Blog Extra: Shameless Self-promotion

I wrote and starred in a short film that was shown at a few shows over summer, and it's now digimatized on YouTube. Lose three minutes of your life with - "The Perfect Chair" (directed by Wyman Tannehill)

Little boy blue come blow your lur

Now this is a pretty nifty idea, a circular crossword in a square grid. We had a circular crossword in a crazy-shaped grid a few weeks ago, and the entry method is about the same, words go inwards, outwards and are jumbled, and the ones on the corners go in diagonally - so really this grid is four 6x6 crosswords to fill in, with a quotation and a name running in two squares.

I hadn't heard of Centigram before, and a peek at the Listener site shows four puzzles, the most recent being 1992 (long time between drinks!), and that one of them was the floor plan of a house with 6x6 rooms. Centigram, if you're reading, I'm really curious to see that crossword, it sounds fascinating.

The diagonals touch every entry (and none were jumbled), so let's start with them and work on these 6x6s.

Couldn't get 6, but 17 is TUPI in SD giving the lovely word STUPID. 13 is MEEMIE, so the I's cross if MEEMIE goes inwards as does stupid. 14 is a cute clue for CARPET, 15 looks like ASSURE, couldn't get 16, 18 is D,EARTH, 19 is HUMERI, 20 is a wonderful clue for STUMPS. Damn, I just noticed I left the P off the end of 21. 22 is an excellent clue for IMATED. So a little hunt and pecking to get DRUIDS and ETHISM, and I had one corner out quite readily.

This was the approach I took to get the grid completed - the lower left corner (in my Americanized version of crosswording, I call that the Desert corner) and upper right corner (New England) were trickier than the lower right (Florida) and the upper left (Hippy corner).

Getting the quotation really helped in getting out these tricky corners. The second "square" in was looking promising already with DEARTHSIM, and then later on NERSBLOWY. I could also see DONNE, so I knew I was dealing with John Donne (though the only quote I knew from him was "no man is an island"). Googling John Donne quotes involving earth and blow brought up the Holy Sonnets and the quotation I was looking for.

To get the end, there was a little dilemma - the quote matches the crossword well, it's given something round corners - the letters in the corner of this grid were ULRS, which could make SLUR, which would fit rounding square sounds, or LURS, and a lur turns out to be a trumpet, so the blown trumpet is at the corners.

This is one impressive puzzle, Centigram. I was slow to get started, but once I got that first corner out, it was a lot of fun to fill in. I can't heap enough praise on the clues - this is my style of cryptic clueing - the surfaces range from smutty to bizarre and for that many 6-letter words, they are presented in any number of ways.

And I'll call this one a victory for George - current tally: George 20, Listener 16. Current streak - George 1.

I've already sent them an email, but congrats to the Google NYC team for taking runners-up in last week's Listener - nice to know a winner.

And since we have a metric setter, here's a video for a song by the late great band, the Centimeters

3507 1

I scanned my grid last night, and didn't upload it to flickr straight away, so you'll have to wait to see my unfortunate grid for this one.

After saying early in the year that I can usually solve numerical Listeners, Oyler and now Elap have had their ways with me! And I saw what I presume is the theme quickly - the first few numbers I got and the title of the puzzle gave it away, it's calculatot language, entering 07734 in a calculator and looking at it upside down gives "hello". So 53704 918 (or 618 at the end) would give BIG HOLES.

I was off to a really quick start...

14 down (Q) is a factorial, the only 4 digit factorial is 5040 (7!)
6 down: O! plus a few fiddly bits gives a 7-digit number, so O has to be 10 (can't be 9)
3 across: W = 3T = 3O + T, is now an algebra equation 3T = 30+T, T = 15, W=45
32 across: U = TO + 2T, so U is 180
This means since V - OU = 7, V has to be 1807, and goes in 28 down
Having both halves of 32 across, H=18 (and since 26 across is OY + OK + A, A has to end in 1)
35 across is AUU + PQ + U and is ---7-80. The only A that fits this pattern and ends in 1 is A=51
This makes 2D H+A+TH = 339, and since 1D is OOE +2V and has to end --14, E is 19, and 1D is 5514

And that is where I came to a grinding halt... 1ac is EYY + O + E + A, and solving 19Y^2 + 80 = 534-- means Y is 53... from there I tried to work on K and R and didn't get a good solution for either.

The puzzle looks great, and I've racked my brain to see where I could go next, I'm sure I'm missing something simple.

So that's a victory to Elap and the Listener Crossword. Current tally: Listener 16, George 19. Current streak, Listener 1.

