In which we learn some geography

It is a cold Christmas morning in Western North Carolina as I type this - I was snowed in for a few days over last weekend (I put my last post up here just before it started to get seriously snowy), and the snow still hasn't melted. Today it's been replaced by a bit of freezing rain just to mix things up. There are things to be thankful for, I keep hearing from friends that they are losing power, or even worse, losing internet. Australia will start playing Pakistan in about seven hours so I'll eat, drink, be merry and imagine the warmth that is Melbourne on Boxing Day.

So I hope readers of George v the Listener have a good one! I've got a few odd things planned for next year, I've been working on getting some crosswords of my own published (you'd be surprised what and where), and I'll be putting some original work up on this page. Not sure if there'll be prizes, I can drunk dial you and leave a rude message on your answering machine or something.

And now to this week's challenge - Resident by Hotspur. I had a bit of luck earlier in the year with "At Arm's Length", and it looks like Hotspur is catching up for his long absence by throwing in the puzzles quick and fast. There's an interesting preamble here, the misprints lead to a rhyming couplet to get the clue, 12 clashes and two "neighbours" to find.

Good news! All real words in the grid, except for some clashes, woohoo. I love me some real wordage.

At the bar solving session to begin with, I could not see 1 across straight away (I felt silly later when I realised it was (B)awls and the misprint was tooLs. But 4 across yielded an interesting problem - I could see the answer was RHOMBOIDAL from an anagram of HOMALOID and BR, but then is the misprint OF, IN, IT? Grrr.... Similar dilemma with the third one, the answer has got to be OIK (unless there's a misprint in YORICK'S), but what do I do to SAD? SOD? GAD? BAD? At least I'm getting entries...

I got a satisfactory distance in the first solving session - the misprint of OIK and TAGS gave me a very sneaking suspicion that those 12 letters were going to be along the main diagonal, confirmed by the intersection of SCORIA and RESETS (actually I had it in as REESTS originally because I am a thickhead).

A restart with Bradfords helped a lot - hat tip to Hotspur for some really amusing clues with even more amusing misprints - HOOKER - OK with a misprint of TART was brilliant, as was NO ONE,R with the misprint of RUN made me laugh.

It seemed every time I got well and truly stuck, a fresh start with Chambers and Bradfords got me another word or two and I was off again. It was the left side more than the right, though I did a lot of it to myself by misspelling LIVRAISON as LIVRASION, keeping me from getting DEIGNS). I also found the down misprints more accessible than the across ones, eventually piecing together TRAINS WITH OTHER TRAINS COLLIDE. I never did get the complete rhyming couplet for the first half.

Piecing together that message down the middle, RIVER stuck out rather nicely as a last work possibility, and OVER THE RIVER emerged, leaving me TRAN-NISTRA (because I hadn't gotten DEIGNS yet). A google of TRANSNISTRIA shows that it is a disputed territory and most importantly the wikipedia article shows this map



And looky there - I can see UKRAINE to the upper right! This sorts out my problems with the bottom right, where already have -OL-OVA and finishes me off with MOLIMENS (MEN in MOL,IS) and SIZED (after finding SIZE=SICE=number on a die).

I've compressed a LOT of time into this! This was one I picked up and did little by little and it took me nearly all the time allocated but I finally have a solution. Never heard of the place, but it's a very interesting theme and a well done crossword. I didn't think I was going to get there for the longest time with that bottom left corner looking spare for a while.

So victory to George! 2009 tally: George 31, Listener 18. Current streak: George 1

This one is definitely not safe for work - the best Christmas song written in the last 10 years...



Feel free to leave comments below, and see you next week for variations of metricality with Hedge-Sparrow.

I wonder if the new Listener is available today on the Crossword Club? Just checked, it is! Woohooo!

That's a lot of work to find one little key

Numerical time! Elap is one of the setters of the numerical crosswords with whom I have the most difficulty. Last year I caught the theme of Big Holes, but couldn't get to the end. This time we're messing around with perfect squares, and there's some form of code involving the numbers.

Well, numerical puzzles are usually a logic exercise, and so with all the single letters being squares, I started by looking for occasions of the same letter more than once in an answer, since there's fewer cubes than squares, and even fewer powers of six. This approach netted me the values of K, U, Y, S and B pretty quickly. E and M had to be 9 and 64 - but in ordering the letters from low to high, I had K - Y S U B - so it was looking good that E was 9 and M was 64.

The grind came near the end to find those last few combinations, particularly the large numbers like J and H. I caved and made a spreadsheet to sort out C and N, which were difficult to separate from each other. In the end, I had a grid, and the ordering of the letters now read KEY SUBMIT XWORD. Well I didn't submit the crossword, but there's KEY (4,9,16) slantwise near the middle of the grid. I don't know whether to put the letters in, shade it or draw a key, so I drew a sketchy-looking key, and wrote K, E, and Y in the squares.

So I think I've finally cracked an Elap numerical Listener. I don't have a great deal to say about it, took me two fairly long sessions with a calculator and Excel. Nifty trick - but I'm not sure if there was any actual ambiguity in the end as stated in the preamble. All the squares I had that could be single digits or double digits ended up being resolved by the checking entries.

I'm writing this blog after the solution has appeared (snowed in today), but haven't checked to see the solution. But I'm going to claim victory to George, unless I've done something truly daft (don't put it past me).

2009 tally: George 31, Listener 17. Current streak: George 1

Bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger, just read the solution and I had a completed grid but totally blew the last part. I thought I had to "find the key" and then "submit the crossword", not turn the key into a crossword.

Victory to Elap and I am still unable to finish an Elap Listener!

2009 tally: Listener 18, George 30. Current streak: Listener 2.


It's cold and snowing here, most of my town is closed down today, and I hear it's not that pleasant across the U.K. either. So let's see if the Fiery Furnaces can warm us up.



Feel free to comment, and see you next week for a Christmas Edition of George vs the Listener, with a nearby resident, Hotspur.

0-0!

All good things must come to an end, and in this case it's my solving or nearly solving the Listener Crossword. Phi was one of the first setters to say he reads this blog and that he was surprised that I had so much difficulty with his Listeners, and, well, here we go again! I'm hoping this was meant to be tough, because I am completely flummoxed.

Phi's 50th contribution to the Listener (and he is almost weekly in the Independent, so that's one prolific setter!) follows two other failures reported here - in "We Interrupt This Programme..." - I had the theme and an idea of where it was going, but couldn't solve a bunch of the clues. Then in "Disorders" I didn't even get to the theme. Well I've outdone myself this time, not sure if I should even have a single answer in the grid. Epic fail!

I tried to make a really good fist of it - we've got an open grid, three complete names, and some of the clues have their wordplay mixed up. The grid is meant to go into two regions... when I read that I was thinking of those sometime Azed puzzles where there's two halves and one word crosses the two and you have to figure out which part of the clue goes into the left half and which part goes into the right half, you get my drift right?

So the clues have no entry lengths, and some of them have the wrong wordplay. This is not just cold solving, this has been put in the deep freeze for months!

Come on, George, you've done carte blanches before.

For the sake of argument, let's call the first clue 1 across... and we have a success on the "1-across" test - PAYS!

Hmmm... if the stars are in alignment, then maybe a clue that I will title "1 down" contains one of those letters. PORT,1,CO! Tempting as it was to bung those two in at the top left corner, I didn't do it straight away. Good thing too, because deep-freeze solving netted me precious little. The next across clue looked like wordplay heading to CHORL (not a word), CEOL (not a word), COL (a word, but nothing that jumped out as a potential definition).

Moving on - looks like an African leader starting with O... OCOMPO isn't a word. VIETASI looks possible for the next one, but also doesn't seem to be a word, maybe it's just VIET. Next one is a soldier, maybe REDCOAT or some variation. OK - then there's T,AS,T.E - which could potentially cross the T in portico, which if it goes in the top right meand unclued C could be Y--S---? ot S--T--. SCOTT someone or other?

Several sessions of this continued, and I'm stuck with the following...

across clues solved: PAYS, TASTE, some form of VIET...

down clues solved: PORTICO, DETHRONE, AFEAR, SUMMA

I found RESELLER as a wordplay in the acrosses and found a definition for it in the downs (subsequent trader). Some other leads from wordplay went nowhere... TASCO, OCTAV(e)IA, SHINED?

There's a lot of effort for very little result here. Trying to play with the symmetry thing, I started sketching in the opposite side of the grid... the last across clue should be 4 letters and so is probably A ONE. But that is all she wrote for me this week, I'm afraid.

Sorry Phi - you've hit everything I can't do here... I'm sure the symmetry is there so that once you get a few answers you know all the answer lengths, but I didn't get that far. I need to go back to cold solving, next time I'm doing a Phi Indy crossword I'll hide the grid and the answer lengths.

