k),RUM) confirms this - Latin roots that appear with the words in Chambers.

My Latin is pretty terrible, so I turned to a friend who is a Classics professor for some assistance. She liked this crossword a lot (her mother does the Times).

The phrase QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM came to mind almost instantly when looking at 4,4,14.

Something bugged me a little here, after the first sitting I had the theme, the hidden phrase, and probably half of the grid filled in. It didn't seem all that important to fill in the rest of the grid, which meant poring through Latin dictionaries and emailing my Classics friend. There's probably some mistakes in the left-hand side of the grid.

Looking through Alban's previous puzzles, some of them sound truly inspired (a tribute to Douglas Adams!, and a cubic puzzle), hopefully a few will be in the new Listener book that may find its way to the US (or I'll cave and order it from the UK, might have to make it and Chambers a Christmas present to myself).

George 21, Listener 18. Streak: George 1.

I can't vote, but I'm caught up in the US election anyway. I live in one of these "swing states" that is being heavily canvassed, and on Sunday, James Taylor is coming to my little town to do a concert to support Barack Obama. I've got a ticket, James Talyor is a kind of a guilty pleasure, but whenever I think of him, I think of this



Vincent Price looks so happy in this clip.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Listener 4000: saved for a rainy week

It has not been the best of three weeks. Two illnesses, two trips out of town, writing a show , and a couple of performances have really eaten into my crossword time.

Listener 4000 looks like a work of art, and it wasn't until a second look at it that I realised the "individual" crosswords occupy the same space. I don't want to do a half-assed job on it, so I'm not going to look at the answers, and I'll be saving Listener 400 for a rainy week (maybe a week-long trip I have to Houston in December).

I'm calling this a timed-out failure. Listener 18, George 20. Current streak, Listener 2.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Smoke if you've got 'em

listener3999

On a plane from Atlanta to Asheville last year, I got almost half of Convert by Mr. Lemon out - I saw that there was a Harry Potter theme from identifying "Diagon Alley" in the extra letters, and I started to pick up more of the tricks that help with solving Listeners. I never did finish it, but I was looking forward to seeing what Mr. Lemon had in store with Tobacco.

16 answers need metallic changes, remaining clues lead to an answer with an extra letter. A message makes it all clear.

Starting on the across clues, nothing jumped out until 12 - (A1,TITIAN)*,ED makes INTITATED with an extra A, and right after it is DIAL + C (hidden). 18 looks like the first answer that needs changing - LO in SAL giving SALON, and a letter needs to be removed (since I'm writing this well after coming up with that, I'm pretty sure SALON isn't right).

Then a bunch of unsolveables, until I hit 21 across... (OIKS)*,MET gives KISMET + O, S(CAN)S, then (LAIC,TYPE)* gives ECTYPAL + I, didn't know 27, (t)RAIL+S, 32 looks like something...ISHLY, a peek at Bradfords and there's SNOTTY for midshipman, so SOTTISHLY + N, and 33 is a clue I like a lot - TOO in OLEO (appearing in 73% of New York Times crosswords) gives O'TOOLE + O. I have almost all the bottom half of acrosses written in.

Downs... trickier. 4 is SAGINATE and needs changing. 6 is SCREE,N, another change (change appears to be losing one letter, or some modification that leaves a word one shorter). For 7, (ANY,SIOUX)* about AL gives ANXIOUSLY + A, 8 is SE,RA+N, and then a bit of a break.

16 is (KAREN) in SOOT which gives SNAKEROOT, and since I have the K,E,R and O, then the modification looks like it's in the first three characters. Sn and Na are chemical symbols for metals - are we merging the two and getting rid of the N?

20 looks like (LINT)* in GAGS to give GATLING+S (that fits). If 23 is C(LOTH)O+N (fits), 26 is PAOLO+I, and a trip to Bradfords to look up cattle gives GYAL so that's an extra N to finish off.

With the words I've written in, I can see a few more clues - 1 ac is BAR,BAR,Y COAST+T (nice clue). I scanned this a little early, I saw 2 is A,RUN,HEM to give ARNHEM+U. Word Wizards suggests TELEOLOGICAL will fit at 35, it has an anagram of COLLEGE and ALI, but I don't see where the rest of the clue could come from.

Since BARBARY COAST is in place, making 4D start with A, there goes the merging metals idea - are we just losing the S so the word starts with a metal symbol (Ag)?

The extra letters look like this T?BAC?OI?SNO?U?AN?DS?N?I?N. TOBACCO IS NOT(NOW?) U AND S?N?I?N? I've got nothing.

And I am stuck...

Looking at it now, I think it probably is removing the first letter so that answers start with the symbol for a metal, that would explain the metallic change, and although it doesn't match what I have in the grid, my need to change answers can all do this...

SALON - ALON (but that wouldn't work with SAGINATE??)
SAGOUIN - AG
SCANS - CANS
35 may have been STELEOLOGICAL to becomne TELEOLOGICAL?
SAGINATE - AG
SCREEN - CREEN

Dammit - is it S that needs to be taken off?
SNAKEROOT - NAKEROOT

Was I this close?

