Friday, June 13, 2008

nonappearance

listener3983

I've noticed over the last few weeks that I don't have a lot of time to work on the Listener during the week, so I need to put more weekend time aside to making a start. This is not an excuse, read on to find out about possibly my worst performance of the year...

From the preamble, I knew this was going to be a tough one for me. Thematic entry has not been my strong point, though I did get the Prousty one earlier, and the "one down, fifty-one to go" from the first puzzle of the year. Seven clues have wordplay that leads to an answer to be entered elsewhere. Immediately I'm confused - does this mean there's entries with no wordplay? Or are these seven just mutually mixed?

OK... all but seven (or maybe fourteen) clues are normal. Let's solve some clues and see where we get.

5ac makes me want to put WAPPLE as the wordplay, but Chambers is WAPPLEless. Not a good start. 13a gives me LABOR UNION and is a nice clue, and fits the length given. So nice that I immediately pen LABORUNI in at 10a and realise I've put it in the word at the wrong place and it's got to be thematically altered. Oops. I can come back and thematically alter it later.

14 looks like it gives wordplay to CURE. But I don't see any definitions in the 4-letter clues that would give me CURE.

16... ummm... ---LE being pushed together? STAPLE? But PATS isn't "thus" when cycling. So it's HUSTLE. Nice clue

18 is HEWN. 19 looks like EVACUANT. I still haven't found any spurious wordplay except maybe CLUE. But the across entries have the same number of letters as the grid. So a jumble or a letter substitution most likely.

31 looks like maybe wordplay giving MEAD. But I don't see any definition for MEAD. Maybe I'll have more luck with the downs.

AHA! The downs have more letters in the answer than there are spaces in the grid. Letters must be lost. I'm having real problems getting answers to these clues (did Poat ask Sabre for advice on how to stump me?). I can only see 8 (EMBRASE), 17 (PEN HOLDER), 20 (VACATUR).

24 looks like the wordplay could be IDLE, but I can't see a definition.

Finally! With the lucky last clue, BEDPAN matches the definition at 29a (One warming the sheets) and I get to confidently write in one word!!!!

Now what... I know there's a B in the author's seven-letter name and there is a book that is "The ------ ------". Ummm... "The Secret Garden" by Burnett? That's not going to help.

All the answers to down clues I found had one letter repeated in the answer. So I tried entering those with the second occurrence of the letter just so the grid looks a little fuller, but this is a pretty dismal effort on my part.

Poat has had the advantage on me a couple of times. "Multi-part puzzle" was the first dartboard grid I tried (and failed) and "Grid References" was total lack of grid completion. But congratulations to you, Poat, "Reappearance" was almost an empty grid. Victory to the Listener Crossword!

Current tally: Listener 9, George 12. Current streak: Listener 1.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was stumped completely on this - I got only around 7 answers. I also got "hewn" as your grid shows, which was incorrect, but this threw me completely as I couldn't for the life of me see how it intersected with "embrute".

I can't recall doing quite so badly on a Listener for a while (particularly as I find your blog quite motivating). Had I spent real money and bought the paper rather than downloading it, I would have cried into my beer!

George the Bastard said...

Yeah, if we take correct entries I practically have an empty grid.

Reading the answer, I might have eventually thought of the poem if I'd gotten a Y in the author's name.

This one was a toughie...