George vs the Listener Crossword

Bye bye blogger

2010-01-22T08:37:00.001-08:00

You've been my home for two years, but it's becoming impossible to keep out spam comments. So thanks, and I'll see you later. George vs the Listener Crossword has a new home. Comments on this blog are now closed.

Year 2 recap

2010-01-16T10:21:00.000-08:00

A second year of documenting my attempts to solve the Listener Crossword has come and gone. And what a year it's been.

I went 33-19. An improvement on last year, I was kind of hoping for better (especially after a great start), but an improvement is an improvement is an improvement. I doubt I'm ever going to be one of those all-correctors, but I drew far fewer blanks (I think I had 4 close to blank grids).

Thanks to all the readers and the commenters, both on the blog and over email. And especially to the setters who take a moment to drop a line, send me extra puzzles and laugh over some of my sillier slips. I've been working on some puzzle ideas, and may get a little revenge in the next year.

Oh, and as for the commenters who want to sell viagara, and lead us into virus sites... I can't find a way to get rid of you on blogger, so I'm most likely up and moving George v the Listener to another host soon (I have a wordpress account, that's looking pretty likely).

This year also saw Listen With Others rise to a new level. Many more reports, and several grids from people with much better handwriting than I. I wonder if it's because of the competition from upstart less competent blogs? You can now waste a rather large part of Friday afternoon reading through a bunch of first-hand solving or non-solving attempts and extra setters comments.

To continue with a tradition of mediocrity, last year I picked my top 3 Listeners that I solved, and the three most impressive I didn't solve. None of these won the Ascot Gold Cup, ummm, so maybe this is a consolation prize or an indication I know nothing (though I did enjoy Conflict Resolution). So here (and I'm sorry if I've just killed your AGC aspirations) are my tops for 2009.

My favorite puzzles that I solved...

4018: In Clue Order, On and On by Loda. How did Loda manage to get so many steps crammed into this? And a great ending. Nearly fell on the floor when the instruction emerged to read the last letter of each across clue.

4037: S by Hedge-Sparrow. Another great ending with the changing of APE into MAN along the centre squares. Even though (as Duncan pointed out in commments) RANI made an appearance, there was a bunch of thematic stuff that hooked me in and the theme got me to the end.

4025: The Brewer's Ingrdients by Gnomon. The merging of beer and Jewish themes tickled me a lot.

4038: Playtime by Samuel. I was taken by the pachinko-looking grid straight away and was really impressed by those final manipulations to reveal the thematic parts. I had to be very careful writing this one out, which was difficult as I solved most of it on a pub crawl.

4059: Child's Play by Dysart. I don't know if this will get universal phrase, but the idea was so simple and so fun, turn a crossword into a game of snakes and ladders! Even though I saw the theme straight away, I knew it was going to be a blast. Leaving out a bunch of squares made the solving challenge enough to overcome the ease of spotting the theme.

My top 3 I wish I'd solved.

4061: 50-50 by Phi. The solution looked so amazing, and the grid was a beast to put together.

4052: Question by Aedites. I should have finished this. And after reading the solution (and a helpful email by Aedites), I think I can get over the bell-changing hurdle.

4048: Rules of Construction by Poat. Almost got there, but that word square in the middle is one hell of a piece of work!

And a final hat tip to 4036: Base Jog by Brimstone. I don't know if it will get much love from the powers that be, being about baseball, but that was a masterpiece of thematic grid, clues (those clues made me laugh out loud) and finale. It would have been perfect if it came out before Henry Aaron's record was broken.

And so we look on to year three? Five questions for Year 3 of George v Listener

1) Will I finally solve a Phi Listener?

2) Keep the fingers crossed - is the Playfair square gone forever? We didn't have one in 2009

3) Will it be proven that Dipper and Hedge-Sparrow are the same person and my life be ruined?

4) Will you read "Dr. George Heard, Asheville North Carolina" in the winners column? Becuase this year, I'm going to submit some!

5) Will there be a Listener themed around The Mighty Boosh, Grand Theft Auto, Blackadder, Tom Holt's J.W. Wells & Co. novels, linux operating systems, or any of the following celebrating their 200th anniversary: Oktoberfest, Chopin, P.T. Barnum?

Die, wren, die!

2010-01-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

I took a scan of my grid, but forgot to upload it earlier this morning, I'll add it here later.

I'm probably wrong in the final step, I think I know what I should be looking for, but I can't find it at all.

Hey, I'm working backwards - let's not do that.

This one appeared on Christmas Day in the US. I wasn't sure if there would be an upload on Christmas Day, but there it was. My Christmas Day was a pretty quiet one, up until 6pm. Some bars open at 6, and it was then that I printed off Rentokil and trudged around the corner to the Charlotte St Pub for a Christmas toast and Listener session.

Jago is making his first appearance in George v the Listener, though I did complete one of his puzzles before I started this blog (the one about the pretenders... 3796 - Theme and Variations). I winced originally when I saw the device, a definition with letter jumble, since I had tried the similarly-themed Azed crossword and gotten absolutely nowhere. This on the other hand, was a breeze to get started on (PRANK was the entry in), and by the end of my second pint I was almost done with the solving, had found ON THE FEAST OF STEVEN and TROGLODYTE. I still needed some entries in the top right-hand corner, but a poke through Chambers and Bradfords and I had a filled grid pretty quickly on.

The hidden message jumped out when I saw FOLD as the first set of letters in the across clues.

A funny thing is that a few days later, I read this... I had a fun little email chat with Brendan about the solving of this (I suspect Hotspur is also a fan of BEQ and left a message in the comments). I don't think he's going to become a regular solver, though I like the idea of this becoming G&B vs the Listener.

OK... got to fold an orgami bird.

Number of artistic skills George has: 0

Ability to fold paper: zilch.

I tried... I went to about eight websites on how to fold an origami bird, and after three solid hours of paper mutilation all I have to show for it is the crumpled mess you see in the picture. Funny thing is that the word RENT appears across the wing! I am pretty sure we should be looking for WREN, given the TROGLODYTE and the title.

So what looked like it was going to be a walk in the park ends up being a crumpled disaster. It was fun trying, sorry Jago, I can enter words, I can shade and highlight with the rest of them, but when you call for nimble fingers, that's all for me.

Victory to the Listener Crossword! Final tally for 2009: Listener 19, George 33.

Well, it's an improvement. Not a great improvement, but a slight one. Not into the upper echelon of solvers by a long shot. I wonder how long it takes (or does it take more talent, a copy of the Chambers CD-ROM, or something I'm missing) to get up there near the all-correcters? Suggestions welcome, though I did read on the Crossword Centre that having full-text search on Chambers helps, so maybe I'll see if I can get a hold of it.