Well done Mr. Lemon - victory to the Listener Crossword. Listener 17, George 20. Current streak, Listener 1.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Blog Extra: Shameless Self-promotion

I wrote and starred in a short film that was shown at a few shows over summer, and it's now digimatized on YouTube. Lose three minutes of your life with - "The Perfect Chair" (directed by Wyman Tannehill)

Little boy blue come blow your lur

listener3998

Now this is a pretty nifty idea, a circular crossword in a square grid. We had a circular crossword in a crazy-shaped grid a few weeks ago, and the entry method is about the same, words go inwards, outwards and are jumbled, and the ones on the corners go in diagonally - so really this grid is four 6x6 crosswords to fill in, with a quotation and a name running in two squares.

I hadn't heard of Centigram before, and a peek at the Listener site shows four puzzles, the most recent being 1992 (long time between drinks!), and that one of them was the floor plan of a house with 6x6 rooms. Centigram, if you're reading, I'm really curious to see that crossword, it sounds fascinating.

The diagonals touch every entry (and none were jumbled), so let's start with them and work on these 6x6s.

Couldn't get 6, but 17 is TUPI in SD giving the lovely word STUPID. 13 is MEEMIE, so the I's cross if MEEMIE goes inwards as does stupid. 14 is a cute clue for CARPET, 15 looks like ASSURE, couldn't get 16, 18 is D,EARTH, 19 is HUMERI, 20 is a wonderful clue for STUMPS. Damn, I just noticed I left the P off the end of 21. 22 is an excellent clue for IMATED. So a little hunt and pecking to get DRUIDS and ETHISM, and I had one corner out quite readily.

This was the approach I took to get the grid completed - the lower left corner (in my Americanized version of crosswording, I call that the Desert corner) and upper right corner (New England) were trickier than the lower right (Florida) and the upper left (Hippy corner).

Getting the quotation really helped in getting out these tricky corners. The second "square" in was looking promising already with DEARTHSIM, and then later on NERSBLOWY. I could also see DONNE, so I knew I was dealing with John Donne (though the only quote I knew from him was "no man is an island"). Googling John Donne quotes involving earth and blow brought up the Holy Sonnets and the quotation I was looking for.

To get the end, there was a little dilemma - the quote matches the crossword well, it's given something round corners - the letters in the corner of this grid were ULRS, which could make SLUR, which would fit rounding square sounds, or LURS, and a lur turns out to be a trumpet, so the blown trumpet is at the corners.

This is one impressive puzzle, Centigram. I was slow to get started, but once I got that first corner out, it was a lot of fun to fill in. I can't heap enough praise on the clues - this is my style of cryptic clueing - the surfaces range from smutty to bizarre and for that many 6-letter words, they are presented in any number of ways.

And I'll call this one a victory for George - current tally: George 20, Listener 16. Current streak - George 1.

I've already sent them an email, but congrats to the Google NYC team for taking runners-up in last week's Listener - nice to know a winner.

And since we have a metric setter, here's a video for a song by the late great band, the Centimeters

Friday, September 19, 2008

3507 1

I scanned my grid last night, and didn't upload it to flickr straight away, so you'll have to wait to see my unfortunate grid for this one.

After saying early in the year that I can usually solve numerical Listeners, Oyler and now Elap have had their ways with me! And I saw what I presume is the theme quickly - the first few numbers I got and the title of the puzzle gave it away, it's calculatot language, entering 07734 in a calculator and looking at it upside down gives "hello". So 53704 918 (or 618 at the end) would give BIG HOLES.

I was off to a really quick start...

14 down (Q) is a factorial, the only 4 digit factorial is 5040 (7!)
6 down: O! plus a few fiddly bits gives a 7-digit number, so O has to be 10 (can't be 9)
3 across: W = 3T = 3O + T, is now an algebra equation 3T = 30+T, T = 15, W=45
32 across: U = TO + 2T, so U is 180
This means since V - OU = 7, V has to be 1807, and goes in 28 down
Having both halves of 32 across, H=18 (and since 26 across is OY + OK + A, A has to end in 1)
35 across is AUU + PQ + U and is ---7-80. The only A that fits this pattern and ends in 1 is A=51
This makes 2D H+A+TH = 339, and since 1D is OOE +2V and has to end --14, E is 19, and 1D is 5514

And that is where I came to a grinding halt... 1ac is EYY + O + E + A, and solving 19Y^2 + 80 = 534-- means Y is 53... from there I tried to work on K and R and didn't get a good solution for either.

The puzzle looks great, and I've racked my brain to see where I could go next, I'm sure I'm missing something simple.

So that's a victory to Elap and the Listener Crossword. Current tally: Listener 16, George 19. Current streak, Listener 1.

Now off to find out where I was wrong and print off the eagerly-anticipated, triple-barrelled Listener 4000 (gulp).

Friday, September 12, 2008

Ready. maestro?

listener3996001

Oh boy did I make a bosh of last week's on many levels. One thing that I completely spaced on was the second ring from the middle having a letter in common on all three answers, so I shouldn't have been surprised that there were more overlapping letters than I though. OK, enough about that, on to Half a Ton by Llig.

This is the first Llig puzzle I've attempted, and looking at the archive it appears Llig favors music and Germans. It's a relief to see a normal looking grid after last week, we have symmetry, and something running around the outside, and a number of clues are connected to the perimeter.

It appears normal clue entry, making this a regular cryptic until I get to the outside. The clues were fun, I did notice in solving a lot of compound anagrams, maybe more in down clues, but I didn't count them.

Curious about what goes around the perimeter, I worked on the down clues first so I could have some of the top line...

