Friday, August 1, 2008

Listener 3990: YCHJCYAROD

listener3990

I hadn't heard of Syd Lexis when I printed off this crossword - the Listener site suggests more than one pseudonym, but this is the first Syd Lexis puzzle for me.

The first word in the preamble gives me the willies - resolving makes me think that I've got to solve the thing twice, however the magic words come up soon - all grid entries are normal. Yay words! 20 clues lead to missing letters in the wordplay (neat trick, we've had a spate of extra letters and words, but no missing letters in a while), one, sometimes two. And there's four closed-off squares, which contributed to my downfall in Terminal Suspension. The four closed off squares are right in the middle, so maybe there's something funny about the middle of the grid.

Let's enter some actual words in the grid...

A run through the across clues and there's some pretty easy (Daily Times level - note, this is not a bad thing) clues.

1 - EASTERN, not sure if there's an E omitted, could be a straight-out clue
11 - IMPERIALISTS, anagram
15 - some old version of GOAL... I wrote in GOALE initially, had to change it later
19 - C in TRADE gives me TRADUCE without a U
23 - Anagram of LEAN gives ULNAE without another U
25 - H,ALE
34 - loved this clue - OX,TONE giving OXYTONE without Y
36 - looks like GED
40 - RE,A,NET giving REMANET without M
42 - IMUE being IMBUE without B

And the down clues were similarly accessible

1 - EIGHTHS, nice anagram
2 - surely AMOK, not sure if there's an extra letter
3 - TEL (LET backwards)
4 - ERES
5 - you can't sneak a RISSOLE past an Australian! Take out SOL (a word I love to use, a colloid of a solid in a liquid, as opposed to a GEL, a liquid in a solid) and we have RISE. Nice clue, Syd L.
7 - I had all the letters here before the correction came out, so I had AIR?, then read in a week that it was meant to read "Advanced Irish melody".
8 - P,S,ON - PSION without an I - bit of a sciencey one today, I'm in the zone
12 - P,GAL making PYGAL without a Y (and making GOALE wrong, checked Chambers for GOYLE and we were off again)
13 - APT,EX making APTERYX and at this point I'm thinking two things - the missing letters can make for some very fun clues, and there's a lot of extra Ys... and a lot of Ys in the middle of the grid. Do the Y's make a pattern?
20 - DE,NT
21 - N,DING making UNDYING without U and Y - another Y, and the extra letters don't have to be next to each other.
22 - more science! COGEN(t) makes CRYOGEN without RY. Another Y, eh... why"?

It was here that things really fell into place. The middle was almost completely full, and looking at the diagonals between the blocked off squares, both of them read URYY...

In 1992 I was living in Hobart, Tasmania (great place), and looking to make more friends I joined a community band, the Hobart City Band. I played clarinet with them for a while, they rehearsed at the Navy base, and after rehearsals, the civilian members could stick around and drink at the base bar. The bar was covered in carved wooden plaques riddled with acronyms, and the deal was to convince people like me to ask what they stood for - there was usually a penalty involved (anything from buying drinks to having to salute the flag with your pants down). One of the ones that did catch me was

YYURYYUBICURYY4ME - too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me. There wasn't really a penalty for knowing that one, it just meant a bunch of guys standing around you shouting the phrase. Might I add I didn't play with this band for very long...

And there it is, going across the diagonals.

So a number goes in the crossword - kind of like in the Ronnie Barker hieroglyphics sketch


I had the theme figured out before entering the last few answers, 46 was a new word to me, so was 6.

I'm guessing the extra letters spelled out the phrase, or something to do with the phrase? I didn't find a missing F.

I liked the puzzle, it wasn't too challenging to me, but maybe that's because I saw the theme very early on. I enjoyed the missing letters parts of the clues a lot, and best of all, that's another victory for George!

Current tally: George 16, Listener 12. Current streak: George 3

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think you did very well to solve this one. I didn't know the rhyme, but was perilously close to getting it. Kicking myself really!