Onwards to Year #3 of George vs the Listener, the blog for the average (yet hopefully improving) solver!

At the Chicago Sketchfest, we were performing after a duo from Boston called Hard Left productions. A lot of their stuff was really really funny - here's Suicide Baby

Feel free to leave comments, suggestions and help. Check back later for the end of year wrapup, and see you next week where I will be a guest of Mr. E.

Give me 17 words and I will make you a grid

2010-01-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

Another late blog... greetings from Chicago, where the opening night after-party for the Chicago Sketchfest had me out way beyond my usual bedtime, and a few friends who owed me drinks decided to cash in on the martini specials, leading to me at one point having three martinis (one Beefeater, one Sapphire and one I couldn't place, possibly Chicago bilgewater) sitting in front of me.

If you're a fan of crosswords and comedy, and can brave the snow in Chicago, some see me tonight or tomorrow night (or both) at 11pm with the Feral Chihuahuas! There will be a Listener Crossword used as a prop.

Now I have a feeling that my first page of X by Pilcrow is still sitting on my scanner back in Asheville, so I have to work kind of from memory. Last year Pilcrow gave us Tour De France which involved entering answers starting anywhere in the entry. I got the thematic stuff but made a few silly slips so didn't have a correct grid. This crossword arrived at the start of a huge blizzard that trapped me indoors for three days. So I had a lot of time to bash away at it.

But we're in again for deep-freeze solving. No clue lengths, misprints in some of the clues but not all (looks like two that do not have misprints). And there's only 17 clues for this huge grid???

The deep freeze solving session went pretty well - I got BERLIOZ, UNNOTICING, HOY, ANUROUS (found out later there was an extra O in it), SMIT, SLOUCH and ICON pretty quickly, which gave a bit of shape to the message - saw PERFECT first and then SYMMETRY. That got me a few more answers. I had a bit over half of the answers, so it was on to the grid.

OK... the grid has to exhibit perfect symmetry. That makes sense, there are 17 unique entries in the fourfold symmetry. And there's only one 3-letter and only one 10-letter word. Taking a guess that the 16-letter entry is that first answer (which I don't know), and that BERLIOZ goes in the first seven-letter slot available, then UNNOTICING (which has to go "after HOY" probably goes in as the last option for an across or the first for a down. Hmmm, but that would put a Z in the 16-letter word. And a U? Ohhh... a Z (unless you draw one with a line through the middle like I do) looks like an N lying down. And a U looks like a C. So maybe that 16-letter word starts UNC-... UNCHARACTERISTIC!!!! So there's the idea - the checking letters also look like letters when they are rotated through 90 degrees or 180 degrees. Lots of N's, S's, O's, H's... that's a neat trick.

Entering in the answers I had in sensible directions left just a few extra words to get. ZIZZING (which I think appeared in a Mephisto recently) was the last one in and made me smile a lot at the possibility that so many Z's I's an N's in a word.

The last steps were slightly headache-inducing, but that's quite a feat of grid construction. Lots of fun, Pilcrow and that was a really interesting idea. And got me through the great blizzard of late 2009.

Victory to George! With one left for 2009 the current tally is George 33, Listener 18. Current streak, George 4.

I can't do an embed, but the link below contains the not-safe-for-work video from Cell Camp that I enjoyed last night.

Feel free to leave comments, and see you next week to close out the 2009 edition of George vs the Listener Crossword with Jago.

Lett us ttake you on a journey tthough ttime and spac

2010-01-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everybody! I've just crawled out of bed from last night's revelry, so sorry for the late posting. The first Listener for 2010 is hot off the press, but we've got three more weeks to catch up with the last ones of 2009.

And this week it's Hedge-Sparrow. There have been two Hedge-sparrow Listeners in this blog - last year's Travel Agents had wormholes popping in and out all over, and early this year there was acknowledgment of Charles Darwin turning 200 with S. So I have a perfect score thus far with Hedge-Sparrow, let's see if that continues.

Preamble says that all across entries have to be modified, so real words for the down entries. There's some extra letters from wordplay to give two phrases. And since the last two have had some sort of science theme, let's hope that Hedge-sparrow continues on to be the anti-Dipper and keep brings on the techie stuff.

To cut a short story short and get me to lunch - I almost completely finished this over three pints at lunch the Friday it came out. I was very much on the wavelength with the clues, and they seemed to fall into place nicely.

This was my grid (and my lovely personal mug at Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company) at the end of my extended lunch break. First thing I figured out was that there were a bunch of T's in the wrong spot, and that a lot of the across answers had LL in them and there was only room for one L in the answer. EINSTEIN at the bottom becoming EINSTTEIN dropped a not-too subtle hint, and soon I had TIME DILATION and LENGTH CONTRACTION from the extra letters. So it is relativity - and there's SPECIAL RELATIVITY in the shape of a C.

All that was left to do when I got back from the bar was to gind entries for 32 down and 37 across (VILLIAGO sounded like it would fit the wordplay but I didn't have a dictionary on me).

Sorry about the short blog, Hedge-sparrow, but I'm hungry and my house-guest is moaning that we need to go find something to eat. I really loved this crossword, and can't wait for the next installment of science with Hedge-Sparrow (now watch it be a Listener based on the fourth act of Henry V).

Victory to George!!! 2009 tally: George 32, Listener 18. Current streak: George 2.

If you're a fan of American-style crosswords, you need to check out Brendan Quigley's blog and bonus puzzles. This week he did one themed around his favorite albums of the 00s, and declared #1 to be one of my favorites as well - here's "Frontier Psychiatrist" by the Avalanches

Feel free to comment below and see you next week for a word with Pilcrow's X.

In which we learn some geography

2009-12-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-18T08:30:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-12-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-27T07:37:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-20T07:25:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-11-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-06T07:15:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-10-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-10-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-10-09T07:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-11T08:00:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

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....

2009-08-28T07:51:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

(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

2009-08-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

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....

2009-07-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

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.

The appears to be more in opposition than in Labour?

2009-07-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Inability

2009-07-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

Here we go with Intimacy - I haven't managed to finish a Bandmaster Listener before. First thing that hit me when I printed off the grid was "that's a lot of clues". The preamble sounded kind of gentle, 14 answers need modification, and with a very large number of clues, that shouldn't be too many. So most clues are normal and most answers are to be entered as normal.

And I stared at it

And I stared at it

And I stared at it

In my customary bar solve session, after a full hour I only had AGORA, CAPSULE, PERONIST, SHOELACE and ZOOTOMY. And a couple of Chambers and Bradfords sessions later, I'm still not much further along with the grid. And now I have clashes all over the place. Two of them seem to be N/S clashes, so maybe directions need to be changed in some of the words?