Victory to Phi and the Listener Crossword, and congrats on the big 5-0, Phi! (I hit a round number age next year, I'll probably celebrate by bombing a Phi Listener). Focus on the tally, George, it is showing that you're getting better...

2009 tally: Listener 17, George 30. Current streak: Listener 1.

OK - in six months the U.S. will be saying "Lady Who?", but right now Lady Gaga (or as I like to call her, Peaches Lite) is unavoidable. However, a few weeks ago, on "South Park" I fell out of my chair listening to them making fun of one of her songs by just having Cartman sing it. It's spawned a few videos on YouTube, so in case you haven't heard it, check this out.



Feel free to leave comments below - particularly if you want to sell viagara on this site (I'll be checking the solution later this afternoon when it goes online), and see you next week for the last numerical bit-o-fun for the year with Elap.

Well that's an interesting way to remember it

Hi again, gentle reader... George vs Schadenfreude is heating up again. My theme with Schadenfreude appears to be "close but no cigar", with a few entries in the blog so far. There was "Overhead Reduction" this year in which I was one letter wrong (In George v Listener terms, that counts as a win), last year was "Terminal Suspension" where I got some of the thematic material, but didn't manage to figure out the true nature of the end game. So here's BAT. And a rather odd-looking preamble. There's a substitution cipher, a three word phrase (28 letters for a three word phrase???) and four little squares at the bottom, no idea what they are for, but probably have something to do with those decoded first letter of the missing words.

1 across is part of the three word phrase, so we can't test that out, but 11 across is going to be an anagram of either ALL VIDEO or THE VIDEO, and it's LIVE LOAD, so first extra letter is T (or more exactly, not T,G,J,K,Q,Y, or Z). So we're away! I started to make a royal mess of things almost immediately by seeing 6 down as PIPAS (A in PIPS), check of Chambers to see it's something lutey (yip), and thinking that the PIPS were a group, that PLUCKS was the extra word. I had a few incorrect extra words later on, but managed to figure them out in the end (I think).

Back to solving - the middle of the grid was to me a lot easier than those entries jutting up or down into the top and last row that I need. I had all sorts of issues with the top right hand corner (hippy corner) - I had VOLED and for the longest time I had the erroneous TAR-LINE at 13 across. This was looking like a goner! I was about to coneded to Schadenfreude that I was going to have a nearly full grid and nothing else.

Steady on, George, there's got to be something to hang on to, right? In the grid, my coded letters looked like

- - - V O - O P - H - T - - A

U - M O R - E - T - - L F - -

Not a lot to go on... BUT! That O has to become an A... A level to O level and ANNATTO to ANNATTA. And that R has to become a T - REHEAR to REHEAT was the only possibility I could find. Word Wizards says that P should become N. The extra letters I had a lot more of...

STRSNHSME...

There's quite a few S's... wonder if S becomes E? Since R is now T that could be ENTER as a first word of the instruction? That would make sense since the instruction has to tell me something about those four little cells at the bottom. Oh, but that means P isn't N? Word Wizards isn't totally up to date, and a thumbing through the alphabet and there's LIPAS!!! OK, so now I know ENTERL - and right at the end there's EL-- and one of the possibilities for the as yet unsolved 36 down is PLEASING - so if the end is CELLS. Work backwards... C-NT - VACANT CELLS!!! Yes, yes, yes, I'm getting there! Putting some of my new-found letters into the grid, there's F-CAT-ON so that looks like IDENTIFICATION - PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION NUMBER!!!!

Finally I've settled on ENTER DECODED ROEFOUR AS NUMBERALS IN VACANT CELLS. OK, well I guess I have the wrong word as an extra word in 40 across... ROW FOUR? If I decode row 4 I'll get some numbers and they go in the boxes.

This is even better news, because I don't have all of row 4 yet! Here's what I had...

- (whatever I codes to) - O N E S I (whatever C codes to) T - R E E

Haven't used X yet, so C has to be code to X, that leaves W to be I so we have TWO ONE SIX THREE. In they go, and I have a few more letters in my unknown entries.

Wow - all the thematic stuff taken care of, but I am still missing a bit in that top right. BARREL works out to mean TUBE so we're good for 1 down, and 2 down must be NITE (T for C in NICE, and my final extra letter WOMAN). We have new words all around and I call this a done grid. The title is PIN encoded - it all comes together in the end!

I solved this all back-asswards, but solve it I did! I hope that this time I have 100% cracked a Schadenfreude Listener, and in anticipation I'm calling this a victory for George!!! Tough puzzle, but a lot of fun.

2009 tally: George 30, Listener 16. Current streak: George 8!!! This is my new record streak.

It's always a long shot, but I am going to be performing in Chicago in January at the Chicago Sketch Fest with the Feral Chihuahuas. So any crossword or bizarre comedy fans in Chicago, let me know and I'll get details as soon as I know them. I mostly know that there's going to be a lot of booze at this festival and that's fine by me. Also performing at the Sketch Fest is Three Dollar Bill, who posted this YouTube video that tickled me a while back - trust me, at about 1:25 in, it becomes hysterical.



Feel free to leave comments below and see you next week to see if the streak is broken by Phi's 50-50.

Childhood perversions

Third appearance for Dysart on this blog, though one of them, Mercury's Whereabouts got very short shrift before I'd really figured out a format. Then came Songspiel, where I got most of the way, found the theme, and made a few mistakes at the end. So no luck with Dysart as of yet. The grid looks daunting, no gridlines (that makes two in a row with no gridlines or few gridlines) and an explicit instruction to not include them. But there's some drawing to be done.

I started this one on a plane. without any aids and was finding the clues pretty difficult - the misprints weren't coming quickly - utter fail on the 1 across test (which ended up being one of the last entries I got). First one in was DIET(IS)T at 4 (if you look really closely, you can see where my pen died and I got a new one, a rather thick bluish one for the plane ride back). Anyway, after a few head-scratching on the clues, I had a look at the set 1 thematic clues... the first two looked pretty straightforward - VI(P)ER and NAGA(saki), I was thinking SNAKES AND LADDERS right away, and got excited and had a peek at Set 2... COMPANION (anagram of NINCOMPOOP - OP) and LAD,DER and we're away!

So it was a rather odd feeling being very early into the solving process and knowing you've cracked the theme and all that's left is to solve clues and put it all together. The last time I had that, I could not for the life of me finish!

And i thought that was how I was going here for a long time. The misprints were still hard to find, I eventually got the message through the SEVENTY-FIVE (I thought it was SEVENTY-SEVEN for a while) to get DELETE ALL BUT SEVENTY FIVE THEMATIC LETTERS, which makes sense - the grid at the end is going to look like a snakes and ladders board with just words and snakes and ladders drawn around them.

Bit by bit the grid began to come together - it helped that some of the snake or ladder letters went into blank spaces, but without grid lines I started to lose track of where I was looking for a snake or ladder word, or a regular clue word. I had entered RUN reversed on the right hand side (on the basis of the N at the end of TAKEN) without realizing that there was still a clue to be solved at 22! Similarly I was staring at what eventually became the O of ROOSE, sure that a ladder needed to go there. Fortunately once I saw that then I saw my last ladder, SCALE (SC still catches me in wordplay) and had a grid of completion and satisfaction.

There were a few things to sort out at the very end - COBRA could have merged with ADDER (isn't there a terrible movie about that), and ANACONDA could have curled back up a little bit - I was surprised to see that the snakes could go up in parts, but that was the only way RACER was going to work. Counting the letters leads to there being no overlap between ANACONDA and COMPANION or COBRA and ADDER

OK, I'm looking forwards to seeing better artwork at Listen With Others, but here's my final work of art. I gave the snakes eyes and tongues because snakes have eyes and tongues.



This one was an interesting solve - I got very excited about getting the theme so early, but then lost it a little when I got frustrated with the fitting things together near the end. But I'm calling it a victory to George, and I've finally cracked a Dysart Listener!

2009 tally: George 29, Listener 16. Current streak: George 7.

I just got finished watching (I was watching the last episode while I was writing this) the six-part documentary on Monty Python featuring a lot of interviews (mostly covering the topics in the book "Life Of Python"). OK, so I'm a huge fan, I once stalked Terry Jones in Melbourne dressed as a gumby. Here's Eric Idle ragging on YouTube people...



Feel free to leave comments and see you next week to take a BAT to Schadenfreude

I need a drink

What's this? A Sabre puzzle with gridlines? Not that many, I guess. According to the Listener website, this is Sabre's 59th! Listener, not counting collaborations. That's an impressive resume. And I've drawn a blank on almost all of them - I called a victory on "Au Contraire" earlier this year (though if I submitted I would have been graded incorrect), before that was "Lip Service" which gave me a pretty sparse grid, and the one before that I managed to get one word. So I guess George vs Sabre is getting closer, I'm doing a little better each time.

