Without Solution

The last crossword of the year, "Without Bars" by Elgin. The preamble is pretty daunting - most answers are entered normally (but there's no gridlines ), four are jumbled and partially entered and they're all acrosses, so if I spot a down entry, I can confidently write it in.

So rather than go top to bottom, I looked at clues on the right hand side of the grid, since these should be down clues and entered normally.

These are tricky clues.

I mean really tricky.

I got a little bit of a start using the right-hand side first method, helped along by 13 across FOU(r) - a very nice clue. In between scanning this and writing the blog, I realise that 17 down is OVERPAINT, so HAMLETS must be jumbled and RAGWORM goes down. 28 probably ends in an H from the jumbled HAMLETS.

But I am well and truly beaten on this one, so the year ends with a crashing failure. I am really curious to see what I missed (by my watch the answer will be posted within the next five minutes, so I'll find out soon enough).

Victory to the Listener Crossword! Final tally: Listener 25, George 27. Very close, but a satisfying end to the year.

I'll be posting a year-end review next. Two nights ago I was watching a little late-night TV and heard that one of the US cable channels (G4) is going to air "Chaser's War On Everything" which is a terrifically funny Australian show (these were the guys that made international news a while back by getting a guy dressed as Osama Bin Laden into the G8 summit). Here is their crowning glory, the darkly funny and not 100% safe for work "Eulogy Song"