The shape of the grid may be a clue, it looks kind of like those truncated tennis courts they use for indoors singles matches, but I don't think that would be it. Maybe a scoreboard?

Well done Bandmaster, try as I might I could not get very far on this at all. I'm really curious to see what it was I missed, but I'm feeling pretty stupid right around now.

Victory to the Listener Crossword! 2009 tally: Listener 8, George 17. Current streak: Listener 1

Well, nothing says intimacy like remixes of Yoko Ono, so here's "Kiss Kiss Kiss" remixed by one of my favorite artists, Peaches (she can make Yoko listenable!).

Feel free to leave comments, criticisms, and advice on wordplay, and see you next week for shock and Hubris!

The Pachinko Parlor is open, win a pencil!

2009-07-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

The inspiration for this blog was to be a little bit of a lowlife version of Listen with Others, which was started by Samuel, so he's a reader and occasional email correspondent, and there's a little pressure on when one of his Listeners appears. Fortunately, I've had a bit of luck and the last two (Motion, and The Cause of Much Pain) came out pretty nicely.

Hey, the grids got little circles in them. And it looks a bit like a pachinko machine. Could be some letter swirling going on here. Although that was in the back of my mind from the very start, I wasn't sure if it would be all that easy. Preamble sounds rather generous - two consecutive letters must be removed, leading to a rather long message. Long messages aren't my forte, but when you have to take two letters out of each clue then they're probably going to stick out.

And they do in 1 across - B,IA,S and we've got EN to start with and we're away.

The day this Listener came out was a rather happy one for me. I'm running a series of comedy shows over summer, and we serve beer at them because things are funnier with beer. Catatonia makes me hilarious. So the day this came out, my assigned task was to go meet with brewers and talk about sponsorships and beer options. Most of the time I had to wait to meet with the boss, so the only polite thing to do was to buy a beer, open up Playtime, and away we go.

First stop was The Wedge Brewery. They were having production limits and couldn't supply us, but I enjoyed a few of their Iron Rail IPA and got most of the top half of the grid filled. The clues are very well-written and fun, I like that most of them make sense when you remove the letters (I guess some abbreviations are necessary). I particularly liked clues where the last letter of one word and the first of another were removed, such as 15 across SHARPS FACE becoming SHARP ACE.

At French Broad Brewing (their Altbier wasn't on tap but 13 Rebels makes a fine replacement), I worked on the message to try to sort out the bottom half. It was those last 9 down clues that were stumping me, trying to get real words (if you can see on my scan, the only one I was sure of was 29 down - I started working out letter combinations on the second page of the printout which is where those clues were). Finally I had the last part of the message - WH EE LS HA LF TU RN. I still didn't have a solution to 27 across, 25 down, 28 down, 29 down 31 down or 26 down. Maybe Samuel listened to the argument that the easy clues are at the end most of the time and put the hard ones there?

Next stop was Green Man Brewing (who lack a website) - their production bar is called Dirty Jacks and is an interesting gathering spot for Asheville's soccer fans (is it true that Setanta sports shut down? the two TVs at Dirty Jacks have been set to Fox Sports Soccer and Setanta forever).

Did I mention that Asheville was also named Beer City USA recently?

Green Man were testing out a Pub Ale, so I gave it a go (they haven't quite worked out how to get a nice head on it, but kudos for trying). I had a small crowd gathered around me trying to figure out why on earth I was copying a crossword from one grid to another and ending up with something that looked like gibberish. I had almost all the grid done, and there it was - EUREKA, I'VE GOT IT, and ARCHIMEDES appear when the words form. The P falls through the wheels and ends up on the bottom (right side up, might have been an interesting twist to have one more wheel and have a P end up a D), and with P--NYA-R-P-, I was thinking PENNY ARCADE, but that's not two groups of five letters, so it's PENNY DROPS. I put in PENNY drops and went back to the first grid to figure out those last few clues (I hope I'm right).

Here's the end result

This was on the easier side, but I really liked re-copying the grid, and the way the messages appeared. Another fun day with beer and Samuel! Speaking of which, for a short time there was a drinking version of a Pachinko/Plinko machine that a friend got for me before they were forced to remove it from the shelves. You drop little counters into shot glasses. I tried using my old digital cam to make a movie of it - the sound doesn't work and the production values are shoddy, but in honor of this Listener, here's DRINKO!

Victory for George! 2009 tally - George 17, Listener 7. Current streak: George 3.

Feel free to leave comments, and see you next week for some Intimacy with Bandmaster (did he really mean that?).

It was Abe Lincoln's birthday too!

2009-06-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

Hedge-sparrow may be a person of science - last were we had warpholes, and this time around there's a very short-titled Listener - S. Preamble is a bit of a slog, extra letters in lots of the wordplay, something different for acrosses and downs. Thematic entering of four clues, and a name to be replaced later.

Since 1 across is unclued, I started with the downs. [T]EN,LARD at 1 down and I'm off - couldn't see 2, got ON[E],I(c)ON for 3 (T and E for extra letters, so probably an H as extra letter in 2), nice clue for 4 down - LO,MOVING, then move the M to get LOOMING and an extra V. SAP,O,TA(p) for 5, and BO(TT)LE for 6 and the gears are grinding... I've got E-OL----- for 1 across, and EVOLUTION is so tempting. There's a T in SAPOTA and an O in BOTTLE. That 6-letter name at 18 down could be DARWIN...

I'll confess - I felt I was on to something, and wrote in EVOLUTION and DARWIN and then looked for confirmation from the across words crossing DARWIN.

Couldn't get 18 across. 20 across - another nice clue for BAA[L]TH(e)ISTS. 24 - A[F]ORT(night)IC, 27 across GR[R]OWTH and 32 across somethingSMIT[E]H and DARWIN is looking like a good bet.

So I was feeling pretty smug with myself about having cracked this straight away, instincts being right, but there's a lot of grid to fill, and apart from the words clustered around DARWIN and EVOLUTION I was going nowhere fast. And I have 10 clashes to find, but in my first run through I could only find two (VIA crossing LEI) and CONDEMN crossing SAG.

Anything in the extra letters? Seeing FI-TE-T near the end of the across clues made me take a punt on SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST (looking at my notes, the I got that from -UR---AL--T-EFI-TE-T) - so maybe the clashes leave the letters from THE FITTEST, that would make sense. Just got to find 8 of them. Knowing the extra letters I can scrape together most of the across clues. How about those downs? Extra letter wise I have THEV---G------ (yes, I did badly on those down clues originally, got the four thematic ones, which I guess are jumbles, but the rest were a lot of blanks). THE V... 13 across is EAGLE, wonder if it's THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE and the B from BOTTLE goes in there?

