Friday, July 18, 2008

This blog is in another dimension...

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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!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done George. I had figured out the theme, and as a good Deep Space 9 fan, spotted the wormhole early on!

My problem was lack of time, and I hadn't quite figured out the wordplay trick, but would have got there. However, school finishes for a few weeks, so in theory that should be a little easier. Retirement will be even better, but then will I have the faculties?!

Congratulations on the blog; I must say that having a look at how you have done has provided me with some motivation too.

George the Bastard said...

This was one of the most time-consuming of the puzzles, I agree. I didn't count up the hours, but there were a number of half-hour to hour-long grabs to get it. Good work on getting wormhole quickly, I could have shaved a lot of time off by seeing it earlier.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the blog, George. Congrats on being ahead at the halfway stage.

You may already be aware, but there is a very convivial weekly Listener forum at answerbank.com

There is sniffiness about it from certain quarters, but most contributers are responsible and don't give the game away.

Best wishes,

John