A puzzle with a C4 point group!

Back when I was a very casual attempter at the Listener, I did manage to complete one of Waterloo's crosswords (3959: And Now We Are Twelve), and a fair bit of 3928: OO Spectacles. I found working through the solution to the latter one of those really fun and enlightening.

An Additional Symmetry appeals to me straight away - I have a great interest in symmetry and topology, and this puzzle fits into the C₄ point group - everything can be rotated by 90 degrees including the orientation of the clue numbers. Fun!

In the effort of wanting to seem like a symmetry smartypants I tried to complete the gridlines before I even got going. And following the unwritten rule, (s)PORTED is the answer to 1 across, and in we go. 2 down probably crosses with 1 across, and is D,(r)ETRO,P. Write it in as 2 down checking the D at the end of PORTED. Should be able to fill in a few now... I had 6 as PORTER thinking it was a triple definition, but much more confident on 36 as EL,IDE(a)S. So 35 down has to start with S... SEDILE (LID rev in SEE), good good.

Hey, DE TROP is PORTED reversed, and SEDILE is ELIDES reversed... is there going to be additional additional symmetry? Might it be crazy enough that the four quadrants themselves have some sort of symmetry? If that is true, then I probably have some six-letter words joining up to thr outer squares... 15 across looks like EG,I,L in MP (finding out that David Cameron is the leader of the opposition in England right now), and that would fit tantalisingly with that P in PORTED.

And this is where I came to a grinding halt. I had a bunch more words, but I couldn't make them fit, particularly ARMCHAIR which was one of the first cold solves I got, wouldn't cross anywhere that made sense. I had another grid that tried to force these words in but I think I threw it out, I meant to trash it... the grid you see above was returning to the ones I was sure of at this point.

Oh... what if these reversals of each other are meant to go on top of each other? Then the grid opens out more... That would make PORTER wrong, since I had (he)REWARD for 18 down it would be DRAWER (double definition). Start again!



Things started settling into place nicely when I figured that out. The big steps were fitting in the eight 5-letter entries that started at the same numbers into the words around the outside. I had to hunt and peck to find the last few words (IGARAPE, TRENCHARD, GARRY OWEN), but once the symmetry was in place, things fell out in a rapid tumble.

A very fun puzzle that was right up my alley, there's been a few of those lately, and nearly caught me. Victory to George! 2009 tally: George 9, Listener 1. Current streak: George 3.

12 pentominos walk into a bar

And 90 minutes later walk out with a completed crossword!

I've not had much of a run of luck with Oyler's numerical puzzles, being unable to finish the last two. But I liked the look of this one, it fit my interest in symmetry and topology, so I printed it off and headed to the bar with a good feeling.

Now before I left I did a little cheating and worked out the prime factors for each of the rows and columns which were not zero.

I started with the left side, switched to the right, and worked back to the middle. It was pretty generous, looking for primes first, the 11s had to be a U-shaped bit across columns 1-3. I could place the 2s and 7s from where the 11s were. Then switching to the other side, where row 12 had to be 10, 10, 10, 6, 6 and backwards from there.

I had the pentominos placed in less than an hour, and the shading figured out in another 20 minutes or so. Done!

The coloring was done starting with the 7s - choosing one color for them, meant that the 2s and 0s had to be other colors - using the 7 color for the 9s, I could use the 0 color for the 11s and back to the 2s color for the 5s. Making sure the colors alternate around the 1s gave me the rest of the shading.

This was a lot of fun, and I'd write a lot more but I'm pressed for time, so I'll put my solving notes underneath. Put your nose close to the screen and you can probably smell Asheville Brewing Company's Old School Pale Ale. The last two numerical crosswords have fallen squarely into my comfort zone, so the next one will probably trip me up altogether!

Victory to George! 2009 tally: George 8, Listener 1. Current streak: George 2.

See you next week for further adventures in symmetry!