And I'm off again with a few more down solutions.

In the end, I think I've gotten everything, and although it is a really nice puzzle, it gave me headaches forever. I saw everything thematic before I got close to the finish - though I ended up using it all to get the last couple of clues in. Seeing APE changing to MAN through single-letter substiutions down the middle helped me get DESTINE at 18 across. In the very very end, I was stuck with looking for words that fit the clashes - my last few clues solved - TEETH, G[O]AL,L, and AR,K accounted for 6 of the clashes! Maybe they make a map of the Galapagos?

My grid looked like a complete mess at the end of it all, so here's a final grid - I think apart from where DARWIN is erased, it's all real words.

So I'm going to claim a plodding, clumsy yet satisfying victory for George! The thematic stuff is impressive, Hedge-Sparrow (and if you are a regular reader, you'll notice I left Darwin off the list of notable anniversaries this year since I'd seen this puzzle).

2009 tally: George 16, Listener 7. Current streak: George 2

Since there was Evolution here, I wanted to put some DEVOlution up, but they are heavily policing their songs on youtube. But as I was browsing YouTube I noticed that one of my favorites, Cassetteboy have tried a video, so here's Cassetteboy vs The Apprentice

Feel free to comment using the link below, and see you next week for some Playtime.

65 27110 2561517?

2009-06-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

Numericality time - Brimstone has one puzzle from 2007 that I don't remember doing, though it had an Orson Wells theme, so maybe Brimstone is US-based? Now I've been living in North America for 15 years and the only new sport I've gotten into since I moved here is baseball. It's a perfect length (abour 3 1/2 hours a game), plenty of breaks in the middle for drinking beer, and since I've been a cricket fan forever - you haven't seen statistics until you've seen the legion of numbers that can follow around a baseball player. So with all due deference to the editors, it might have been a litytle more subtle to leave off "35 years ago" in the preamble, because by the end of reading the preamble and seeing ths shape of the grid, I was 99.9% sure this was about Henry Aaron and Babe Ruth, and the chase down of Babe Ruth's 714 home run career record (Henry Aaron's record fell a few years ago under much controversy).

So that only left the crossword... I made a list of sets... A,B,H,U had to be 2,4,7, and 9 (and were all letters in BABE RUTH and HENRY AARON). The across set were D,G,I,J,K,O,P,Q,S,V and numbers 5,11,13,15,16,17,20,22,23,24 (and my money was on O to be 5 because the rest of the letters weren't needed), the down set were C,E,F,L,M,N,R,T,W,X and the numbers 1,3,6,8,12,14,18,19,21 and E,R,N would have to be the single figure ones. That leaves Y and Z to be 0 and 25, so if Y was 0 then we can make the names.

By the lenth of entries, H had to be 4 and we were away... I'll give it to Brimstone - the clues and the arrangement of the grid is amazing! Things fell into place really nicely, and there was 7-4 and 7-5 crossing each other in the middle waiting for a 1, and the character strings for HENRY AARON and BABE RUTH along the edges.

Here's the grid with the necessary adjustments.

Although I found it pretty easy, I can't go past how amazing the grid is - top stuff Brimstone!

So I'll declare victory for George here - 2009 tally: George 15, Listener 7. Current streak: George 2

The funniest piece I remember about baseball is very well protected by NBC and not on youtube (though I'll be meeting one of the stars soon), so here's the funniest thing on cricket I've seen in a long time.

Feel free to leave comments and see you next week for Hedge-sparrow's shortest name for a Listener Crossword EVAR!

Where you been Haydn?

2009-06-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Oli Grant for pointing out my inadequacies last week, so the revised tally as of last week is back at George 13, Listener 7. That was a pretty silly mistake to have ARABIA instead of ARABIS as the plant, and it meant that all the letters of THE MIDDLE MAN were checked. I usually give myself a tiny bit of leeway, but that was a blunder.

Can we break the drought with Nibor? There wasn't a Nibor Listener last year, so although I've tried (and failed) several Nibor puzzles, I haven't written about any. So we have omitted letters from clues, so they could be in definitions or in wordplay, and those letters are inserted into answers (or at the start or end). Six unclued jumbles (whee, more jumbles!).

So there's a funny story about my beginning to this crossword. I had been doing some long travelling, and I'm not really a plane socializer. Just because I bought a seat and end up sitting next to you doesn't really mean I want to talk to you for insert number of hours of flight here. I was on a flight from Melbourne to Auckland, and the entertainment system in the plane was busted. This doesn't bother me that much, I had a book of short stories (Saki, as recommended in a thread on the Times for the Times blog), and a few crossword puzzles. I also had a bubbly travelling "companion" in the centre seat, who started up a particularly banal conversation with the gentleman in the aisle seat whose life depended on the acquiring of a working entertainment system. He eventually feigned sleep, leaving her to prey on me, and my distraction at the time, which was the May 24 Saturday Times crossword.

George enters an answer...
Bubbly girl: "How does THAT fit with THAT"
George: "Well there's a definition and there's wordplay, so the answer is in the clue twice, in this case it's an anagram"
Bubbly Girl: "Who does these?"
George: "They're pretty popular, not so much in the US, but you find them in every newspaper in Australia"
Bubbly Girl: "Well I don't get it"
George enters an answer...
Bubbly Girl: "Now how did you get THAT??"

(repeat, but do not fade)

Eventually I got to the end of what was a pretty good Saturday puzzle.

Bubbly Girl: "So now what are you going to do?"

And thus it was that I started on Half a Dozen, entering letter possibilities in cells, scratching together a secret message, and causing bubbly girl's head to literally explode (I think she spent more time looking at the page than I did). Last thing she said to me before getting off the plane was "you're weird", which is pretty accurate.

Well, on the plane for a few hours, I made pretty good progress on this, starting with some cold solving and moving on to trying to make a phrase out of the extra letters. The Downs fell first, solving 14-25 gave me IGHTE which I thought was going to be part of EIGHT or EIGHTEEN, and 4-9 down gave me RS-MAY so I'm thinking FIRST MAY EIGHTEEN something. I got enough of the last few across clues to see TH-R-Y, so THIRTY FIRST MAY EIGHTEEN something sounded promising. At the end of the trip I had about half the clues solved, but without internet I didn't know what was so special about may 31st eighteen something (there were only 5 clues left after the EIGHTEEN and they were --IN-, so O'NINE?).

Didn't take long with Google to know that Joseph Haydn's death was just about 200 years ago, confirming that POLYP is made from LOPPY (J)UDDERS, and we have our theme. I did enough music to know that Haydn did a series, the "London Symphonies", and that the names of them were the right lengths (and letter combinations that I suspected) to fit in the unclued entries.