1down - NAUSEA compound anagram of AS JENUFA with F and J
2 - WAS,PS
3 - ENCODE (odd clue, not sure I really understand the wordplay, is it E,D,E around COD?
4 - NAIRA - compound anagram of OCARINA with O,C
6 - CROSS,TOWN
7 - E-P,ROM
8 - DIDO (hidden)

-NWEN--C-ED-- entered into word wizards gave me ON WENLOCK EDGE and the theme was taken care of straight away - I read up on Ralph Vaughan Williams and his "cut out" approach to music, which was interesting (though I'm still not a fan), and see that the rest of the perimeter gave SERENADE TO MUSIC RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.

Got the whole thing done in two fairly short sittings, but I think it helped a lot that I got the theme in quickly, was anticipating music or Germany and knew a little bit about old Rafe. Compound anagrams are one of my favorite type of clue, so I was a happy camper working them out.

And after last week, I'm back on track - victory to George! Current tally: George 19, Listener 15. Current streak, George 1.

Here is a "recording" of a part of "On Wenlock Edge" by the Perverts' Chorus

Sunday, September 7, 2008

The stuff of nightmares...

listener3995

Let the excuses begin... this puzzle came out in a week where I was away from printers and computers for most of the time, so I didn't get to really work on it until after the next puzzle came out. The grid shaped scared me. There's jumbled words and clues that are listed together. The only real words in the radials are thematic ones with no clue as to how to get them?

Crikey!

I present you with the effectively empty grid. A few years ago there were a lot of these, but since I started the blog, I haven't had a paltry effort like this. I'm dying to go back and see what it was that I missed.

I think there's something to do with the letters in the quadrants - I tried to figure these out by solving as many of the radial clues as possible and looking for extra letters. I thought I was off to a good start - the clues for 1 gave me CINERARIUM (anagram of RARE,I,CUMIN) and DIABLERIES. Both of these are 10 letters, meaning they're not the long entry in 1, and the common letters are IEAR, and the entries in 2 and 3 all have to have these letters. That makes the second half of 2 REANIMATE, but didn't help me with the rest of 2 or 3.

I think the second part of 4 is OBOVATE, but the rest of 4 and 5 elude me. 6 I do better on, DE(n)SO,LA,TE and SE(STET)TO. Each are 8 letters long, so there should be three letters in the quadrant, common ones are OTES, and if 4 is OBOVATE, then it's OTE.

7 Gives me JET,PLAN,E, and TULIPANTS - 8 letters and 9 letters, so JETPLANE goes jumbled in the middle one, and there's only two letters in the middle. Common are T,P,L,A. 8 gives me PENALTY for the last half, which has all of TPLA, but the first half of 9 is LIASE so it has to be LA in the quadrant.

10 I'm stuck on, the first half of 11 is DEMOCRATIC (10 letters), and it looks like the second half should be IDIOMISM (9 letters), not sure of the middle bit. The first part of 12 is INDAGATOR, the three words have IDO in common, and that would fit in the middle unless there's an 11-letter thematic word.

The rings don't help me at all... the answers for ring 5 appear to be INSURES, UNSEAMS and ENVOI, but that's only 19 letters and there's 36 space in ring 5?

I'm lost...

Well done MynoT, I am soundly thrashed on this one, I can't wait to find out what I missed.

Victory to the Listener Crossword: Listener 15, George 18. Current streak: Listener 1.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Blog Extra: Guardian and Listener

The Guardian's Crosswords are now available free online.

I've had a go at the dailies this week and printed off last week's Azed but haven't had a chance to try it. Their interface is really nice, and the .pdf version of the crossword has won me over - it prints perfectly on one sheet of American letter paper, and has some white space under the crossword for scribbling.

I'm on the road for the next two days, so my blog of 3995 is going to be a day or two late.

Friday, August 29, 2008

dum dum dum dum ping ping dum dum dum dum dum ping ping bzzzzzzzz

listener3994001

I scanned my grid this morning but forgot to upload it to flickr, so I'll have to update this later.

Zero had one nifty puzzle in 2007 where the grid turned out to be a map of Italy, and I got absolutely nowhere with it. This one has an odd-shaped (but symmetric grid) and a very short preamble. Shading and affected cells - in the Italy one I think it was clashes?

On to the clues, I found the clues pretty tough - made even more tough by 24-27 across being omitted by my printer! It was obvious quickly that most answers were too long for the grid entry - the first two I saw were NEMESES for 13a, ON A PLATE (A PLAT in ONE) for 14a, ETUDE for 15a, CZAR for 17 and EXCERPT for 18, so it's likely to be dropping letters or multiple-letter clashes. Since I had three close together, I want to the downs, saw INEZ for 2 (INES and INEZ being on the brain since popping up in Yes by Lato), so something is fishy with that AR. 18 down is EXAM (AXE back with M) which works with my EX in EXCERPT, so maybe it's many letters crammed in the one spot.

Big penny drop moment was ON A PLATE... if it is two letters in each square, then I have ON, AP, LA, TE - and those fit with the downs LONER, NEAP, BLASTED and HAUTE. So a lot of checked spots have two letters, cool! In an hour or so I've got a grid filled more than half-way with a lot of double letter clusters in the middle, and none around the outside. I thought there was probably none at 1ac either, which left me with a problem for a while at 10ac, thinking that ET (from HETES) went there.

40 is unclued... and from assuming that there were no doubled-up cells in the bottom row I had -P-CE-N-ADERS... SPACE INVADERS! And shading in the doubly-filled squares, there's one of the little beasties!