See you in 'ELL

To me, Hotspur is a new setter - the Listener website shows four previous crosswords, three along similar themes, but I haven't tried any of them. 31 misprints in definitions out of 58 clues, so a little more than half of them, a literary work and two sets of words. I'm not always good at matching sets, but let's head on with this.

OK, so 1 across looks like it should be AFRICAN and I'm after a literary work starting with Z for Zulu

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance? Too many letters.

What else? Googling literary works beginning with Z doesn't seem to be throwing up many contenders. OK, I know I probably shouldn't be looking for the theme after solving one clue, but that Z is so tempting. How about some more clues.

More than half of the clues have misprints, so be on the lookout for them. 15 is a really nice clue for NAPOLEON (P,OLEO in NAN), but there's no misprint there. In 16 "ARIS" is sticking out as a likely misprinted word, could be IRIS or AXIS, though if it was AXIS then I'm looking for a literary work with Z and X in the first word. Crazy...

21 is C,RIBS and misprint H, so we have the possibility of Z, X, and H. Is this work going to be in English?

I like 24 - BEL,TWAY - I am heading to Charlotte shortly and there's a really annoying beltway around it that I'll be spending more time on than I really want.

27 is good old ANSATE (anagram), no misprint. There's probably a glut of misprints coming up.

And 30 is another one - R for M in MOISTER and we have ROISTER and another misprint.

These misprints are rather playful - in 52 across SE(x),AN(s),CE and GOFER becomes GONER, hehehehe

Now the penny drop moment came in a rather amusing fashion - I had about a two-thirds filled grid, and my misprints read Z X RA T ERSI EA R O B O (I now know that the B was wrong, I had creature that was BOILED for 29 down). I had been snowed in a couple of days lately, so I was getting to a few video games that had been sitting unplayed, and one of them was "The Simpsons Game". In this game, the levels are parodies of video games and other literary works... take a look at what Level 15 (the second last level) was...



I tried to get a shot of me and the crossword in front of the TV, but if the flash came on you couldn't see the screen, so we're both pretty dark. Ahhh video games, what can't you do?

So that Z is an S (SUSU), and I managed to get the rest of the definitions in order by matching the letters from the title SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR, and PIRANDELLO going down the main diagonal (this also helped me to get SORD and TALLY).

In the play, the six characers are a father, a mother, a son, a stepdaughter, a boy and a child... but before I started down that path - FRANKESNTEIN is poking out at me in 2 down - and SHELLEY can be made from an indirect route of the letters in the bottom right.

NAPOLEON was the pig in "Animal Farm" by George ORWELL and the ELL (also part of PIRANDELLO) are where they meet. And an ELL is an arm's length of fabric! Woohoo, we're nearly there.

There's some other "charactery" looking words in this grid, do they have ELL authors? "KIPPS - the story of a simple soul by" by H.G. WELLES. "HERZOG" by Saul BELLOW. "BELINDA" by Hilaire BELLOC.

The last one is giving me agony... SMOLLETT used JENKINS as a character in some stories, and would fit the ELL, but I can't find anywhere to fit the rest of the name. Let's keep the fingers crossed on this one.

I'm calling this one a guarded victory - took a lot of slogging through, but the penny drop moment was one of the best. 2009 tally: George 7, Listener 1. Current streak: George 1.

Pleasures don't get much guiltier than this - DragonForce have just announced that they are doing a concert in my little town in April. Better start growing and dyeing my hair now. Guitar metal geekines doesn't get geekier - here's "Heroes of Our Time" - comments welcome, and see you next week for some numerical fun and games.

Boustrawhatnow?

All good things must come to and end, and it's my streak.

I haven't tried any of Salamanca's crosswords other than the last (?) two of the "Plays of the Bard" series that I got nowhere on. So I was expecting something difficult, and I got it. First off, I had to look up Boustrophedon which means "alternately right to left and left to right" which doesn't seem to make much sense to me given that we start with 1 down? Does it mean down to up and up to down?

Then we're later switching to across. Across boustrophedon or just across? Hmmm. No letter lengths. Not every letter is checked... well since I'm lost on how these go in it's a pity not every letter is checked, I could look for letters that appear twice and hope they're forming a pattern.