Still wasn't done - a lot of time in Q-space to work with these letters to get my last few answers - JOSEPH, ASS, ETAPE (it's always ones the intersect with each other that you end up missing).

So hopefully the drought has successfully been broken! I'm claiming (yet again) victory to George in this one!

2009 tally: George 14, Listener 7. Current streak: George 1

Since he's mentioned in it, here's a bizarre little video someone did on YouTube for Monty Python's "Decomposing Composers"

Feel free to leave comments (before anyone starts, there is the worst-drawn T ever in 5 down in the fifth cell), and see everyone next week for some number crunching with Brimstone.

Ni Michael Jackson this week, but there are the Bee Gees

2009-06-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

Schadenfreude is back with another Listener puzzle that is going to require extra letters. Last year's offering, Terminal Suspension completely flummoxed me after I thought I had gotten the theme, so let's see how this one goes.

It's carte blankish - the clues are in order, and since the grid is 12x12, and since there's 20 across clues, each of length 5,6 or 7, then the rows have to be 7 and 5 (so no gaps), 6 and 6 (ditto), 6 and 6, 6, 7, 6 and 5, 5 and 6, 7, 6, 6 and 6, 6 and 6, 5 and 7. So I could immediately put in a few of the across clues.

Oh, I should say that my first solvins session (without aids) was at a pub, but not my regular Friday haunt, this was at the Clyde Hotel in Melbourne where I whiled away a misspent degree.

So in went PO(OR)I,S and EASIER, S,C(RIB)E and a knowledge of which row held RIFTED, EGEST, P,RATING and VANISH. A bit of guesswork on the down clues and I had the top left and bottom right corners out without needing Bradfords or Chambers.

Bradfords got me most of the rest of the grid in the next sitting, I was left then with the bottom right to get together (ROARING and INISLE heling me to get ENEMATA). Excellent, I've got a complete grid -really helped to know the symmetry beforehand.

Now what - the grid needs to be chopped up. Poor grid. But how? Looks like I'd disturb only a few words with a slice down the middle (eyeing that TAIN part at the end of DISTAIN), but if I cut from top to bottom along the middle I'd only disrupt AREOLAE (and keep it a real word), PRATING (ditto), TIERCES (yep) and ANICUTS (d'oh!). So I did what any good scissorbug would, and cut it into 4! Then spent ages trying to refit.

This was going nowhere slowly. Maybe I overestimated, maybe it's just two slices. Back to the vertical cut drawing board. I laid out my two slices and looked between.

OK - RIFTED could become GRIFTED or DRIFTED, which would mean (given the pattern) I need to add a letter to INISLE, which chould be D or S. PRATING could be PIRATING (arr harrr), which means TIERCE-S which could be TIERCELS or TIERCETS. This is getting somewhere. What about the top or the bottom? AREOLATE would be the only possibility, and ANNICUTS at the bottom.

SO there's an anwer and "the clue" there. The bottom part looks like it could be LEMON.

What if the top three letters are THE... that works, AREOLATE, POORISH, ESCRIBE. That means I need additions for MANTRA (could be P,M,S), and BREAST (A).

THE MAN!!!! OK, and MIDDLE fits there.

No down answers are disturbed (except for MIDDLE, in the middle, haha). Across modified answers are AREOLATE, POORISH, ESCRIBE, PIRTATING, INISLED, DRIFTED, MANTRAM, ABREAST and ANNICUTS. Woohooo! Schadenfreude, I think I've got ya! I was confident last week, but feeling better about it this week.

My cut up grid looks bad, this looks worse...

So I'm claiming victory for George!

2009 tally: George 14, Listener 6: Current streak: George 1.

Shameless self promotion today - Tommy Calloway (who is doing the intro) and I wrote this parody of certain styles of female vocalist. Here's Cherdonna - "Cougar"

Feel free to leave comments, and see you next week for Nibor!

She bang the drum machine

2009-05-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

What amounts to normality may have been resumed, I'm back in North Carolina, I have Chambers, I have Bradfords, I have my scanner and I have working internet. What more could one want (list begins soon).

Beat it was started on a plane much to the bemusement of the person sitting next to me. I was flying on one of the newer commercial jets and they were trialling having a trivia game going on using the headrests of the person in front. Brilliant idea, the person behind you was guaranteed to be thumping on the back of your head for four hours. In my case, I alternated between beating up the hapless passenger in front of me and trying to get a start on Beat It!

A Michael Jackson theme would be too much to hope for, but there's lots of missing letters, some in the wordplay, some in the definitions.

Last year, Lavatch brought us "Key Cutting" which was a beast I eventually tamed, involving finding out a bunch about a literary work that I had no idea existed. So I figured this would also involve a literary work I had never heard of.

So I'm an addict, and had Bradfords with me on the plane. Which helped, since 2 across looked like ----POST and sure enough there's GATE under "lecher" and we're underway. Useful to have on the plane too, since everything crossing GATEPOST was there... a check under "open" gave GIVE (two tenses in the one sentence, woohoo!), 3 down looked like THROB (extra letter B), 4 PLOD (extra letter D), from definition 5 very temptingly OATHS (curSes), but couldn't see wordplay, 6 S,PARER (extra letter R) - the extra letters are coming surprisingly easily. My big rush at the start didn't pan out to the bottom of the grid though, that huge entry at 42 a complete blank, 41 is our old chum AIGLETS (crossword fans, if you have frayed laces, go to a shoe-store and ask if they have any, it's a hoot), and although I can see 28, 21 and 37 are COME,T, PRO,FILE and SAR (with and extra A), they're all too short for the grid so I can't really put them in.

However, this was a pretty good start, and there aren't all that many asterisked clues, so maybe I can work on those titles. I didn't know the answer to 11, but I guessed it was either Brush calculus or Crush calculus making it LITHOsomething. I also didn't know 14, but it was likely to be gOod or goAd, so that made

(B/C),(A/O),T,?,D,?,O,U,?,E,D,?,G,Y,?,?,R,?

CAT AND MOUSE looks likely for the first title (are the words Toms and Jerrys?), so maybe DOG YEARS for the second? Seeing that the extra letters coming from those down answers to 2-6 were close together, I'd been circling them in the grid (didn't want to fall into the same trap as in Elitism). When I had a computer, it was straight to google and word wizards (WW threw up nothing for 11 across, but gave me LEON BLUM, confirmed SENUSSI, ASTELY and my final saving grace - TERGIVERSATES confirming that those three short answers were just written in with the final space blank). Then to Google to find that CAT AND MOUSE and DOG YEARS are both books by Gunter GRASS (who I couldn't find in the grid), but the third in the trilogy was THE TIN DRUM, and those circled letters looked like they could make a drum if I join them up.

