So you've found me. Welcome, pull up a preferred beverage.
The Listener Crossword fascinates me. I discovered it in 2004, when I was starting to be pretty confident with the Times Crossword, being able to solve it regularly at least twice a week. Looking for a new challenge, there was the Mephisto. No blank spaces, lots of obscure words. First few attempts and I had nothing. So I invested in a Chambers Dictionary, home to obscure words. By the middle of 2006 I was solving, or getting very close to solving this beasty.
There remained one unsolvable crossword - the Listener. Meta-puzzles, clues within clues, themes, many obscure words. For two years I have bashed away at this with very very little success. How do you tackle this thing?
In 2007 three discoveries made me turn the corner. I found that there were blogs on livejournal for the puzzles. You can find them in the navigation bar on the right. One goes through exorbitant details on the solving of Listeners (don't expect that degree of detail here). The second was the Listener Crossword site giving more details, like how to solve individual clues. This meant I could take a partially-solved grid and go through it one clue at a time, and pretend I'd solved more than I actually did. Confidence is wonderful. The third is a series on tips to solving the Listener (start here and work backwards). It highly recommended getting reference books to help you.
So it's 2008 and I am armed with
Chambers Dictionary - 2003 edition
Chamber's Word Lists
Bradford's Crossword Solver's dictionary.
And I am ready to take it on. The battle royale for the ages, George vs Listener 2008. Hope you enjoy reading all about it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
There MUST be an audience for this blog. I've now scraped through a few of these little beggars, and mostly comments I find on the internet say 'Hm, rather an easy one, but perhaps ok for the beginners.'
Further to Chambers, for the Listeners I permit myself the 'Word Wizard' at chambers-harrap.co.uk (which I don't allow for regular crosswords). Can't work out if this would be frowned upon, but I probably wouldn't complete many without it...
actually chambersharrap.co.uk
Thanks will - I use that liberally, and have made a link to it on the front page of the blog. As for there being an audience, sounds like you're proof positive! Hope you enjoy the read.
How refreshing to read a Listener blog that isn't full of self-congratulation and "Oh I'm officially an idiot for taking all of five minutes to discover this theme" and "here I am the big-shot Listener solver dashing off a few answers at the kids' playground".
Keep at it George, they do get easier over time. I'm all for Word Wizards -- I figure you can either spend hours trawling Chambers for everything that might fit, like I did in my youth, or spend a couple of seconds on a web site and get on with your life. And it really isn't cheating -- you have to have SOME idea what you're looking for first.
Best,
...Robert
Good luck, George! I hope you find it's worth the effort.
Thanks, Brunellus, and now I know where to go to get my Latin translating done.
Post a Comment