What I do know is that the first clue is 1 down, presumably it starts in the first square and it is RESIDENTSHIP (anagram of THE N SPIDERS I). The second answer is either ANA or ANAIA, and with cold solving I'm stuck until (g)HOST.

Hmmm... if they're in across order near the end, then maybe I can start at the end and work up.

The very last clue is an anagram - PACKTHREAD. Maybe crosses with the P in RESIDENTSHIP? Try it... ANA or ANAIA could go up from the A in PACKTHREAD?

Is the second-last clue a two-letter word (please?). No, it's TONDINI. Hmmm... now if it went in backwards then maybe it crosses that I and N from RESIDENTSHIP and ANA, but that makes an ugly DK at the end of column 4. If the acrosses are normal, then maybe HOST rises from the H in PACKTHREAD and TONDINI crosses there? That would make the one above it most likely a 4-letter word for "something to sleep on" beginning IN... (in case Peter B is reading, I tried INRO as the stock 4-letter word beginning IN, but it doesn't work). I look for places for my other longish words that I think are in the across section (AU NATUREL, UNTAMES) to cross longish and weirdish words that I think are in the boustrophedon part (AUSPICE, MBIRA, BEDROCK, AKIRA), but it's not working.

I am completely stumped... I'm heading over to the listener site soon to see what it was I missed, but I just completely cannot get started on this one. Well done Salamanca, victory to the Listener Crossword.

2009 tally: Listener 1, George 6. Current streak: Listener 1

While I was toying with this, I was reading about a group I've performed for a few times, Arts2People doing a Labyrinth-themed ball in Asheville. So it would be a perfect finish for this puzzle if you had to go all around a bunch of hedges avoiding David Bowie and his creepy hair and camel toe. Let's all paint our toenails black and relive (if you're my age) your childhood with some David Bowie.



Comments welcome, and see you next week!

Blog extra: a comment on the last post, and some tips

I was in the middle of typing a long response to an anonymous comment on the last crossword, and thought it might be worth a new post. I hope Llig, if a reader, liked the comments on the last puzzle. Tackling a thematic puzzle can be immensely frustrating if you have absolutely no idea what is going on or can't solve the clues, or can be incredibly fun if you manage to rip through one and have it all done by the end of the day. I seem to be averaging about six solving sessions on ones that I complete, and usually more on ones I can't figure out.

Here's what has helped me the most - some of this was in a really early post, but I should update it.

There is a 26-part series that I think only ran in the online Times on the Listener crossword. It helped in sorting out the basics, what to expect from preambles, themes and what reference books to get. It is now well-hidden, but the first part is here, and has links to the rest.

Solving clues was (and in the case of some setters, still is) a big challenge to me, because I had really only done two cryptic crosswords regularly, the Times and the Melbourne Age. There are conventions and clue types used in the Listener that do not appear in either of those. Phi suggested I do the Independent crossword, and it appears a few of the Listener setters are regular Independent setters. It's also a really fun solve, and you can check answers right away. You can do it online for free, but there doesn't appear to be a print option. Here is the link, but be warned, it will try to run a java thing straight away and may freeze your computer momentarily.

Another aid to solving clues us to check through all the ones you couldn't get carefully at the detailed solutions page on the Listener website. To be honest, I haven't been looking at the solutions on the Times page, since this page has a complete solve and notes. You can also try getting one answer at a time and see if that helps you get further. There's also some reviews on the clues by Gregson that are put up at Derek Harrison's Crossword Centre message board (I comment there occasionally).

And finally, Bradford's is an essential! Not easy to get in the US, (Amazon is currently claiming that the third edition is being released on April 1, but mine is the 6th edition), but great to get you off the "one-track definition" mind, say if you see the word "repair" and think it must mean "get something fixed", while it might mean "to leave" - words that fit both definitions are side by side.

Everyone keep having fun! Right now you could be solving a maze, uncovering misprints, or cutting up pieces of paper into non-overlapping shapes.