Now I will admit I got a little tip on doing Sabre puzzles from another setter - read each word carefully - Sabre is not a fan of clue padding, so if you are stuck look up each word in Bradfords and Chambers because a bit of wordplay goes a long long way. This stood me in really good stad here.

This is a daunting looking challenge! Sets of four entries, two normal, one jumbled, one encoded (ciphers are not my strong point). Kind of like the circular grids then... one-quarter of the answers are thematic. You know... with half of the grid being real words, then I should be able to just lightly write in the normal entries and see where I get from there...

1 across is thematic, so we can't pass the 1 across rule, but 13 across is (t)EMP(t)RESS and we're on our way! Not only that, but it looks like my lucky day, as if EMPRESS went in as normal, so did the locateable anagram FERNYTICKLES, AME(t)ER, I.P.S.O., and the hidden URI. No place for INDIA at 5 down, but it's not INDIA, it's KE(N)Y,A idiot and it also goes in. That places NEODYMIUM (yet another reason you should never tackle the Listener without a chemsitry degree) and 15 is looking very tempting - RESINA which if it is a real entry would be RESINATE or RESINATA. The top row is looking like FAIUKP (I think this is going to be coded), and 20 down is looking like an jumble of MARY,BUD. Hey, I think I could crack this one!

That was about as far as the grid got in the first sitting, but I managed to work out almost all of the clues on a first go. This tip is helping, or Sabre decided to make it easy on us. At the end of the first sitting I was missing 14 across, 16 across, 35 across, 6 down, 24 down and 33 down. Not too shabby!

I got stuck here for a few days where I didn't have a lot of time to look at this one. I kept trying codes to check which of the entries was which in the sets of four. This got me started again - one of 23 across or 6 down had to be normal - word wizard gave me PSAMMOPHILES which works for 6. 38 (ANNATES) and 30 (CRIES) had to be coded, which meant that I had a few of the letters of the cipher. As a complete hail mairy, I put what I had for 1 across (-IRS--------) into Word Wizards and miracle of miracle, there's not that many words that fit. And one of them was KRISCHWASSER, that would work with RESINATA as the thematic words. Can it be so? Let's try 23 across... -R-N----W--- gives BRANDY-PAWNEE. Eureka!

Excited beyond belief I then dug myself a huge hole looking at 21 down convinced it was a jumble of BURGUNDY. I've got URG already, what else couldit be? But but but but 27 is really ajumble of HECHS, right? Nope... there is BURGUNDY in this grid, but it's not jumbled in 31, it's jumbled in 10! So 21 is a code: S-U-E-NE - SAUTERNE (had a few of those at a tasting last year).

A post-midnight frantic solving session learning about POMBE, KIR, SLIVOWITZ and QUETSCH later and I'm done! Kicking myself for not seeing AREG, and for thinking that WIT was jumbled, which stopped me from entering the letters from TURNIP GREENS in. Is there a naughty definition anagram in 33? But I've conquered Sabre! Woohoo!

Victory to George! 2009 tally: George 28, Listener 16. I'm finishing the year strong (watch that collapse soon), with a current streak of 6.

For my US friends, happy Thanksgiving for next week (I may be posting late, depends on when I come to after a long feast). For Sabre and the others who enjoyed this week's sartorial offering, here's D.R.I.N.K. by the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy (what is Max Eider up to these days?).



Feel free to leave comments below, and see you next week for a bit of Child's Play with Dysart.

In which Bradford's gets a thorough workout!

It's the end of the week, so it's time again to check in with the battles against the barred-grid. This week it's Hypnos who is a new setter or a new pseudonym, and a rather long preamble. We've got eight thematics, clued in an odd way, across clues are normal, down clues give extra letters in wordplay, and there's some highlighting and words that aren't in the grid to add in. Okeydoke - sounds like a good place to start is with those normal acrosses.

No chance on the 1 across test, it's a thematic one. But we have luck on 6 across - L(IMP)ET, and that gets me going with 8 down being P,S,I (and an extra S) and 7 down being IDEA,LLY with extra I. A first crack at solving and actually the down clues weren't too bad, I got more of the down clues than the across clues, and at the end of the first solve, I had a grid that looked pretty flush at the top, a little light on at the bottom, and my extra letters were GRIDISG--ENSTIR--HOLE.

Speaking of the HOLE at the end of the message, I managed to dig myself a pretty substantial one with those "Alternative" and "Associative"

(damn, I'm out of time for right now - if you've checked in early, enjoy the grid and the tale so far, I'll be back to update later, but I think I've cracked this one).

A disjointed blog is still a blog, right? I'm kind of pressed for time, so let's cut to the chase...

Stumbling point #1: Even though the answers were practically staring myself in the face, I thought that the grid entries WERE the alternatives and associatives. So it looked like COCKTAIL should go in at 1 across and CAPSULE at 2 down. Well I'd solved one of the alternatives to be TANKARD and figured that COCKTAIL as a glass would be the alternative to TANKARD, and that CAPSULE probably foes with that associative that says PILL. But then again, there's something that looks like it should be RIVET at 36 across, and the first "alternative clue" answer would be RIVET, but aren't I meant to put an alternative answer in there?

Could you believe I went two days before convincing myself that these answers really did go in there, and that got me all eight of the alternative/associatives in a flash. Putting those in helped me finish the downs to give the message GRID IS GIVEN STIR ?N HOLE - surely IN HOLE, which would be wordplay for PORRIDGE, which would fit the title. I didn't really see the wordplay for 30 down, but Chambers supports a STOCK as a nosy boss, and 22 has to be ALA,SKA and we have a grid.

Looking up PORRIDGE in Chambers, there's BROSE, and rather helpfully, turning the page for the rest of the possibilities for PORRIDGE there's THIBLE under "PORRIDGE-STICK". Highlighting done! Now to the example and the item... I'll admit, I should have gotten these earlier - I knew that the first Alternative was the one that had to lead to the thematic (looking up RIVET in Chambers, and there's CLINK!), but which letter got removed from that last associative clue? So to Word Matcher with the letters I knew - let's find a 7 letter word containing UPSNAA - SPANDAU - and it's WEIR that we needed from the associative.

This was an 11th hour, 11th minute and 58th second solve - I was worried that I'd get as far as the theme word and not be able to see the rest of it. I am a little frustrated that I never sorted out all the alternatives and associatives... I have

PRIVET - CLINK
TANKARD - POT
VEHICLE - ???
COCKTAIL - ???

and

SHOT GLASS?
HUMAN? INSTINCT
STRETCH LIMO
TIME CAPSULE

Only sure of the last one...

Despite all this, I'm pretty sure I've got what was needed, and I'm calling this a victory for George! Good challenge, Hypnos, that was a slammer of a puzzle.

2009 Tally: George 27, Listener 16 (last year's record is tied!). Current streak, George 5!!!

OK - how can I resist this clip of the late, great Ronnie Barker doing a crossword in "Porridge" (if only Hypnos had worked RILK in there)



Feel free to leave comments below, and see you next week for a whirly of a birly with Sabre.

Get the flock outta here

Loda is making a second appearance for the year, after the appropriately-titled "In Clue Order On and On" (and on and on and on...) which I finished, but it took a mammoth effort. Let's see what ROC brings - all but fifteen clues have misprints in the definition, quotation and speaker, and fifteen entries need something thematic cut out of them. All sounds innocent enough, most of the words in the grid are going to be real words.

The 1 across test is interesting this time out - anagram of IT,S,D,MEN,ARE,INTENSE - that's INDETERMINATENESS and since the grid is 13x13, four letters have to come out. Can't see four letters that would come out and leave a real word. Can't figure all the wordplay in 9 straight away, but with IE, R, and Y being a part of it, then OSIERY is tempting and WILLOW IN THIS is the definition misprint. It looks even better when 1 down is I,OD(IS)E - chemistry clue! DOSE with something elemental, 2 down is DICHTS (IAN'S WIPES), 3 is TRAUMA (U in A MART reversed) and 4 is EY(e),RA (BEAST FROM THE FOREST). So the first half of INDETERMINATENESS is looking good...

If something thematic has to be removed, could it be MINA? or NATE? MINA would fit the title of the puzzle.

So the MINA seemed to be a good idea gwn HAWKEYED appeared at 22. I had the Y from ELEGY, and 8 down was SLENDERNESS (which has ERNE in it). So I think there's some aviacide going on here.