This took me two sittings, so it's probably easy by Listener standards, the end was very fun though, making the grid so that the shape of the space invader fit checked cells and having the grid still have 180-degree symmetry when the space invader itself doesn't is a really nice touch. I had to browse through Chambers to get a few of the last clues (like SOKEN at 30D). This one is a victory for George, and back to a little breathing room. Nice puzzle, Zero, if you're looking in.

Current tally: George 18, Listener 14. Current streak: George 1.

This made me think of when New Zealand ruled new-wave music, so here's "Computer Games" by Mi-Sex

Friday, August 22, 2008

Argentdum

listener3993001

The dreaded Palyfair square... I have not even attempted a crossword with such a beastie, and I didn't even get to filling out the square here.

This is the first Radix Listener I've attempted, I wasn't doing them regularly in 2005 when the last one appeared, but I have read some of Radix' postings on the Crossword Centre. And it looked like it had some elements I could get into - words needing to be removed, leding to a phrase.

But time really caught up on me these last few weeks with a move, a couple of big shows and some other commitments and this one kind of fell by the wayside. I only spent two long sessions with Chambers and Bradfords and couldn't crack all that many of the clues, and no enough to start to make the message appear.

And after a few good shots I'm starting to feel like a beginner again. Sorry, Radix, it looked like a really nice challenge that I wasn't up to. And with the corrections that were pointed out for last week (I thought that was LAR+DO at 22 down), that makes two in a row that I've missed!

Current tally: George 17, Listener 14. Current streak, Listener 2.

Friday, August 15, 2008

La symbol phallique

listener3992001

The preamble didn't leave masses to the imagination - clues start at some point in the grid entry (and as turned out useful later on, every clue was affected, so none could start at the same point). 12 letters to shade at the end (in this case I've chosen the green highlighter of doom).

I'll jump to the end - this was one of the fastest finishes I've had of a Listener crossword, a little over an hour after starting I had the grid filled in except for 26, which took a little guesswork. The starting point was at the bottom - with 32 being COLLEAGUE, 28 being TALC (and the C not able to be the checking letter), and 23 being HOURI there was only once option available, and I worked around the grid from there. There were some very nice but not too-challenging clues - I liked 7D, and the anagram at 2.

As for the finish, with 12 letters and LA TOUR staring me in the face, it took a moment to find the EIFFEL making the shape of the tower. This was a well-done grid, I don't know if the preamble had to give away the method of entry so quickly, maybe hinting at it would have provided more of a challenge?

But I'm over the moon thanks to Pilcrow - that is a new record 5 in a row for George!

Current tally: George 18, Listener 12. Current streak: George 5.

Here's the song that I couldn't get out of my head while solving.

Friday, August 8, 2008

At last, a crossword with the flowers removed

listener3991001

I've tried (and failed dismally) on two previous Dipper puzzles: 3946 (Growing Pains) which had clues for vegetables as extra words and 3895 (Where and Tare). A distinct horticultural theme, as well as title. Grid entries in across clues are shorter than the clue answers, and grid entries in the downs are the same length.

So either a flower has to be removed from the answer in the acrosses, or the across answers are flowers derived from the across wordplay somehow? Alternative arrangements makes it sound like downs could be jumbled (ack).

I started on the acrosses. The first one that caught my eye was 14, if we have MAR,S and a 12 letter word for sweets, that's likely to be MARSHMALLOWS. MALLOW sounds like it could be a flower, so it's either MARSHS or MALLOW. I can't figure out the rest of the wordplay in the clue. 16 looks like KEROSENE, with the wordplay giving KENE (hidden) and ROSE the flower unindicated by the wordplay. But which is the grid entry? 24 provides the answer to that - three letters in the grid are the wordplay OT,E and there's SCILLA missing to give OSCILLATE. Anything else in the acrosses? The wordplay for 26 looks like BIN,O,ID, so (CANNA)BINOID. 40 looks like a compound anagram in the wordplay, SHE,ISN'T less IT gives HNESS... (IRIS)HNESS. The definition and 15 letters in 41 make it look like AMERICANISATION or AMERICANIZATION (depending on if you Americanize it), ERICA the flower, and the wordplay is A,M, IS in NATION. 42 looks like INTE or RRED, neither of which are revealing anything, and 43 looks like another compound anagram of RETNAIN...

With my acrosses filled in, and some odd letters next to each other in downs, it appears the jumble guess is going to be right. Oh - it helped that I went back to another compound anagram, in 11, which I'd thought was probably STATIC ELECTRICITY and found that a STATICE is a flowering plant.

The down clues are normal, but from the first one I solved (2 - P,OLDER - which had to fit into -L-E--), it was clear that things had to be jumbled. A few down entries had more than one unchecked cells, so unless there was a hidden message (and there wasn't anything hinting that in the preamble, repeated letters in a word have to go in those unchecked cells, i.e. for ETHICISE as 18d, an I was already placed, so the unchecked cells had to be Es.

I made heavy weather of this one, and put it down for a day or two at a time, getting one or two clues here or there. The real penny-drop moment that helped me get most of the right hand side was seeing DIS(ASTER)AREA for 17. I made two sheets at that point of the acrosses and downs to try to fill in the downs by looking for words where I had some of the letters, and the acrosses from the choices of letters available from the downs...

listener3991002

listener3991003

And crawled home after a lot of hunt-and-pecking. The flower theme had a few great moments - the clueing of IDA(LUPIN)O as IDAHO without H was classic.

