Friday, March 28, 2008

A nothing guide European

listener3972

So close, and yet so far...

I made a promising start on this one, after my first sitting, I had a dozen or so clues in, and had found a few of the clashing points. If you're compiling a crossword and want to make me happy, have 1ac be a long word that is easy to get, makes me feel smart. Working from GLOSSES OVER and an equally gentle first clashing letter in 6 down (REND), I had a half-filled out grid by midweek.

I started looking at the theme at this point, extra letters in the wordplay... if you look carefully at the top of my grid you can see where I was. I had...

A - - R - - U I - E - - R O - - AN

I have had some lucky guesses in the past, so I was hoping the last part was EURPOEAN, and a look at 33a gave me more hope - (PRO)<= + RA gives me ORRA and a P, and now knowing the extra letters, I filled out the bottom half of the across clues, wheee!

- U I - E looked like GUIDE, and a peer through Chambers gave me EMERAUDE as a version of EMERALD, and there's my extra G from EMERGE(=came out).

Very excited by this point, all I have to do is take care of

A - - R - GUIDE EUROPEAN

Blank well and truly drawn. 11 across looks like TRIENE, and would you believe, as I'm typing this blog I think I see it now... I had TRIUNE - U + ER = TRIENE + R, and it was probable meant to be TRIBUNE - U + E(?) = TRIENE + B

So I was stuck at A R-R- GUIDE EUROPEAN, which I took to either be RARE or RIRE (still on that French kick from last week).

RIRE seemed the best bet, so I looked for words meaning to laugh or joke in other languages. No dice. I went to the preamble and thought maybe European words for "THE" was what I was looking for - naturally a lot of LA's and LE's. If the R is a B then I'm probably looking for birds, though I don't see any.

Congratulations to Mr. Lemon - I am undone, the streak is ended at 4, and I tuck my tail between my legs and hide in a corner. So near and yet so far...

Tally: Listener 4, George 6

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi George

I got to where you did, more or less, although I knew it was "bird". I didn't (and still don't) really see how "guide" fits in. I listed the clashes in order and, with hindsight, "tail" appears quite obviously at the end. I maintain that the majority of these are just a tad too difficult, and this is to do with clues not being solvable enough, compared to AZED, for example, because the cross referencing isn't so easy. Rant over!

George the Bastard said...

I've now seen what I missed, and I feel pretty stupid at not just writing the clashing letters down, I was convinced that something was going to be revealed in the crossword. If I had made that jump, there's a decent chance I would have gotten there. Anyway, it's a new device that won't trip me next time. Difficult doesn't faze me, there's got to be a level of challenge. Thanks for the comment!