By the end of one rather long sitting (stuck home on a really miserable night), I had a pretty good-looking grid, more than half full, some ideas of birds to be removed, one mistake to be rectified later (JACKSAUCES instead of JACKSLAVES), and a quote that looked like

I - E - - - - THE BIRDS ARE - L O - - K - N - CH - R - E -

In the second sitting I decieded to tackle the quotation to see if I could get the missing wordplays. Googe "the birds are" + charles and there we are - I SEE ALL THE BIRDS ARE FLOWN: KING CHARLES I

I like having the phrase and knowing the misprints are in the definition! The ones that still took a while to find even with this were...

44 across - I thought ANGY might go to ANDY, and I hope ANDY IRVINE is a fan of the Listener, because I'd never heard of him.

30 down - got HEREIN from the definition (SHOWN BY THIS PAPER) and a word search, still don't see the wordplay - RE in HEIN?

24 down - AG GRO(t) from wordplay, didn't know this to mean SNAGS (would have been fun if the answer meant sausages)

10 across - needed that S to see RISE IN DISGUST to be REVOLT

OK - so there's birds removed from the answers and five more curved lines (presumably birds) to be found. 32 across is OOSE, and there's a G near those O's, but if I follow the other two Os I can make GOOSE in a V-shape (either one bird drawn like a V or a phalanx of birds). Looks good, because there's RAVEN across from it, EGRET above the RAVEN, ARIEL in the middle, and SCRAY, which according to Chambers can be a bird, in the top right. I don't think there'd be five phalanxes, so let's just draw some curvy birdies. Here we go...



OK, my bottom right bird looks even more stupid.

That was a lot of fun, I like getting phrases and themes early, helps with the hunt-and-peck (or hunt and de-peck in this case). I'm calling this one a victory for George!

2009 tally: George 26, Listener 16 (one more to tie my record from last year!). Current streak: George 4!

I think last time there was a bird theme I put "Excellent Birds" by Laurie Anderson here. But there's a show I'm going to on Wednesday that I am very excited - Peaches, with the opening act MEN. MEN is half of Le Tigre who were truly weird. Here's "Well, Well, Well" by Le Tigre.



If you are reading and happen to be in Asheville North Carolina this weekend I'll be hosting "The Love Game" at Asheville Brewing Company on Coxe Avenue on Saturday. Feel free to leave comments below, and see you next week for a look inside Hypnos.

Shouldn't this have been by waterlO?

uM, so what is black and white and red aL over?

welcome to george versus the listener croSword, where i baTle this baRed grid on a wEkly basis

waterlO is back! earlier this year there was An ADitional SyMetry, but I rEMber waterlO best for two listeners i tried before i started this blog - "and now we Are twelve" was a rare solve and one i could not finish, but got a big kick out of trying was O! spectacles, where several leTers were to represent things they lOked like. this one is more along those lines - when a leTer or series of leTers has to be repeated then they are put in a diFerent colour. no secrets, just a lot of manipulation of characters.

the 1 acroS test is satisfied with kAB(y) and we are away. i reaLy enjoyed the theme and almost got it finished in one siTing (not a bar solve, but a late-night sofa seSion). the last few tOk a bit of finding - iONe, and AR being the last in

i found the clues to be on the easier side, it helped that the croSing was often with a multiple leTer - some people may find these tO straightforward, but i have a soft spot for playing with leTer sequences

victory to george! nowhere near as cheap as last wEk. cuRent taLy: george 25, listener 16. cuRent streak: george 3

toMoRow is haLowEn and i'm performing at the spirits of asheviLe baL - so here's a trailer for a scary movie. yes, that's me masturbating to a copy of playstation magazine



fEl frE to coMent below and sE you next wEk for some roc-ing out with loda

Ummmm, when does 21 = 24?

Leo is a new setter to me, a check on the Listener page shows 5 crosswords scattered over the last 13 years, one of which represented the 1999 Rugby World Cup????? It appears Leo likes ciphers and removing letters. There's extra material in some clues, and wordplay with extra letters, and then we need to literally adjust a grid to a satisfying conclusion. Hmmm... well let's get cracking then.

I had a really amusing first solving session on this one - I was performing in an improv show at a bar, and hadn't killed my bar tab by the end of the show, so I thought I'd stick around for a drink and talk to some of the crowd. Not sure what it was about this show, but the place EMPTIED almost as soon as the show was over. So I had a full beer, and nobody else around... so I fished this one out of my backpack and decided to have a bash in the bar. I ended up making such a good start on the grid that I got one more beer, which I think annoyed the owner who was thinking about closing early.

Now despite that, I failed at the 1 across test - it was one of my final entries. I did make a pretty good start with 4 across - POST, HAS,TE(E) - so an extra letter of E - the whole right hand side of the grid then just fell together including seeing that 4-15 across were giving -ETTER (so probably LETTER or LETTERS as the first word of the message), and that something was fishy with 8 down, 22 down and 16 across - 8 down was ANT (extra material APOSTLES), 18 was GAD (extra material ROMAN TABLES?). 22 was TARA, and I had placed the A,RA, so there was a missing letter where 22 crossed 31 (extra materal FEBRUARY), so 31 could be ULE (extra material PERFECT). 44 down looked like Y,E,S, so there's probably a blank square at the top of that.

I was feeling pretty good about this - and intruigued that I'd found a Q as an extra letter (don't see many of those). A little googling shows that there's 12 Roman Tables, and 12 apostles, so these extra bitties are looking like numbers, and with LETTER as the first word of the message, we're probably replacing numbers with letters.

The second session found another empty square right in the middle, so it looked like a pattern - used that to confirm 39 and 40. It was the bottom left half of the grid that took the longest time to fill - I was looking for 29 to start (S)LAM instead of (S)LATE, and seeing OPS at 40 sent me hunting through many pages of Chambers to find KEEP CAVE meant to keep watch.

So I have a grid - I didn't bother with the rest of the extra material, just kept in mind that there's numbers somewhere. The message reads LETTER COUNT GIVES A SECOND MAGIC SQUARE. OK, a magic square is one where the rows and columns add up to the same value (there used to be one on the same page as the crossword in the Melbourne Age a long time ago). So do I turn the numbers into letters and make sure they form a magic square?

Or do they count to something?

Hmmm - well HAL crossing OPS means I think there's an O at 40. Similarly TA-RA and _ULE could only be Y. ETA- and CAS_E should be T. Poking through word wizards for combinations that fit the rest of the clashes, and turning it into a number code gives... nothing. But I can make TWENTY ONE out of the letters? Is that a count for a Magic Square?

I don't usually do this, but since it's after 11, the answer is up, and I've lucked into it. Is a cheap victory a sweet victory? I was meant to count the letters of the numbers that came from the extra material. I didn't do that, but I got the correct answer. Yikes, sheer luck.

Amazingly cheap victory for George: 2009 tally: George 24, Listener 16. Current streak, George 2.

I now have to go deal with a school field trip, so here's a little Robot Johnson - "I Hate Your Kids"



Feel free to leave comments, and see you next week to see how neatly I can write in lower case.

Sorry about the crappy scan - I didn't get a chance to do it last night so I popped by the library on a break this morning where there's scanning machines that scan things but they come out kind of light (this was also a victim of the "end of the blue pen start of the black pen", but you can't see it from the scratch.

Before I started the blog, Wasp wrote one of the rare Listeners that I got out - "Two Down", with the Cluedo theme. Last year there was Symbolism, which ended up with a big M appearing in the grid. This time, we've got text messaging!

OK, I'll own up, I text message far more than I should. I caved about a year ago and added text messaging to my phone plan, and a quick check of my phone shows that thus far this month, I have received 147 text messages and sent 125. I don't like them, it just appears this is the now way to keep in touch. I have a twitter, but I have not used my phone to send anything to it (I haven't updated it in months).

So we have some eight-letter words that are mangled text messages, five letter words that are unclued and have something in common, and a big win in the 1-across department - with a hidden word of all things to give UVEA... we're away!

Except that UVEA only crosses two of the 8-letter entries and a five-letter entry. Oh well... those years of Inorganic Chemistry help out for 10 down - N(I)OB,ATE, 4 down is PUT with U replaced by AC for PACT, and I found the cluing to be on the easier (or on my wavelength) side, and the entire left half of the grid was finished in a first sitting, as well as sorting out which of the 8 letter words belonged to which of the numerical sequences (yes, there was a bit of peeking on Word Matcher initially, but the checking letters were generous enough that word wizards was all that was needed on the last few).

The five letter words similarly didn't prove to be a problem - in the left hand side I had G--IC crossing VI-WS and SC--E crossing TY-ES. So with VIEWS, GENIC, TYPES and SCOPE, we've got four words we could put TELE in front of to get real words (TELEVIEWS confirmed by Word Wizards), I'm on the way, and I thougt home and hosed.