The hero is Oskar Matzerath, which if added in the bottom left makes some real words, and GRASS makes the handle of the drum. ISSEN in the top of the drum probably means something. That helped me finish off the last few pesky clues, a double-check that there are 25 clues confirms that there's a stick pointing off the side of the drum (maybe TAAKTAA is a type of drum, since I'd already written a line over them I may not have the letters correct in the words).

And the slump is over! Victory for George and another Lavatch puzzle where I learned something (I'm not in a hurry to go read it though, sorry). 2009 tally: George 14, Listener 5.

I'm editing last week's post to include my pretty pathetic grid which had some nice doodles on it (want to see what ANIL looks like?).

For your viewing pleasure, here's an improv group that I have done some work with, the OxyMorons doing a show for a local TV programme called "The Pleasure Saucer". I wasn't performing that night, but I'm in the audience throwing out suggestions, listen for the random Australian in the crowd.

Pleasure Saucer Epsidoe 28: The OxyMorons

Feel free to leave comments, and see you next week for some de-reduction of overhead, and a lesson in arts and crafts.

Edit: DAMN AND BLAST IT!!!! I had ERRANT instead of ERRING and so what makes more sense, GRASS should be a T inside the drum and isn't a handle.

Revised tally: Listener 6, George 13. Streak: Listener 3!!!!

odder sirs

2009-05-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

Still travelling, so no scan of this one, though it's rather a sight. (Edit: added now I'm back)

Phi got in touch with me after I wrote up his puzzle last year and gave me some tips, pointers, a bonus puzzle and has been a genuinely nice guy. Which still staggers me that draw a mental block when it has come to his Listener puzzles. I thought I was going to make a good fist of this, I like the shape of the grid, symmetric but not conventional (and there's gridlines too!). Preamble may be giving the game away somewhat normal clues have a disorder, which means probably a jumble, maybe a letter astray. Clues entered normally have an extra letter. Let's go a-hunting.

The pub session did manage to happen on the day this Listener came out - things on the home front have become more hectic so a leisurely Friday lunch is no longer a guarantee. I had a hard time unravelling the clues, even though I've had a bit of luck lately with the extra letters thing. So I returned from the pub feeling pretty good about...

1 across - S,TAB so probably a jumble
14 across - some form of ADIOS in plural... ADIOSA ADIOSES ADIOSESAMAMUS - the wordplay seems to be only giving me ADIOS
15 across is probably HAWAII but can't quite think why. Just sounded nice
19 across and we're off -A,POO(R)P - and there's a word in the grid
21 G,ATE
22 I thought this was probably WAK(e),A
30 (N)B,RIGHT and another word in
34 F,IRE

and for the downs

1 Some form of SCUPPER? That wouldn't fit with that WAKA... hmmm
2 ANIL becomes ANUL - it may be worth scanning the grid to see that I had drawn a picture of it to the side
3 BIG from GIB(e) reversed
4 INSI(N)STED
5 Maybe ARAME but can't see the wordplay, had ARAME from definition
7 OU,ZO(E)???
8 SEA PURSE+D
9 SHIAH - another jumble
12 AGIT,A(S)TO,R
23 A,(S)TOP

But then craziness set in and I didn't get another chance to look at it until I was on the road and without Chambers (I should get the online version). I take Bradfords on the road with me, and saw that 3 was probably SAD (from DA(I)S), 28 down was most likely HIDE and 17 down probably TWITE (don't know about that roof ornament).

So with the extra letters I had R-N-IS-ED-S-S-ER (reorganised something?) but a pretty sparse grid and not a lot of time or options to check answers. Phi wins again!

2009 tally: Listener 5, George 13. Current streak: Listener 2

What amounts to normal service will be resumed next week when I will be back home. Feel free to leave comments, and see everyone next week for some beating of it.

I can't paint dogs playing poker in 77 squares!

2009-05-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

Greetings from sunny Melbourne - no scanned grid this week, but it wouldn't make for fascinating reading, the thing is almost empty. I pounded my head against many blunted surfaces to tery to make any progress whatsoever.

Intriguing preamble - misprints in definitions, leading to charades in other languages and other artists. Down clues in order, across clues in alphabetical order of answers with one missing (a check of the letters show s that there's a seven-letter answer missing, probably the one right in the middle of the grid).

With this much thematic information and help, you'd think a grid would appear, but I am troolyrooly stuck! I started with the down clues, thinking that I could place them at least, but the only four of them came to me through cold solving - S(CAD)S (misprint heAps), prOVOLOne (misprint partly Ovoid), ODDER (RED,DO rev - misprint comparitively fisHy), and (d)ADDY - (misprint Adelaide lEss formally). So that gave me virtually nothing to go on for the across clues, of which I could also only cold solve 5! ARAISED - put Up art; D,ONE - finE; NODDY - inveRted pendulum; SO,DA - joHn collins and WELL,TOD,O - loTs of money. I could have a stab that ADDY and NODDY cross, ARAISED goes in the bottom left since it can't cross OVOLO and I think that centre spot is reserved for the unclued entry.

Next step was to look for misprint candidates to maybe decipher a message. My guesses for the acrosses were U-M-RTEMD-U--RH-T- and for downs SEAR-TOAOR-H---GR-EN--RE, which migth mean GREEN somewhere (CasE might be presented to this?).

Shackleton, you well and truly have the better of me! I am off to find the error of my ways. Victory to the Listener Crossword

2009 tally: Listener 4, George 13. Current streak, Listener 1

Feel free to leave comments - I won't be online much for replies.

hat and hy and hen and ho and here and ho

2009-05-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

This is the first Elfman Listener I remember having a go at, a peek at the setters page shows two others, one from 2006 when I was not doing it every week. And there's Letters Latent (though not given as such), which used to be a turn-off, but I managed to complete last year's Letters Latent puzzle (though that was only part of the challenge - Key Cutting by Lavatch).

On a first run through the clues, I had most of the bottom half of the grid - the top stayed pretty empty for a long time. Most of the clues only lost one letter, so any repeating letters couldn't have been the latent ones - though knowing there were three latent letters in 35 helped a lot to see FEE(B)LER, taking a punt on B being flux density.

The good thing about having most of the bottom of the grid meant that I could get the phrase pretty quickly - looking at the very end, I had -I-(A/N)E(H/A/W) and given the title, it was probably going to be I KNEW. And knowing most of the across answers from 26-41, meant I could pluck out (E/A)-T-(A/D/S)ER(U/V)I - which looked like I could pick out "SERVING ". A bit of Googling later out popped the Rudyard Kipling (R.K. - Requisite Knowledge!) verse "I KEEP SIX HONEST SERVING MEN THEY TAUGHT ME ALL I KNEW".