There are two I'm uncomfortable with - I have 25 from wordplay alone - caLls fOr toWel... is it LAID-LOW? Or DOWN-LOW? And 27D I'm torn between SONNET and SENNET, I've gone for SONNET in the grid, and off to check.

However this is another victory for George, and a new solving record with four in a row!

Current tally: George 17, Listener 12. Current streak: George 4

Friday, August 1, 2008

Listener 3990: YCHJCYAROD

listener3990

I hadn't heard of Syd Lexis when I printed off this crossword - the Listener site suggests more than one pseudonym, but this is the first Syd Lexis puzzle for me.

The first word in the preamble gives me the willies - resolving makes me think that I've got to solve the thing twice, however the magic words come up soon - all grid entries are normal. Yay words! 20 clues lead to missing letters in the wordplay (neat trick, we've had a spate of extra letters and words, but no missing letters in a while), one, sometimes two. And there's four closed-off squares, which contributed to my downfall in Terminal Suspension. The four closed off squares are right in the middle, so maybe there's something funny about the middle of the grid.

Let's enter some actual words in the grid...

A run through the across clues and there's some pretty easy (Daily Times level - note, this is not a bad thing) clues.

1 - EASTERN, not sure if there's an E omitted, could be a straight-out clue
11 - IMPERIALISTS, anagram
15 - some old version of GOAL... I wrote in GOALE initially, had to change it later
19 - C in TRADE gives me TRADUCE without a U
23 - Anagram of LEAN gives ULNAE without another U
25 - H,ALE
34 - loved this clue - OX,TONE giving OXYTONE without Y
36 - looks like GED
40 - RE,A,NET giving REMANET without M
42 - IMUE being IMBUE without B

And the down clues were similarly accessible

1 - EIGHTHS, nice anagram
2 - surely AMOK, not sure if there's an extra letter
3 - TEL (LET backwards)
4 - ERES
5 - you can't sneak a RISSOLE past an Australian! Take out SOL (a word I love to use, a colloid of a solid in a liquid, as opposed to a GEL, a liquid in a solid) and we have RISE. Nice clue, Syd L.
7 - I had all the letters here before the correction came out, so I had AIR?, then read in a week that it was meant to read "Advanced Irish melody".
8 - P,S,ON - PSION without an I - bit of a sciencey one today, I'm in the zone
12 - P,GAL making PYGAL without a Y (and making GOALE wrong, checked Chambers for GOYLE and we were off again)
13 - APT,EX making APTERYX and at this point I'm thinking two things - the missing letters can make for some very fun clues, and there's a lot of extra Ys... and a lot of Ys in the middle of the grid. Do the Y's make a pattern?
20 - DE,NT
21 - N,DING making UNDYING without U and Y - another Y, and the extra letters don't have to be next to each other.
22 - more science! COGEN(t) makes CRYOGEN without RY. Another Y, eh... why"?

It was here that things really fell into place. The middle was almost completely full, and looking at the diagonals between the blocked off squares, both of them read URYY...

In 1992 I was living in Hobart, Tasmania (great place), and looking to make more friends I joined a community band, the Hobart City Band. I played clarinet with them for a while, they rehearsed at the Navy base, and after rehearsals, the civilian members could stick around and drink at the base bar. The bar was covered in carved wooden plaques riddled with acronyms, and the deal was to convince people like me to ask what they stood for - there was usually a penalty involved (anything from buying drinks to having to salute the flag with your pants down). One of the ones that did catch me was

YYURYYUBICURYY4ME - too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me. There wasn't really a penalty for knowing that one, it just meant a bunch of guys standing around you shouting the phrase. Might I add I didn't play with this band for very long...

And there it is, going across the diagonals.

So a number goes in the crossword - kind of like in the Ronnie Barker hieroglyphics sketch


I had the theme figured out before entering the last few answers, 46 was a new word to me, so was 6.

I'm guessing the extra letters spelled out the phrase, or something to do with the phrase? I didn't find a missing F.

I liked the puzzle, it wasn't too challenging to me, but maybe that's because I saw the theme very early on. I enjoyed the missing letters parts of the clues a lot, and best of all, that's another victory for George!

Current tally: George 16, Listener 12. Current streak: George 3

Friday, July 25, 2008

Belinda in the sky with twins!

listener3989

Want to scare me straight off the bat? "Some of the across clues are "Letters Latent"". Crap. My least favorite form of clueing (I'd almsot prefer printers devilry). And only some of them, great.

My memory is a little flaky, but I think I tried one Lavatch puzzle before ("Fallout") and it was nearly an empty-gridder. What else do we have here...

Down clues are two clues side by side (and each has the same number of letters) with a separator word.

Well so much for my brilliant idea of working on the down and eaving etters atent unti ast.

Breathe easy, the first across clue isn't letters latent, it's A,B in G,BED. The second one looks like a definition of Noble and a Frenchman in P-E, Rene is too short, Alain? PALA(T)INE. I solved a letters latent! And I have a first row. 11 looks like it could be AIR(H)OLE and maybe these letters latents aren't going to be too bad. 12 is a straight out ODENSE. Thinking I'm going to get a lot more of these latent lettery ones, I attack the rest of the acrosses. I like 20 - SA(P)ONIFIES, 33 is a non-latent DAHLS, 36 is a nearly giveaway (H)EDGING, and 38 looks like some anagram of SSSNAT. I've got a decent part of the grid filled in!