The right hand side of the grid took two more sittings - mostly thanks to a stupid mistake - I had put MIT,TENS in 22, reasoning it that you could put cash in a bumbag. However that was wrong and confirmed by ARCHDUKE and USERNAME in the 8-letter entries. Chambers confirmed that MITUMBA was a real word, and Bradfords threw up BEHIGHT as a possibility for 37, and I was off again on the right hand side.

Nearly done - full grid, and now some extra numbers... U,I,S,R,P,U,O,S - hey, that's an anagram of SPURIOUS (which would work with "Phoney"). Was it a typo, did they mean to say the correct LETTERS instead of digits? Nothing on the stop press, but surely that's what it is, right?

So in goes SPURIOUS as the theme words, and I think we have it all done. After some of my recent catastrophes, this was a sigh of relief, and keeps my unbeaten streak with Wasp!

Victory to George! 2009 tally: George 23, Listener 16. Current streak: George 1

I'm heading out tonight to see an act that has come highly recommended, but I have to see it to believe it. I like what I've heard so far - here's "Tight T-Shirt" by Benji Hughes



Feel free to leave comments, and see you next week to find out more about the square root of 576 with Lato.

F'n bell!

I don't know if Aedites looks in on here, but I have found each of his Listeners a real challenge, from the first circular grid I ever filled in (yes, there was one mistake) in Babes, to hunting down a massive number of permutations of prime numbers in Euclid's algorithm. My heart sank immediately in the preamble. The first part sounded fun enough, grid is divided into C,D,E,F,G - so away go checking letters, and the run of real words we've been having. And then - bell-ringing!

Please, someone help me!

There are two things I cannot wrap my tiny little mind around - the Playfair square (now watch, since I've written it, there'll be one soon), and bell-ringing. This I think will be the first time (apart from Quadrivium) that there'll be a complete solution on the Listener site for a bell-ringing puzzle and maybe I'll be wiser next time.

Anyhooo...

I spent a massive amount of time on this one (a theme with Aedites), and I thought I might even get there in the end. Funny thing is it took me a while to determine which set of letters went with D,C,G, and E, but I have no F's in the entire grid??? (I still can't solve 6D, so maybe there's an F in there). So I assume that F is by itself?

There also seems to be a lot of letters that match up with D.

Hmmm...

Filling the grid wasn't too too bad - there were some really helpful clues that raised an eyebrow, like learning of the existance of XYSTI (also known as EGDDC), and HOG PLUM as a cashew. There was a lot of use made of Word Matcher to find possibilities once I knew all the letters - that proved invaluable in figuring out the long answer in 1D,7D,12D - WITH A popped out quickly. Surely there was a BELL in there somewhere - the first four letters of the 8-letter word could be BELL but that wasn't going anwhere, but BELLS could be the last word. BUILDING WITH A ... BELLS? A google search on that threw up an old poem describing a CHURCH as "'TIS A TALL BUILDING WITH A TOWER AND BELLS"... so that looks like the quote, and CHURCH goes in the bottom.

But then I'm completely stuck, and wondering the following

- are there really no Fs? Surely there's one in 6 down but I can't find anything to work...
- how do the bell changes work?
- what are the answers to 17 across, 28 across and 41 across (all letters are checked)
- how do the bell changes work?
- what is a bell change anyway?

Aaaah, the anguish! So close and yet so far. The answer should be up now (I have to dash off for an hour or so after submitting this, but soon I will know what I was missing)! Great challenge, Aedites, wish I could finish it off.

Victory to the Listener Crossword! 2009 tally: Listener 16, George 22. Current streak: Listener 1

I'm off to the Grey Eagle tonight to see Carolina Chocolate Drops - they're a really fun show, preserving an unusual form of music from this region



Feel free to comment, and see you next week for Phoney Waspy goodness.

Reminding me of t-shirts I see on a weekly basis

Rok is another new solver (or new pseudonym - does would that make it a newdonym?), and we have a grid celebrating a work of art (hopefully not Pollock again!), lots of clues that have extra letters in wordplay, the rest have a misprint. There's rather a lot of clues, so look for extra letters first. Grid should finish up with all real words (Word Wizards at the ready), so this doesn't look too too daunting.

Oh, and while I'm writing this, Australia is doing pretty well against England in the semi-final of the Champions trophy. Woohoo!

However the 1 across test fails, as I can't see what turned out to be a reasonably simple clue in the end. The first one in is ADMIR(e),(P)AL. Wow, a P? That wasn't a bad starting place, the old naval commander helped me get most of the New England corner, and the combination of 9,10 and 11 down giving me a THE as a word or part of a word from extra letters.

The first misprint was a bit of a stunner - BABY->BABA at 20 across meaning there's a Y? Nearby there's FACIAL becoming RACIAL. So a 9 letter artist with an F and a Y??? Thinking there can't be too many possibilities, I went to Word Matcher with the misprints I knew and looked for 9-letter words (as well as the F and Y, I had N from SENATE - SEDATE, and K from KENT - LENT), so looking for 9-letter combinations that had a F,Y,N and K - I realized typing it in... this is probably going to be Pink Bloody Floyd. And if it's Pink Bloody Floyd then it's going to be that album cover that I see on t-shirts of kids who weren't even contemplated when the thing came out.

I already had most of the right hand side of the grid filled, - enough to see the R O Y G coming down a diagonal on the right. There was WHITE as part of WHITER, so that has to be removed, fill in the rest of the spectral lines coming out of the prism. The extra letters were tracks on the album- SPEAK TO ME, TIME, MONEY, US AND THEM and BRAIN DAMAGE.

Cracking the theme helped me with a few clues on the top half I was struggling with (including 1 across), and I had a completed grid at the end of my second solve. I had to find WATERS, GILMOUR, MASON and WRIGHT (I'm not a Pink Bloody Floyd fan, but I've been near enough to know the names of the guys - I liked Syd Barrett but he was gone by then). MASON and GILMOUR were easy enough to find, but it took a little doodling to see the how WATERS and WRIGHT fit in - but it made perfect sense.

To make an equilateral triangle in a crossword grid, you'd have to go two up, one across to get the right angle - that was a pretty nice touch. I had little circles to find the rest of the thematic stuff, and here is the end product in its computer-altered glory...



I didn't care much for the theme, but I liked the puzzle and the construction, so thanks Rok for some real fun and a much more relaxed solve than some of my recent efforts. I nearly fell for a trap of misprints vs correct letters (if you look carefully at my grid, in the box I started putting the correct letters instead of misprints). So I'm declaring victory to George, and the ship is starting to be righted a little.

2009 tally: George 22, Listener 15. Current streak: George 2

Here's a double-dose of recent videos from my sketch comedy group The Feral Chihuahuas. The first one was the filmed intro to a live sketch where I play Biff Christ, the stoner teenage son of Jesus.



And a commercial for a product that restores your manly smell. I get to wear a mullet wig!



Feel free to comment, and see you next week for a question by Aedites.

No snips or sticks allowed!

I'm running late today, won't have my usual blathering up for another hour or two...

And that time has passed - Parsnip is either a new setter or a new alias/combination (I'm not going to be fooled on one of those again). We have some ingredients lacking definition, and a recipe that can be made with most of them, two long unclued entries across the top and bottom and it does appear that all clues and grid entries are normal and regular words. This is as good a chance as any to break the recent slump!

1 across is one of the unclued entries, so let's try that 11 across test - EN + anagram of MEALS is ENAMELS and we're off and running! Oh - sadly it looks like the days of the Friday pub session solve are over (I have to stay sober for Friday afternoon committments until at least 5) so my first solving session was over a rather delicious Saturday morning breakfast and what I lacked in beer I more than made up for in coffee. My first solving session went pretty well, I had most of the California corner finished, with a big hat tip to E-COD, and a fair chunk of the bottom done without Chambers or Bradfords. I had even cracked the 15/30 connection and wondered if there'd be a second Darwin Listener within the year (surely not). At the end of breakfast the major questions were...

1) is GOOGOL correct? It looked like it should work, but gave me -AOL- at 42 across and that didn't look promising.

2) Is 38 NEVI? (that was confirmed shortly after), and if it is, 41 is -EG-N-LD which is surely REGINALD, so maybe the recipe gives names?

3) Is 13 SYCONIUM? Is it even a word?

4) Why, if I'm doing so well with these clues, is the New England corner utterly empty except for DEATHS at 22?

I had a quick Chambers browse back at home to find out the answers were maybe, yes, no, and because I'm not as smart as I consider myself.