Retrofitting words then got all of the bottom half out readily, sorted out that the W linking WHO, HOW, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, WHAT from the verse was in that blank centre spot. I was still stuck on the top left corner and had to do a lot of picking through and abusing the Quinapaulus search feature with adding in the letters I knew, the expected letter latent and the length of the clue to get NOMOS, ALRIGHT and PABULUM. But I got there in the end and my fear of Letters Latent is slowly evaporating.

Victory to George! Despite some agonizing hunt-and-pecking near the end it was a nifty finish, I like the little shape made by the words, and it was some nice work to get that long phrase into Letters Latent!

2009 tally: George 13, Listener 3. Current streak: George 2

I'm leaving for Australia next week (hopefully I'll have reliable enough access that posts for 4031 and 4032 will be made from down under, but they'll probably be brief). Very excited to be heading home, here's Melbourne's Greatest Band, TISM

Feel free to leave comments below, and see you next week for an art lesson.

My printer runneth dry

2009-05-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

First off, wave bye bye to my old computer, aka "The Computer In The Cow Box". You didn't quite make it to 10, old fellow. I have a marginally newer laptop, but had to reinstall the scanner software. Eventually I got there, but the settings on scanning are oddly different, I hope the grids are viewable.

Duck. The Don. There's no secret as to the identity of Duck, you can buy his book on amazon, read bits about him on Wikipedia, and find him commenting regularly at the Crossword Centre. I don't know if he reads this, but we had an amusing back and forth on the Times for the Times site a while back about me claiming to have never heard of a Bible story. So I guessed this had to have some sort of religious theme, despite the title Office Block.

The preamble sounded kind of gentle, most clues normal, only 17 of them have extra letters. Some clashes, a lot of words get one misprint but always checked. Check. Words with extra letters in wordplay go in as normal.

Duck heard my plea to make 1 across an easy clue, and came up with GRAS(P)S. Awesome - in goes a P. LA(PP)ST gives me a first extra letter of T and we're away.

I found a lot of the clues difficult - at the end of my first sitting (didn't make it to the bar the day I printed it out, I was on the road) I had close to a half of the grid sort of filled in. Remembering some advice from earlier, I put circles around the misprints, I figured they would have something to do with the final words. I had a tough time finding the extra letters, most of the ones I had entered were the regular clues. I was guessing at where the misprints were, and starting to get a real mess of a grid, when I noticed that in the top right, I had three misprints in a diagonal and suspected that there would be a misprint where 18 met 11 (I had SNARK for 11, but didn't have CEILS for 18 yet).

Interetsing - my complete mess of a bottom left corner also had two places I thought there would be misptints in a row... all my misprints would fit on five diagonals that added up to 38 cells - AHA! I knew I had to toss this first version, so I drew the lines through the diagonals as a guide and started afresh. I wasn't sure if I had the right answers, so this time I'm going to be very careful with those misprints and correct words.

Something's not right here. LAUDS and PLINE???? What is PLINE? And where does PRLME fit in.

A trip to Chambers and things unravel... LAUDS is the morning office and one of the canonical hours. Something interesting is that my 2003 Chambers doesn't have this definition of LAUDS, but the new one does. A smart cookie like Duck probably knows things like this. Some googling later I know that they are LAUDS, PRIME, TERCE, SEXT, NONE, VESPERS and COMPLIN, but that's only 37 letters (grrr). Ahhhh - but i have PLINE, so a check of Chambers shows that COMPLIN can also be COMPLINE.

But this still doesn't fit my grid. Gah! And I have to have at least two clues wrong because my extra letters of THEANNICAURH can't make THE CANONICAL HOURS which would have 17 letters.

Time for Grid #3 - which is on garish paper since I was out of white

First problem taken care of was 6 down. Which was one of my first in (despite it being completely wrong). Initially I thought it was BOL(U)STER with an extra U, but now I see it was MO(L)ISTEN with an extra L. That also took care of 24, knowing now it had to have an extra O, so it is RENEGUER RE,(ONE,URGE).

And so I have a complete grid, my words, and a huge sigh of relief. I'm still stuck on two parts... 25 down needed to be the extra letter U, GINGLE matches the definition, but I'm still stuck on that wordplay. The wordplay to 17 should be the first C in CANONICAL, so is it just S,C,ILEX?

I thought I'd never get there, but victory to George! My first completed Duck listener, though I've done many of his puzzles in other places.

2009 tally: George 12, Listener 3. Current streak: George 1.

While working through the hours part of this, I couldn't get "Dance of the Hours" out of my head, so here it is, as performed brilliantly by Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

Feel free to comment, and see you next week for the revenge of Letters Latent!

Indication of lack of depth on my part

2009-04-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry I'm later than usual in posting, for those of you eager to see how I bombed. OK, I knew I was in for it from the preamble. If I can't make much sense out of the preamble, I know there's too much in a crossword for me. And this time we've got misprints, numbers (but some single digits even though the numbers go to 26?), and some double digits that need multiples of 26 added to them, and some squares with two letters and possibly a number in them as well. Yikes!

Mr. E is also responsible for two almost-empty gridders in my experience, Workplace, and Yes. I poked and prodded at this one forever, got a few answers at a time, and started to put some bits together, but I still have only half the clues solved, and no idea what was meant to happen next.

The only two clashes I found were near the top right - and three of them in SCAPE. Since the letters (that so far) don't have clashes are C and E, then maybe they are part of the number region, that line would read 33335. Above that is an H and I that could be 8 or 9, not sure about the region under that. 40 across looks like where one of the two letters crammed together goes with A and I from B(AIL)OUT. I can't dream up anything that fits 27 down, so maybe that is another of the ones where the answer doesn't match the grid length?

This is not to say I didn't like the crossword, and I must single out 32 down (E for Ernie in Bert giving BERET) which is my favorite clue I've seen in ages! But after a good run there for a while, it looks like I'm slipping back into the old form of hit and miss. I only have a limited time online where I am right now, so when I get back home I can't wait to find out what it was I missed. Well played Mr. E - victory to the Listener Crossword!

2009 tally: Listener 3, George 11. Current streak: Listener 1.

ring e he ead f ohn he aptist

2009-04-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

Quick post-script to last week, I did make a mess of it, but I honestly couldn't unravel a lot of those clues and once the answer was up, I did my usual routine of getting an answer at a time to see if I could have figured it out. I hadn't heard of the book nor the author (note to setters, the George challenge - the first setter to work in a Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Terry Pratchett or Robert Rankin theme wins me doing a video version of this blog declaring you awesome).