Can we guess at some downs?

2,25 - I can see the first half is AIRMEN, which has to be 2. So NUCLEAR is the extra word
3,19 - I can see the second half is BIOLYSIS (Lavatch must be a scientist), which has to go in 19. CALLED is extra
4,24 - some atlassing tells me that PINEGA is a Russian river, and has to go in 24. IN extra

Having the first letter of most of these downs is helping.

5, 32: First half looks like GAES, the other half then has to be DE-- - DEAN?
6,30: POLIO is the rather uncomfortable second half (and fits the first two letters at 6).
7,28: Finally one where both halves appear - LE(H)AR and VIS,OR!
8,27: ANISE (fits 8), INFOLDS is extra.
9,26: WEALD is the second half (remember that one from Carte Blanche!), goes in 26.
10,13: TETRAHEDRA (more science!) is the second half, and goes in 13. A director starting with E and having 10 letters has to be EISENSTEIN, let's write him in at 10. OBVIOUSLY is probably the link word
14,21: ummmm, no clue
16,22: The second part is an anagram of SALE meaning a woman, ELSA or LESA, either would fit at 16. or 22...

This is looking more promising, back to the lers laen. 15 is HI--S which probably means HINGES without an E, and little cokehead Martina Hingis is our tennis player. And hello - this row reads TRIVIAL-HINGS. If 14d starts with a T we've found our phrase!

17 is (R)EASSU(R)E - E ASSUME minus the M.

Penny drop moment at this point... there's four whole words in those across clues, and so far it seems at least three of them don't have letters latent! THER-P-O--H- got to be THE something OF THE. RAPE? Google tells me that THE RAPE OF THE LOCK is a poem by Alexander Pope and it contains the words "What mighty contsts rise from trivial things"!!!! The first letters from the down clue words have to make an 11-letter word that comes before LOCK. I have NCIAMITO... COMBINATION!

Very excited by this find, I bashed out the downs... the B has to come from BRITAIN in 14,21. TENNO is the first part, and confirms my idea at 14d. Chambers Word Wizards suggests BRIAN ENO as a possibility for the letters in 3D (Hey, Brian, you're in Word Wizards!), wordplay words, BRAIN(move the A), E,NO. Knowing I need a latent A gives me TENAILLON (and suggests 4D wasn't BOVINE, but BOVRIL), and ANN(E)XATION for 23.

I have a completed grid!!!!! Now what... replace TRIVIAL THINGS with ALEXANDER POPE of course. That solves... nothing. Something's got to appear in another row.

Looking at the grid, head-smack moment... there's an X in the fourth column. It's a COMBINATION LOCK, I have to move the columns, and rather neatly, there's only one L in the second column, one E in the third and so on. Our three ambiguities are that there's three A's in the first column, two E's in the 8th and three E's in the last.

I printed off a new grid and wrote in the new columns and saw... nothing. Four rows looked like possibilities, so I wrote them out again, with all the possibilties for the ambiguous letters

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Still nothing... back to the preamble... the theme's last line. Oh, what's the last line of the poem...
"And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name". There's BELINDA, and if we choose our combination write, she's in GEMINI.

Lavatch - this was hard and fun. I spent lots of time on it, and where initially I was dreading it, the lttrs latnt didn't turn out to be so bad. This is one of the most involved Listeners that I've gotten to the bottom of, many many steps.

This is a long long report, but I really liked the puzzle. And I got it! Another point to George in the battle and a slight lead is restored.

Current tally: George 15, Listener 12. Current streak: George 2.

Friday, July 18, 2008

This blog is in another dimension...

listener3988001

We are at the half-way point in George vs the Listener Crossword!

This week, it's "Travel Agents" by Hedge-Sparrow. Hedge-sparrow appears to be either a new setter or another pseudonym (a neudonym?) of a previous setter. Preamble time - the grid represents a region containing a number of interconnected entries... across clues have extra expressions, down clues have wordplay leading to extra letters, but are entered normally.

So let's start with the downs and enter normally, shall we? I'm feeling good really quickly, because the wordplay doesn't seem too tricky. If you want to give me hope, start off with an anagram, and here we are, LESS RUST becomes RESULTS with an S, then EC(H)O,NOMIC,S (long aside - any other Hofstadter fans who tried to play Nomic, the card game where the rules change every hand? I nearly failed Organic Chemistry because I'd leave my lab bench to go join the game in the hall.), V,(O),OWING, EVE(R) and AIRN(T), and it looks like the first word in my down phrase is SHORT, 13ac is SOWER, and 17ac is UNI-N--- so if the entries turn out to be real words, it looks like it's going to be UNIONIST.

Got a good feeling, that was doomed to be short-lived. The rest of the down clues came in fits and starts, and I wasn't sure of a few of the extra letters. Near the end of the downs, I had DIET(R), IN(A)RE, P(V)ALP, and D(L)IE, so the last word of the phrase is likely to be ????RAVEL, and with TRAVEL in the title, 36 probably has an extra T.

At this point my extra downs letters looked like

SHORTC--SF--S-AC--IM--RAVEL, and I really want the second word to be CUTS, but can't make anything of the clue.