That was it until lunch a few days later (with Bradfords, always a good lunch date), and a brand new SYCAMINE from Word Wizards. 44 across was looming temptingly... -LLT-IN-S-IC- ... ALL THINGS NICE??? That would fit the names as the unclued entries. In my rush of joy I tried to write PUPPY DOGS TAILS across the top, but there wasn't room... oops - PUPPY DOG TAILS would be more correct proper, I guess maybe possibly.

Funny thing is that one of the very first Listeners on this blog used a different part of the same quote (and got me some curious attention on the Crossword Centre message board, I think the first time anyone noticed this blog).

Names! PETE would fit in, CLARE, REGINALD, looks like UNA or ENA across that middle bit. Why are these ingredients even here? (I hadn't even looked at them to this point). 32 is -ON. RON? DON? JON? (simon le) BON? And -E-I--A could be MELISSA or NERISSA. OK, got to figure out these ingredients, I guess.

The list of ingredients... well I've got the all things nice, so I need sugar and spice. I've got the puppy dogs tails, so I'm going to need sticks and snails.

My black pen went walkabout, so third and final solving session is in blue. Started with a hunt to get the last of the normal entries - VENAE and AESC being the ones that clinched that pesky corner, and then on to these ingredients.

The ingredients took a lot of cold solving and poking and poring (if they weren't in alphabetical order, I don't think I'd have gotten the last one). Since this is a crossword, where there's sugar there's DEMERARA! The first one could be (m)AN(I)SE, that's a spice. NE,RITE and DO,D,MAN (sneaky) are snails. A search for TRE---- gets TREPANG... well that could be a spice at a stretch???

One variation on the recipe... maybe sticks isn't right. A look online shows that I'm the only person on the planet that thinks this is "sticks and snails" but most of the time it is SNIPS or SLUGS. SNIPS doesn't help me, but a TREPANG is definitely a slug, and so is a LIMAX (confirming what I thought that 20 across was likely MAX). SINE is a name (thanks back of Chambers). That means I'm looking for a spice, and although I don't understand the wordplay, VANILLA looks like it would fit the last clue.

So my anagram of ANISE, DEMERARA, DODMAN, LIMAX, NERITE, SUCROSE, TREPANG, VANILLA fits my final set of names REGINALD, PETE, VERA, DORA, MELISSA, SINE, DON, MAX, MARTIN, UNA, CLARE.

Tricky there with the ingredients, Parsnip. A fun puzzle, a bit of a search there at the end (knowing I needed a V somewhere helped with that last ingredient), but I'm calling this a victory for George and a slump broken!!!!

2009 tally: George 21, Listener 15. Current streak: George 1.

Last week it was announced that Peaches is doing a show in Asheville. I am super stoked. This clip and song is by in no way safe for work, but here's the song that really got me hooked on Peaches.



Feel free to comment below, and see you next week for some Wisdom of Joints with Rok.

Domi - NO

If it's been difficult enough to find time to solve with Chambers and Bradfords handy lately, it's been harder to find time to sit down with spreadsheets.

Googly is a new setter to me, I see a few other numerical puzzles listed. I liked the theme, and thought I had a good starting point with the intersection of COP, COAP+CARP-CARD-COP and COAL+CARP-CARD being related. This meant that one of C,O or P was 5 or 10. I eliminted O from being 5 or 10, so C or P was 5 or 10. O was limited to a small number as was D... but that was all she wrote and I really only got two chances during the week to sit down and bang out a solution. So there's a paltry grid.

Well there goes a shot at an all-correct numerical year, and well done Googly for tossing up a deceptive puzzle that I just could not get a start on.

Victory to Googly and the Listener Crossword: 2009 tally - Listener 15, George 20. Current streak, Listener 3!

This weekend is the Brewgrass Festival. I'm lucky enough to get a ticket (woohoo) and can't wait for the beer. Unfortunately the musical lineup isn't as good as two years ago, when a highlight was the Carolina Chocolate Drops rocking a drunk crowd. Come back CCD! Here they are (and an advance warning, it looks like I'll be doing stand-up at next year's beer festival - the drunker the crowd, the better!).



Feel free to comment, and see you next week for a Parsnip Recipe

This backache is giving me an endemism

I just realised I've scanned the grid and left it on my laptop, so it won't be up until later tonight, but it's going to be a pretty funny read for those who like looking at my messed-up grids.

Poat last year brought "Reappearance" where I barely solved a single clue. So the only way is up, right? There's rules of construction, all clues are normal but ten of them have extra words, and an extra word means the answer goes in backwards. There's ten more jumbles, but nothing to indicate them, and some form of symmetry to the whole thing.

Do we pass the 1 across test? Robin's band are the MERRY MEN... so lose an M and contrive the wordplay, and we could have MERRY ENGLAND. Nothing to indicate it goes in backwards, so let's hope it is entered normally and bang it in. Looks like a good choice, because there's RE(d)BACK, R(HAP)HE (thanks Chambers... after last time with Poat I decided that every time I sat down with this one there was going to be a laptop, Chambers and Bradfords close at hand!). And looky there- 5 down is L,ARN so ABSENTEE is an extra word and we enter it backwards.

More fun with Chambers and I find KHEDA - also going in backwards, extra word WE'VE, AB,ED (another reversed... FISH-EATING as an extra word???), and KACHERI (anagram of THICK EAR - T). Which means that 4 is a jumble of EKE. Found a jumble!

And another one, since 15 is ELAPHINE (PH in ELAINE - well done George for remembering to check that back section which says ELAINE can come from FAWN). This doesn't match with me P and L, so jumble away. 18 across is ESCHAR (another hit and hope in Chambers) and the top half of the grid is starting to look pretty good.

Not so much the rest... MAI,NOR (which gets reversed, extra word UPWARD), and A,GO,G (looks like it could go in normally) are about the only things I have in the bottom.

Great... looks like I'm going to have another nearly-empty grid POAT experience.

And what am I meant to define with WE'VE FISH-EATING BIRD (OK, maybe FISH-EATING BIRD go together), UPWARD, ABSDENTEE, ORGAN?

In an extremely rare big brain moment, I see BA-KACHE and BACK... could both of those be BACKACHE??? If so, then 24 could be ACHENE. Ooooooh - symmetry!!!!! I had ENDE.... and some extra letters - ENDEMISM looks like a possible word. A square of BACKACHE and ENDEMISM? Well it got me a few more entries - MISMUT, SNASTE and LEMONED, which helped me get CUNEATE and CREPE SUZETTE across the bottom.

But I can't see any more patterns like this. What am I missing? And what's going on at 38 across?

I was thinking that flash of inspriation was going to get me there, but at that point I'm irrevocably stuck. Got a lot further than last time with Poat, and I think I may have had the moment where the penny tried very hard to drop, but got stuck somewhere in the machinery.

So Victory to Poat, yet again!!! 2009 tally: Listener 14, George 20. Current streak: Listener 2.

I'm having a rough second half of the year here! So let's get some advice from the experts... here's Peter Biddecombe solving the Times Crossword 24328.



Feel free to teach me the ways of the Poat, and see you next week for some dominoation of a nation.

Shut out by Lato... again

George vs Lato is sitting at 1 and 1 so far, with success on the Prime-minster themed "Yes" and a close but no cigar on the fat men surrounding "Explanation". Cut Out looks pretty innocent at the beginning, 15 thematic words, linked by anagram(!) or association to suggest a 32. Most clues are normal, seven have extra words to guide us to the 15.

We can't have the 1 across test, since the word that would go at 1 across is one of the 15! Oh, and 32 is tucked away there and is checked by two normal clues and three of the 15. Yikes...

We do pass the 9 across test, with A in SIM for SIAM. And then the dilemmas begin. 2 down is CELL in AIM reversed for MICELLA, 12 across is RE, GO UP around R for REGROUP, 3 down is M in AIR for AMIR. So what of 1 down and 4 down? The only two-word anagram of PROFOUND minus DON I can think of is UP FOR... which kind of fits the clue. The only wordplay I can see for 1 down is USHER - the middle for USER - if that's so then CONSERVATIVE is one of the extra words.

This makes the entry at 1 across UM-AU-... UMLAUT? What would that suggest?

My experience from here on in was pretty frustrating. In the last two Lato Listeners I got through the clues pretty well, but this one had me butting my head at a lot of them, and there's two that seem to be surely right to my tiny mind but maybe I'm missing something?

Take 24 across for instance... Presenter read out letters would be EMCEE, but then there's "and" and "card" extra. That wouldn't be on, would it? That didn't stop me writing EMCEE in there and trying to reconcile it with the down answers. I did finally get that one taken care of with FA|S|T and (c)OOPS. Never did find an adequate replacement for 24 across.

