This one took me a loooooooong time. I initially threw it away in frustration after thinking for an hour that there needed to be a letter in the middle of the grid and therefore I was looking for 6-letter answers. After finding a few likely 5-letter answers, but nothing else, I decided that there was no letter in the middle and I needed to hunt 5-letter answers.
Next step, in the groups of three, there were a certain number of letters shared. I put those next to the groups and found a few more answers... we're slowly getting along. This eventually led to me having more than half of the centre ring, and a few in the middle ring.
Centre ring has four examples of the theme, I could see DEE and RAE, _EA, and __L. So a search on these turned up nothing other than popular girl's names (making _EA probably LEA and __L either LIL or SAL based on the ones I'd solved). Looking at the middle ring, I had a TTL from group 1 and from 10 and 11, an F next to a W (which even I can see is going to be the end of a word, if not a phrase). Penny drop moment - "What are little girls made of" has the right number of letters and fits around the middle (except for at 12, where I had a wrong letter!). We're away!!!!
This got me a few more clues. But not a lot of the grid filled in. Here we go, I need this 48-letter phrase to do with little girls. Writing out 48 spaces on a separate sheet, entering the definite letters (only about 9 of them) in and the "possibilities", and I could see "roses" fitting in 10 and 11, and "blue" fitting in around 1 and 2. Since I got lucky before, "Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you" neatly fit all the letters I was sure of.
I had stared at this one for almost two weeks getting nowhere and now I'm on course! The rest was just hunting to fit in the extra letters. There's one I'm not 100% on (if you can spot it in my grid you win half a biro), but I'm calling this a win for George, evening the score and stopping the slide at 2.
Tally: George 3, Listener 3.
5 comments:
Great to see another Listener blog, especially as this gives a different perspective on the puzzles - somebody trying to come to terms with it, and finish it on a regular basis.
Good luck with the puzzles for the year... and I am sorry that Robert (comment on the first entry) finds us guys at Listen With Others so self-congratulatory. I don't think any of us would class ourselves as 'big-shot Listener solvers' - we're probably just a bunch of solvers who are so obsessed with the thing (or short of time) that we sometimes take the puzzle to the playground!
Chris, Listen With Others
Thanks Chris, without your blog I wouldn't be able to get more than half-way through any given Listener. One of the recommendations on becoming a better solver was to keep notes and a log of solves, so that's part of the motivation.
Keep up the terrific work at Listen With Others (I comment there on occasion)!
Thanks, George. If you ever fancy switching stables to the LWO camp, then you would be very welcome indeed! I know from experience how the best intentions of a single-person weekly blog can fade.... but the least said about that, the better.
Chris
Well, this one was no good. Tried the 6-letter thing for a while, but noticed a couple of 5-letter ones and started off. But just needed to solve more clues than i could to get anywhere near.
Simon on the Crossword Centre Message board wins half a biro for pointing out that I did have a mistake in this one, I had guessed "FILAR" for "ARMIL".
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