Now off to find out where I was wrong and print off the eagerly-anticipated, triple-barrelled Listener 4000 (gulp).

Ready. maestro?

Oh boy did I make a bosh of last week's on many levels. One thing that I completely spaced on was the second ring from the middle having a letter in common on all three answers, so I shouldn't have been surprised that there were more overlapping letters than I though. OK, enough about that, on to Half a Ton by Llig.

This is the first Llig puzzle I've attempted, and looking at the archive it appears Llig favors music and Germans. It's a relief to see a normal looking grid after last week, we have symmetry, and something running around the outside, and a number of clues are connected to the perimeter.

It appears normal clue entry, making this a regular cryptic until I get to the outside. The clues were fun, I did notice in solving a lot of compound anagrams, maybe more in down clues, but I didn't count them.

Curious about what goes around the perimeter, I worked on the down clues first so I could have some of the top line...

1down - NAUSEA compound anagram of AS JENUFA with F and J
2 - WAS,PS
3 - ENCODE (odd clue, not sure I really understand the wordplay, is it E,D,E around COD?
4 - NAIRA - compound anagram of OCARINA with O,C
6 - CROSS,TOWN
7 - E-P,ROM
8 - DIDO (hidden)

-NWEN--C-ED-- entered into word wizards gave me ON WENLOCK EDGE and the theme was taken care of straight away - I read up on Ralph Vaughan Williams and his "cut out" approach to music, which was interesting (though I'm still not a fan), and see that the rest of the perimeter gave SERENADE TO MUSIC RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.

Got the whole thing done in two fairly short sittings, but I think it helped a lot that I got the theme in quickly, was anticipating music or Germany and knew a little bit about old Rafe. Compound anagrams are one of my favorite type of clue, so I was a happy camper working them out.

And after last week, I'm back on track - victory to George! Current tally: George 19, Listener 15. Current streak, George 1.

Here is a "recording" of a part of "On Wenlock Edge" by the Perverts' Chorus

The stuff of nightmares...

Let the excuses begin... this puzzle came out in a week where I was away from printers and computers for most of the time, so I didn't get to really work on it until after the next puzzle came out. The grid shaped scared me. There's jumbled words and clues that are listed together. The only real words in the radials are thematic ones with no clue as to how to get them?

Crikey!

I present you with the effectively empty grid. A few years ago there were a lot of these, but since I started the blog, I haven't had a paltry effort like this. I'm dying to go back and see what it was that I missed.

I think there's something to do with the letters in the quadrants - I tried to figure these out by solving as many of the radial clues as possible and looking for extra letters. I thought I was off to a good start - the clues for 1 gave me CINERARIUM (anagram of RARE,I,CUMIN) and DIABLERIES. Both of these are 10 letters, meaning they're not the long entry in 1, and the common letters are IEAR, and the entries in 2 and 3 all have to have these letters. That makes the second half of 2 REANIMATE, but didn't help me with the rest of 2 or 3.

I think the second part of 4 is OBOVATE, but the rest of 4 and 5 elude me. 6 I do better on, DE(n)SO,LA,TE and SE(STET)TO. Each are 8 letters long, so there should be three letters in the quadrant, common ones are OTES, and if 4 is OBOVATE, then it's OTE.

7 Gives me JET,PLAN,E, and TULIPANTS - 8 letters and 9 letters, so JETPLANE goes jumbled in the middle one, and there's only two letters in the middle. Common are T,P,L,A. 8 gives me PENALTY for the last half, which has all of TPLA, but the first half of 9 is LIASE so it has to be LA in the quadrant.

10 I'm stuck on, the first half of 11 is DEMOCRATIC (10 letters), and it looks like the second half should be IDIOMISM (9 letters), not sure of the middle bit. The first part of 12 is INDAGATOR, the three words have IDO in common, and that would fit in the middle unless there's an 11-letter thematic word.

The rings don't help me at all... the answers for ring 5 appear to be INSURES, UNSEAMS and ENVOI, but that's only 19 letters and there's 36 space in ring 5?

I'm lost...

Well done MynoT, I am soundly thrashed on this one, I can't wait to find out what I missed.

Victory to the Listener Crossword: Listener 15, George 18. Current streak: Listener 1.

Blog Extra: Guardian and Listener

The Guardian's Crosswords are now available free online.

I've had a go at the dailies this week and printed off last week's Azed but haven't had a chance to try it. Their interface is really nice, and the .pdf version of the crossword has won me over - it prints perfectly on one sheet of American letter paper, and has some white space under the crossword for scribbling.

I'm on the road for the next two days, so my blog of 3995 is going to be a day or two late.