7 down is another one... surely it is STINK... S, KNIT reversed. But I can't find an answer for 10, 13 or 16 that works with it. 10 may be PINNACLE, but I can't see the wordplay that leads to that.

I'm probably also wrong at 33...

So after several sessions of bashing away, I think I have a half a grid, five extra words (sure of DAY, SCHOOL, BISCUIT), none of which seem to justify my probable thematic entries of UMLAUT and FLOOR (or FLUOR).

And I am stuck with several capitals Sssss

Well done Lato - victory to the Listener Crossword, and I'm going to have to pick up the pace to make significant improvements on last year!

2009 tally: Listener 13, George 20. Current streak: Listener 1.

This weekend is the LAAFF festival in Asheville, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm doing a show at 7, but hopefully before that I can catch the Mad Tea Party set. Aimee will love me for putting this up, here's their video for "Found a Reason", and the CD they signed for me





Feel free to comment, and see you next week for some Rules of Construction

Stop me if you've heard this before - two mathematicians you've never heard of are in a hospital....

The whirlwind of travel, performing and end-of-summer issues is finally over, and I can settle in to some proper solving sessions and not writing these blogs in a mad rush (maybe). Stan appears to be a new setter, S.J. Mulligan according to the Listener page. Diagreement has a few blocked off squares (on that main diagonal), extra letters in wordplay and (ouch) some squares that need ttwo letters side by side! Let's see how it shakes out...

The 1 across test is not met, I could not see that one straight away, but 6 across rectifies that - A,LAMP and we've got ALAP and an extra M. M as the second letter of a quote? Working through the clues, after the first solving session I had a nice little half-filled in grid and one of my double letters - REBEL crossing BEARABLE and BE checking. That helps in finding these doubles, when they're checked!

The clueing seemed pretty gentle, particularly in terms of anagrams with extra letters, so I also had a bit of a handle on the quote... --AL-EST-U----SUMOF-WOC-B--IN-W-WAY-

Looked like smallest two something in two ways... C-B--??? Cubes? A google of "smallest two cubes" brings up a wikipedia page about 1729. 1729 is the Hardy-Ramanujan number, and it looks like the latter of the two can be written in that conspicuous diagonal (pity - at the time I didn't know 5 down and was hoping I could replace that U with something more helpful).

So the disagreement is the story about Hardy and Ramanjuan (Hardy thinking there was nothing special about 1729, Ramanjuan saying that it could be formed by adding 1 cubed to 12 cubed, or by adding 9 cubed to 10 cubed.

I got all the thematic stuff with about eight answers left unsolved (all in the top half). The CU and BE double letters appear in the first cell of 1, 9, 10, 12 (10 being unchecked!). I still can't figure out the wordplay on 1 across, but I'm pretty confident of the word from the definition.

But finally, the drought is broken and I believe we have a victory for George! And a fun puzzle to go with it, I had never heard of the number or the story. Tsk tsk to Stan, didn't Stan know that this week is the numerical puzzle? Hope to see some more Stan in the future.

2009 tally: George 20, Listener 12. Current streak: George 1.

Infantile humor time - I was introduced last week to fenslerfilm, who overdubbed the GI Joe public service announcements. Some are terrible, but some are hysterical in their simplicity. Here's my favorite.



Feel free to comment, and see you next week to find out of I'm cut out for Lato.

I cannot tell a lie, and I cannot finish Admission

(pretty pathetic grid picture coming soon)

Sometimes time is not on your side, and a crossword is just that much better than you, and this is one of those weeks. The preamble looked like a lot of fun, misprints (but no idea how many), clashes, and a combination of THREE letters to get a message! Last year Kea had Conflict Resolution, which required summing four letters to get a message, so this should theoretically be easier.

The 1 across test passed - there's SPYPLANE and no misprints and maybe I got a false sense of security playing the "Definitions are left intact" game, thinking 1down was SC,ROLL (can ROLL be coiled? probably), 2 PURSUED with some form of misprint there (URS or SRU - maybe the U in SRU?) and POSSES,S... but from there I got bogged down and couldn't find a way out.

I started to get a pattern of the misprints around 4D, 13D and 24AC, with one at the end of 18AC, so it looks like a U or a cup.

And then schedules spiralled out of control - I didn't even manage to get a session where myself, chambers, bradfords and the crossword were in the same room (look for this to be a pattern over the next few weeks, things have somewhat settled down now).

So I'm sorry, Kea - for the amount I enjoyed Conflict Resolution, I didn't get the chance to enjoy Admission. And I didn't even give it the amount of time to say that I could have gotten somewhere if I did. Moral of the story - if you're doing long travelling, don't drive!

Victory to Kea and the Listener crossword and I'm in a real slump here. 2009 tally: Listener 12, George 19. Current streak, Listener 3!

Feel free to comment below, and see you all next week to find out if this admission leads to a disagreement with Stan.

SPWORKACE TIWORKME CONTINWORKUUM

I'm afraid this is meant to be a rush job (we'll see if it is), because I'm about to head out the door on another random travel. I didn't recognise the setter, Raich, but a peek at the Listener page shows that Raich is none other than Niall MacSweeney, regular commenter and sometime blogger at Times for the Times, who had one that I couldn't do in 2007. So hi to NMS if he's looking in. Interesting-looking grid, no symmetry, particualrly in the middle grid o'boxes, which will be filled out from the extra letters in wordplay. A grid of real words and definitions intact, sounds like I should be able to make a reasonable go of it, so away we go...

Omen #1 is when I can see 1 across, and here it is - TRANSPLANTING anagram +H. Message begins with H? Maybe it's saying hello to me? I did make a pretty reasonable go of it - there's a really generous number of checking letters, in several of the small answers there are none (37 across for example, fine by me because I had no idea who that old air company was). At the end of bar session, I had about half the grid filled in, and a good start on the message.

I needed the message to fill in some of the outer bits, but there's some of our old friend words - HIGHLIGHT, LETTERS and TWENTY-NINE were easily picked out of the message.

The clues were not too slippery, there was some general knowledge I couldn't figure out for a while, and after session #2 with chambers and bradfords I was done with the main part of the grid except for a few stragglers in the Florida corner (KENTE was the last one in - I had all sorts of answers in there at times, and it was really quite straightforward, KEYNOTE without the Y, extra letter O).

The message was revealed - HIGHLIGHT CONTAINER TWENTY NINE LETTERS USE PARKINSON'S LAW. I was familiar with Parkinson's law (and its variants) that work will expand to take up the available time and space (and more!).

So now how to end it? I can see TIME AVAILABLE wraps around the blank squares, and there's a W from STEW and a K from my lucky-last KENTE - so I guess the rest of it is WORK repeated in the middle? Are they all going down? Is there something more subtle about the CONTAINER?

So I think I've got it, but I'm not 100% on it... if I've missed something deeper I'll have to come back and fix things, but for now, I'm calling this a victory to George. I won't be able to see true solution until tomorrow morning most likely, so I'll keep fingers crossed.

2009 tally (tentative): George 20, Listener 10. Current streak, George 1.

AAARGH! I'm not getting away until late, so I did miss two things - I missed "for its completion" and the WORK was meant to be in a spiral. Bugger.

2009 tally (revised): Listener 11, George 19. Current streak, Listener 2.

Since we have work expanding, here's a mullet-tastic video of one of Australia's oddest bands, the Uncanny X-Men - "Everybody Wants To Work"



Feel free to comment (I'll be slow replying this time around), and see you next week for an admission of Kea's.

The curse of the black thumb strikes again!

It's Dipper time! Almost exactly a year after Flower Arranging, we have Green Cross Code, and some more horticulture. Not my forte by a mile. Daunting preamble, there's green X's to go where trees are, five of them have had bark stripped and there's a jumble of the removed letters. Clues have extra words which are there to help Dipper (which I infer, means they're not there to help me, bugger).

Not sure what caught me, but for a week this sat there with two whole grid entries filled out, AMYL and CYMA. Had to wait until I was done with a few big shows before I could really sit down with Bradfords and Chambers and chip away. Chip away is right... everytime I worked through there were a few more answers at a time that came clear.

It took a long time for the elements to come clear. 5 down didn't work unless I used A,LESION,A as the anagram fodder to get NEOPLASIA. So some entries are longer than others, and where there needs to be more than one letter in a square (presumably a clash) is where the trees go.

The first tree I spotted was where CEL(I)A (at 34 down) met PEARLITIC at 39 across... if the cross was TI,LIA there's a tree. Glimmer of hope time! I didn't have to jumble any of those letters (I didn't look to see if there was a consistency between across first and then down to make the tree names). There needed to be one more clash in PEARLITIC, and it had to come from D(ART)R,O,US or CAL,MER(ino). 36 across was SP,A,R - so that could cross with CALMER to make PA,LM (so it's not always down first), leaving OU,AR, which isn't a tree, but SOUARI is (pat on back, you dredged up SOUARI from somewhere).

