Friday, October 30, 2009

Shouldn't this have been by waterlO?

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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

Friday, October 23, 2009

Ummmm, when does 21 = 24?

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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.

Friday, October 16, 2009

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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.

Friday, October 9, 2009

F'n bell!

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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.

Friday, October 2, 2009

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

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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...

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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.