Acrosses: Found these a little unnerving. 1 is REVERSE.. and REVE goes into the grid, but the next letter is an A. Extra word appears to be BIBLICAL, but I don't know how that fits. 8 is PA,R,S, extra word ROWS, and my grid entry ends RT. 11 is COVE (hidden word), and extra POEM, and I have COVI-. 13 looks like S,ASH with extra word LEAD, and I have the complete entry, SOWER. 17 looks like UNI,ON,S, extra word CUTS, and I have UNI-N-S-.

It appears the first parts of words are intact, and something's got to happen to the second halves.

Stuck for a while, I took a lot longer on the across clues than on the first... until I saw that 25 could be G(ROW)ER - and there's my OWER sitting in 13!

No way... could it be the same deal as in one that I couldn't finish, "Reappearance"? The ends of words are moved? That would make SHORT CUTS make sense.

Back to the downs... SHORT CUTS FOR SPACE TIME TRAVEL!!!!! Guessing the phrase gets me a few more down clues - 7 is NE(U)ST, 26 is MOD(E)I. I then took the acrosses that I knew and started trying to fit in the first and second halves of letters.

Oddly enough, a few hours of bashing at this and I was still stuck for a while, particularly in the middle section. I thought about what needed to be highlighted, actually thinking it would probably be warp hole or wormhole, and there on the diagonal was WO-M-OLES. That convinced me that 22D was ASHEN, still not sure about the wordplay - SHE in (W)AN? and the end of 19 was the ER from DOCKER. And I'm not 100% on the first letter at 47, since everything else in the acrosses seems to be a word, but I can't think of anything else but WEEDING for 47ac.

And we're done. I still have no idea where the extra words in the across clues came in. You nearly had me, Hedge-sparrow, after all those down entries filled in and no clue on what to do with acrosses, I nearly gave up. Eventually I resorted to writing the bits out and crossing them off as I found spaces or words for them (you can see that on my grid). But the slide is halted at two and I'm just keeping above water in the battle.

Current tally: George 14, Listener 12. Current streak: George 1.

Half-time report.

If you told me a year ago I could solve 14 of these beasties I would have laughed myself silly. Off the top of my head, last year I completed maybe 5. Keeping the blog has helped immensely, both in keeping myself on track, and thinking about different solutions. That this blog gets read and commented on is an extra blessing, it's nice to know I'm not alone in solving mediocrity. Seeing themes and taking leaps of faith on phrases is a good thing. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Friday, July 11, 2008

1, 2, 3, 4, fizz, 6, buzz, 8, 9, fizz, 11, 12, 13, buzz, fizz - when do I get a drink?

Before I get on with the blog, a little personal sad note, today would have been my partner's 29th birthday. If you have a loved one, give them a smile today.

listener3987001

The horror of seeing a grid without bars! The only crossword without bars I've ever completed was Carte Blanche by Homer. The puzzle is by BeRo - one of the first Listeners I attempted, and one that got me hooked on trying to solve them was an earlier puzzle by BeRo that turned into a letter sudoku.

I remember "fizz buzz" from elementary school, but have never done it as a drinking game. It's too mathematical for my American friends. Answers change direction when they hit a wall (hey, so do I!), or when one of the fizz or buzz letters is encountered. That would be E, G, J, N, O, T, U Y. And they can start in any direction... off to solve as many clues as I can, so I can at least put the starting letters in place.

There's a lot of clues!!!!!!

Some of them start in the same box, so I can get a few starting letters. It looks to me like getting 32, 33, 36 and 37 would be really helpful (though that turned out not to be the case).

To cut a very long story short... I came up way short on this one. I got a little more than half the clues, but not enough to really construct the grid. With E, N, T, and O causing a change in direction, that's going to happen pretty often. I tried fitting some of the longer words with fewer direction changes first (BODHI TREES, TITANOMACHY, LYDFORD LAW), but I think starting from the middle and working outwards might have been a better approach.

My real problem here was being unable to solve enough of the clues to get moving. Sorry, BeRo, you had some clues I really liked, but I'm going to spend some time on the ones that really stumped me. It's complicated on this type of puzzle, because until you get a lot filled in, I can't see where I could get checking letters from, until I know that the twists and turns of the answers get me there.

Here is where I'm truly lost...

1) There is a 13-letter word for "outgrowth" in Bradford's, but I can't fit it to the wordplay at all.
3) I wanted IGNORAMUS or some form of that here, but trying to fit anagrams of IMAGES doesn't help me.
6) Less avant-garde?
12) Is this a subtraction anagram? It must be a well-written clue because I can't find a definition
15) ??? S-M-?
17) -ADL--- -ALD---... help me out, vocabulary
20) baffled
23) also looks like a subtraction clue, but can't see what to lose
25) Both of them. Eeeks
45) Can't wait to see what I was meant to do with this.

So well done, BeRo - it looks like a really nice puzzle, but it's got me today - and you have nearly erased my once-comfortable lead in this battle!

Current tally: Listener 12, George 13. Current streak: Listener 2.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Listener 3986: Terminal Suspension by Schadenfreude

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I'm writing this on the morning of the 4th of July, and in true American spirit, I'm watching cricket and blogging about a British crossword, woohoo!

Terminal Suspension by Schadenfreude, who is the champion of setters that I can get most of the way with, and completely fail to finish. Last December brought "Misprinted Choice" which was way out of my comfort zone (though I liked the puzzle when I saw the answer), before that came three crosswords that lead to nearly-empty grids. So here we go with Terminal Suspension.

