Friday, July 17, 2009

The appears to be more in opposition than in Labour?

listener4040

Hubris is another new to this blog setter, and a browse through some earlier Listeners shows that I have gotten nowhere before with Hubris' puzzles. After last week, let's see if there's something I can cotton on to. The preamble sounds innocent enough, 28 misprints (I counted 53 clues, so a little more than half misprints), part of a description and the name of the person who said it. Some highlighting to do later, but it appears no manipulation in the grid so we're in real word territory!

Got of to a pretty brisk start on this one, though I got mostly straight (I think) clues first. I like the trick of some of the misprints being in the wordplay and some in the definition, makes it a little less obvious what to look for. First misprint I spotted was in 11 across (Wealth - Health, making F.I.L.T.H. which when capitalized like that looks like a good name for a bad-guy agency in a James Bond film). The game was kind of given away early on, since those first three rather gentle across answers - hidden ODES, PEAK (confirming PEAK = sneak in Chambers) and ERAS,E leave a pretty obvious SPEAKER sitting there. Early on I also saw 27 as MACER, so with a SPEAKER and a MASE, I think there's a parliamentary thing gioing on. With SCRUMPS and SKIMPS at 14 and 16, there's some MPS, so it seems, kind of like Samuel's Motion puzzle earlier this year, we've got a picture of parliament.

With almost all the grid filled (making liberal use of knowing there's real words and going to Chambers Word Wizards to get PHELLEM, STIVE, and PROTYL), the rest of the theme comes together - there's L A B O U R scattered on the left, and O P P O S I T I O N on the right, near their MPS.

Hmmm... I'm making this sound a lot easier than it was, because this was a puzzle I filled in painfully slowly, a first session got almost half the grid, but then it was tiny clue after tiny clue, and a last squeeze to get the rest of it. I think I've got it, but some things are really bugging me.

What on Earth is the quotation and the author? I only found 19 mipsints, and they make nothing! H BE LU N O N OS MRT DKE ML N? That sounds like me talking about politics after two bottles of cheap red wine. Is it Latin?

Is 25 across BARMY or BALMY? Or something else entirely? Can't cheat with the theme or the misprints here, since the letters aren't needed for the shading.

So there you go... I'm going to call a conditional victory to George, but I may need to update this later. I can't wait to see what I missed with those letters.

2009 tally (tentative): George 18, Listener 8. Current streak: George 1.

If my reports seem shorter lately it's because I've been hellaciously busy - so instead of a song or a dance, here's some media coverage of my summer shows. If anyone reading this is in Ohio (my apologies), come see me in a rare out-of-town non-standup show at Shadowbox next week.

Mountain Xpress article: they didn't interview me for this story, but I'm mentioned twice, which is rather amusing.

Asheville Citizen-Times article: In the paper version, it said the shows were going to be improv. I do improv shows, but this wasn't one of them.

Columbus Alive: They ignored our media packet and used an old picture, but I like the article.

The joys of being a largely self-promoted comedian and writer! Feel free to leave comments below and see you next week for a tackling of a motley collection.

2 comments:

George the Bastard said...

OK, just checked the solution - didn't know the Dickens, and I had missed a bunch of misprints. I had Kit for expedition in 24, and on top of that I thought 23 was a misprint (Day to work).

Duncan said...

Delightful to have a crossword which responded to the expenses scandal percolating through our parliament at the moment - the quote fitted that beautifully.

I got speaker and mace quite quickly too, but then veered off the task as I hadn't twigged the geographical layout. In fact I was getting quite cross, because I thought we might be looking at SPIN and NOISE (perfectly legitimate features of the House of Commons if you ask me!) Amazing how dense I can be with hindsight.