OK, so back to looking for trees and I've got the bottom half almost complete.

Nextr realization was from looking at 26 and 27. I knew 27 was F(LYS)LIP, but then there was nowhere to put the extra letter. Could a tree be in an unchecked square? Two letters outside LY? A search of ?LY? on word wizards and a browse of Bradford's proved useless. It wouldn't be fair to put a tree in an unchecked square, would it? YS,S - NYSSA! Aaaaaah, it can be a single letter from another answer that gives me the tree. That helps me place that annoying DISHEARTEN at 7 down with SHE,A crossing AID.

Still about 15 blank entries... is there anything that helps me in those extra letters? Working from the back, a search of ?AR?AR?L brings up CARBARYL, an insecticide. Well, if the rest are insecticides, I can get ride of the extra words and maybe solve some of these clues... a bit of a hunt and I've got DIMETHOATE (damn, there's two words in 1 across that start with D), BENOMYL, PYRETHROID (the insects in Dippers garden may have spread to his head if you're getting that out), MALATHION and I'm now only missing a handful of answers.

It took until this point to get two that I really liked - SPEEDFREAK at 41 across and AS,SIMILA(r),(ha)TE at 18 down. The latter is hall-of-fame material.

And that was about all she wrote... in the end I'm pondering a number of things...

- I think 15 across is P(L)AT, but I can't for the life of me resolve the U and L into a tree. Similarly the rest of the letters in DARRAINE - are there two (or even three) trees right next to each other?

- What is going on at 1 across? 2 down needs that DER taken care of, and CELC.... would fit some of the wordplay in the clue (and give EL,DER), but I can't find a word that works with the rest of the clue. AL,DER maybe suggests some sort of calcysomething rock, but I'm stumped.

- 19 across is a total mystery, but I think it needs two trees. I was tempted to just draw these crosses and make up letters, who knows, I might have been right. I suspect 29 across is just BET and there's a tree making up the rest of 29 down. I'd just have to guess at the five remaining unchecked letters.

You've got me, Dipper! I thought I was going to get past this, but I'm falling hard at the last hurdle (and as I'm typing this, I'm following the Fourth Test with a big smile on my face). In a final irony, although I used a green marker for the crosses, and specified my scanner to scan in colour, it appears that my green crosses have turned to black, a fate that awaits any plant that relies on me to take care of it. Maybe I should have my garden grow like Dippers, with a bucketload of pesticide!

Victory to Dipper and the Listener Crossword. 2009 tally: Listener 10, George 19. Current streak: Listener 1.

Even though it was trees rather than flowers this time, here's Gumby Flower Arranging



Feel free to comment - and see you next week for some OOOOPPPPsidaisy with Raich.

Allez Cuisine!

Another in the line of Listeners I was working on while I was out of town, this one was started in an airport. I like the shape of the grid - Charybdis must be into crazy grids, I got nowhere on "Wot No Lines", but it also turns out that Charybdis was one half of Harpy who had an interesting-looking grid that turned into a map of Venice in "Hard Rectangle" last year.

Preamble seems gentle enough - extra words in each clue, middle letters (there's a new one), make a quotation. There's a lot of clues, that is going to have to be one long quotation! Then some unclued thematic entries, highlighting at the end, an answer needs to be modified (maybe a letter goes on the inside?) and we're done. Perfect for a plane - looks like the grid is all real words with one to be modified later and the clues are mostly normal.

I drew little arrows to find the unclued entries. The cross each other! Hopefully this won't be too bad.

The clues were fun - I didn't get any of the first few on a quick read through, until ARM inside A LIST gave me 11 across. But it was the left hand side of the grid that filled fastest. Charybdis chose some obvious and some tricky extra words to hide the message, and I was surprised by the number of even-lettered extra words (my original thought was to look for words with an odd number of letters. The clues also had a sensible surface when the extra word was removed (8 down might be a stress, but with this many clues, that's pretty cool). The drawback of this was that a lot of the extra words were at the start or finish of clues, or extra adverbs or adjectives, which made them easier to find. Hey, look at me, I'm commenting on construction!

By the time I got back home from my long trip, I had all the left hand side, most of the top and bottom, and what turned out to be some horribly wrong answers in the right. Most egregious was being convinced 12 down was TULADI, which is a word I made up that didn't fit the clue or wordplay, and 24 was RIDE which fit the wordplay but not the definition. I had the quotation - THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW DISH CONFERS MORE HAPPINESS ON HUMANITY THAN THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW STAR, but didn't know who said it. My friend Steven picked me up from the airport and I told him about how far I'd gotten on the Listener, and he looked it up on his blackberry (first time that mastubatory aid has been useful) and said it was some guy "Brillat something".

Brillat-Savarin! I remember him from the opening of the English version of "Iron Chef" (where they use - "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are".

Finally home and with Chambers and the interweebs at my disposal, the rest of the theme comes together. Savarin cheese is a cheese with a hole in the middle, and a savarin cake is a cake with a hole in the middle with yeast, nuts, and booze inside. YUM! Now I want one!



In goes BRILLAT SAVARIN, and the rest of the unclued entries are things that would go in a savarin cake - ALMONDS, TAFIA (needed to look that up), WALNUT, CHERRY, PEACH, and BACARDI. Just a little Chambers hunt-and-pecking to get my last few answers (TRONCS, TAIGLE) and we have a completed grid! Now to that preamble - I'd spotted I at the end of POOR and thought that might have something to do with it (a dish, a dish!), and right near it is ASTRONOMY with G next to it, so I don't have to modify any entries, it's there in the grid. GASTRONOMY crosses RIGEL diagonally, and the R,I,E,L in RIGEL cross dishes - CHARGE+R,POOR+I, REGAL+E (thanks, Chambers), and BOW+L (RAKU+BOW+L?).

Thanks for making a few hours in D.C. National Airport, Charlotte Douglas Airport and two plane flights a lot more fun than they should have been, Charybdis! Can't wait for the next crazy grid.

With that I'll claim victory for George!

2009 tally: George 19, Listener 9. Current streak: George 1.

I'm very excited about Leonard Cohen doing a concert in my town in November. Leonard Cohen is awesome music to put on right when it's time for everyone to leave your apartment. Here's "Waiting for the Miracle"



Feel free to leave comments, and see you next week for floral fun with Dipper!

Ummm, well I printed it out. And scanned it. And. Umm....

Merlin is a kind of new to me setter, I looked up previous work by Merlin and saw "Olde Treasure Hunt" which I seem to recall being an empty-gridder. Clues are normal (whee), but everything gets modified. Some Letters Latent, the letters spelling out a name, and different modifications for the acrosses and downs.

Ye Olde Colde Solving time!

Ummmm... I was having a horrible time trying to cold solve these clues. It may have been the location, this was an "on the road" puzzle, so my first solving session was at a rather hysterical faux-British pub in a mall in Washington D.C. About the only thing I got on the crossword at that pub was Fullers. I could only solve six clues, most of them anagrams (N,I,TRAT,E, PENCIL CASES, LABRADOR RETRIEVER, HALICORES, LYDIAN STONE, IMPEL). Trapped without Chambers or Bradfords for five days, I stared and scratched my head. Has Merlin invented a new form of George-proof wordplay? It appears so.

Can anything help? Well it looks like a lot of the grid entries are three letters shorter than their numbers in parentheses. MOTLEY could be a set of two three-letter words. TOM and ELY? My few down answers look like they have three-letter boy's names in them (HAL)ICORES, LYD(IAN)STONE. ELY is a see, or a river or a town, do we take them out? What could be removed from RATTEEN and NITRATE - they both have RAT in them. Is it a Pied Piper thing? I actually scanned the grid before I came up with this, and tried entering in NITE, TEEN and the other modifications to see if they were getting me any closer. Maybe a bit longer with the acrosses trying to fit RAT into works and I may have come closer.

That's what I'm thinking this was meant to be, but it's just a guess... I am completely stumped. Very curious to see if I was on the right track. Victory to Merlin and the Listener Crossword!

2009 tally: Listener 9, George 18. Current streak: Listener 1.

Last night I got back from a sketch comedy festival that was a lot of fun (when it gets edited, I might be able to embed a little bit of me on stage with Saturday Night Live legend Garrett Morris). One group that really impressed me were called the Laughter League - the sound on this is a little wonky, but here's one of the bits that they did at the festival.



Feel free to comment, laugh at my ineptitude or just discuss the weather, and see you next week for some weight gain with Charybdis.