For the third week in a row I had preamble understanding issues. Lots of clues need a letter removed, but I can't tell if it's all of them except the six that need a misprint, or just the ones that don't need a misprint or need a letter moved up to the top of the grid. Across clues are entered normally and I know all but the last six need a letter removed, so let's get a start on those.

16ac gets me started on both the letter removal and the puzzle - Aragon looks like he needs to lose an A to make argon, and we have GAS,P.Y. Even though I'd looked at it once, that made me twig on 11 - it's rarer and we have ARE(a) bordered by (B)rooks. In 17, SNOTS looks like it needs to lose a N to make SOTS, and INsomethingANTS becomes INTEMPERANTS. I'm liking these across clues, the clue surface makes sense after the letter removal. 23 is a subtractanagram, 25 is LETO. Yes, I'm a clue-solving machine!

At least until the bottom half of the grid, which turns up depressingly empty at a first run-through.

A decent start on the downs, though I'm convinced that all of the clues have extra letters, it doesn't take me until much later to realise that the ones that need to have a letter moved to the top don't need a letter removed from the clue. Anyway, PROY, MENSE, GRIOT come quickly, and I have my first letter in the top row, the I from GRIOT! I have GYNIE for 6, meaning either a G or a Y go to the top, and 20 is ALDIS LAMP - the ALD are in place, don't have any other checking letters. 22 is a complex anagram of SHOOT-EM-UP (nice clue), and I move the H to the top row. Some thinking and I have WRYBILL for 11, so a W goes to the top.

What now... I can't get anywhere with the first letters - since I thought I had to remove letters from most clues, I have B---ANDT-ILI-NE---C-C-A-L-U-M---N-.

What now?

Odd thought moment - the bottom row is unclued (and not mentioned in the preamble). So there'd be no way of knowing if you had to remove the last or second-last letter if that was the one to go. So maybe the last letters of the downs stay in, and then I've got PE-P at the end of it, and LITTLE BO PEEP would go across the bottom! Woohoo! A Word Wizards search of W---I---H turns up WEEPING BIRCH as a possibility. It's the sheep and their tales!

It finally hits me that I don't need to remove letters from every clue, and so the phrase becomes BOYSANDTAILSINEACHCOLUMN (hmmm, though that makes the remaining word in 13 MONE?).

This gets me a grid that is almost full, there's a gap around that annoying 37A (where it seems I have to read pages of Chambers to find it). BOYS AND TAILS looks like a possibility, the first column has (reading down) YBILL - so the tail of BILLY has moved. The last column has YSOOT. Can the tails be at either end? That wouild give me ROYT in the third column, NSEA in the second. OTM? OBIN is in the sixth column, but the R is further down.

Well done, Schadenfreude, you've got me again. I have a nearly-full grid, a grasp of the theme, and can't make it to the finish line. I had a lot of fun, and I thought I was going to get there, but this one has just stumped me in the end-game.

Current tally: Listener 11, George 13. Current streak: Listener 1

Friday, June 27, 2008

Clement Ines, heh heh heh

listener3985

Two disappointing weeks in a row, let's see what the next challenge brings. "Yes" by Lato. I've only tried one Lato puzzle before, "4", in which I got a few grid entries but didn't come close to the theme. What's in this one...

Eleven entries associated with members of a group. Extra words in eleven clues - hmmm, I like extra words, but finding just eleven of them will be tricky. Seven-letter word that completes assocation. I hope it's an obvious word.

I got my hopes up quickly here - I started this one on the plane on the way back from my New Jersey/New York trip, and without any aids at all, I had a good third of the grid filled in, and a couple of obvious extra words. The clues appear to be around my level, and rather fun. 10ac being s(ANRDA) Bullock with OR in to make ANDORRA is a very amusing construction, as is 15ac.

13ac gives me my first extra word - COCKATOO, 26ac my second - FILM. Films about cockatoos? The clues retain their surface after removing the extra words, so pretty good stuff here.

Even before I got stuck in to the dictionaries, I spotted a likely contender. I have COCKATOO, and there's -I-CHELL. Good Aussie lad that I am (or was), I know a MAJOR MITCHELL when I see one! -AY is ingering tantalisingly in the NE corner. There's eleven entries. I now have DEPRESSING PLACE IN SOMERSET from the entries lacking definition (not 100% on DEPRESSING, but it seems to be the only thing that fits. Googling the phrase brings up Peter Roebuck's tour diaries, which means -AY has to be Peter May and we're looking for cricketers. OK, where's the Bothams, Larwoods, Olds, Snows... ummm... they're nowhere.

Bugger.

And for a week I had a grid that was complete except for 34ac and 37ac, and MAY and MITCHELL written in before I knew any better.

Deeper searching on the phrase brings up DOWNING STREET as a possibility. AHA - it's not the MITCHELL that is the parrot, it's the MAJOR. The current prime minister is BROWN, and BROWN BETTY is a PUDDING. We're off again! It's still MAY, but we're it's MAGGIE (Thatcher) MAY, the Song by that old Scots git. Final confirmation here came from looking up "Grouse" on wikipedia and finding that a HEATH HEN is a type of grouse. Working backwards through Prime Minsters, I have a full grid and a relieved expression. The slide is stopped at 2!

Oh, I almost forgot, the extra word is PROJECT for the TONY BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. It might have been a better film that way. Nice puzzle, Lato, you held me up for a long time there, however a last-minute gasp victory for George.

Current tally: George 13, Listener 10. Current streak: George 1.