Oh, video blogs - I'm meant to start making them for a comedy project, so once I get the hang of them, I might add some vocality to this nonsense. George versus the Listener breaking all boundaries.

Now to this week - Centigram is back! And there's some more jumbles, down answers have missing words, 25 needs to be removed and replaced by some new words and there's two mystery squares. All tied in to a performance.

I started by hitting the downs - I read somewhere recently (was it Times for the Times) that you should start crosswords in the bottom right hand corner, also known as Florida, because by that point the setter has lost inspiration. In this case it seemed like a sensible place to start because that's where the performance lies, so I started with 41 down and worked myself up.

41: looked like it was going to be OCA or COC - Chambers confirms the first, so we have an E at the end of the performance
39: I in O,D,N and we've got our God and Cretan as the extra word
37: E,PIC and New is the extra word... with NCE confirmed I think we're headed to a dance
34: Let's test that logic out... remove appoints... LOCUM? LUM is a hat and it's back-patting time.
32: Well assuming I remove the DO.... ----NG? Actually this was one of the last in.

Certainly looks like dance, maybe RIVERDANCE (Michael Flatulence only has two names though), or TAP DANCE (KELLEY, ASTAIRE, DAVIS JR?). Thinking this would be a breeze since I'm looking for dancers and had cold-solved four of five turned out to be false hope, the rest of the cold solving only gave me another 10 or so of the down clues, and with B-OT-E-S it looked like there was going to be BROTHERS in the middle. I don't know any dancing brothers, and Google turns up some unlikely candidates.

So it was time to bite the bullet, stop trying to solve this entirely on the downs and get stuck into acrosses. My printed sheets are a mess, because I put the letters I thought I knew next to the clues.

I got off to a so-so start on the acrosses - I got 1 (T,ACTLESS), but was convinved 7 was SCRAP (since I had REVEL and POTATO), so it kept me from seeing IMPS and ENTICE that I should have gotten on the first go around.

So it was solve acrosses, back to downs, solve acrosses, back to downs... you can see from my grid that I put the letters I didn't know from the acrosses in (that worked out pretty well for me in Squaring the Circle and Au Contraire).

The penny drop moment was rather fun though - it was getting 2 down - CANNACH that I finally had HERO-(M or S)BROTHERS - and realise it was HEROD'S BROTHER'S and the last word had to be DAUGHTER.

I had S-LO-E in that second row with the closed-off square, so in went SALOME, allowing me to get M(EL)ONS (EL for O in MOONS), convince myself that 10 really was ENT,ICE and that SCRAP was wrong (I must have been firing on zero cylinders, because it took entering PIRE + 1 letter into Quinapius to see TRIPE).

25 was THE SEVEN VEILS (heh, they did get removed), which helped me get VENTOSE (how did I not spot an anagram?), VASE and TEETER.

So the conclusion would be off coming the head of John the Baptist, into the bucket made by the other square. That would give me all real words across the middle and a fun conclusion!

Except that there were a bunch of empty squares in Florida!!!

I didn't have an entry at 28 (though now I knew it had to be a real word starting with L or S), an entry at 32 across OR down, and though I knew 40 was CONNIPTION, 45 was STRANGER and 35 RUNNER, still didn't know where those last letters fit.

Took an extra hour of dictionary hunt and pecking to find that LANDERS worked as a double definition (kinda) at 28. I was concerned I was going to have everything here but a few leftover words, but in the end I was there - a very fun and topical crossword by Centigram. I didn't notice until the end that the jumbles were made a little easier by multiple unchecked letters being the same letter (the three N's in CONNIPTION).

Seasonal victory to George! And in a bizarre coincidence (there seem to be more of those popping up lately), I went to a performance of Godspell in the time that I was working on this crossword. So here's some 70s hippy awesomeness from the film of Godspell - "By My Side".

2009 tally: George 11, Listener 2. Current streak: George 1

Feel free to leave comments (in response to recent message, you can do that by clicking on where it says "n comments", and see you next week for an indication of height!

Defeatism

2009-04-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

Some weeks you've got it, some weeks you don't...

Last year there was this really fun Listener by Zero that had the shape of a space invader. Before that was a map of Italy that I couldn't make head or tail of. Now we've got to divide clues up into three groups - 21 leading to wordplay with one letter omitted, 16 clues with extra words, and 17 normal clues. Sounds tricky to begin with, because there's nothing to rely on. Each clue had to have a correct definition, so that was foremost in my mind. There's also to be some highlighting in the end, so following what we've seen from Zero, there's probably something amusing to the highlighting finale.

But this was just one I could not get into. Time has not been in plentiful supply, and being able to snatch a few furtive minutes at a time just was not going to cut it for this. To make matters worse, I lost my original grid while I was travelling (I found it yesterday when I was cleaning out some folders - that's the one I have at the top), and had to start again - at least I remembered that I had to figure out how to spell BODHISATTVA. Here's as far as I got with Grid #2.

I didn't get close enough to start guessing at the theme... all the missing letters I found were Rs and Es, not sure if that was significant, and the extra words were LOVER, FLASH, FLAKE, INITIATE, and ELECTRICIAN. Nothing came to mind, and I ran out of time with one of the emptiest grids in a while.

I'm sure I was missing something simple (or just needed more time - or brain cells, or both), but I feel bad about this paltry effort. Victory to Zero and the Listener Crossword!

2009 tally: Listener 2, George 10. Current streak: Listener 1

Since it's Easter and Passover, let's have some religious music (to go with Corn Mo from last week). Here's the updated version of "Jesus was Way Cool" by King Missile III, from the excellent and overlooked CD "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life"

Hava Notherbeera!

2009-04-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Gnomon is a new setter to me, the Listener website lists a 2004 puzzle that I don't remember trying. I had a long trip a few weeks ago so saved this one to start on the plane. Not a bad one to try on a plane, since I didn't need a lot of aids to get a reasonably-full grid. Spotting the theme took forever!

Well I like beer and I thought "hey cool, a Listener about beer". The instructions seemed pretty straightforward, particularly when seeing that 1 across was M,A,L,T and we've actually got a brewing ingredient and there's no trickiness to the title. 3 down looked like it should be TEAM, but I couldn't work out how to remove one letter to get it from the wordplay. Do I have to remove all occurrences of one letter from the wordplay part? Hmmm... moving on.

The rest of the ingredients were easy to find - YEA(S,T) at 28, (SHOPPER - PER)* to get HOPS at 29 and (A PEWTER TANKARD - E DRANK)* to get TAP WATER (presumably the ingredient you wouldn't want to own up to) at 38. By the end of my flight, I had almost all of the bottom half complete, sort of.

Sort of... I was using definitions to get grid answers. Some wordplays weren't making sense, and it seemed like a bunch of random letters had to be removed, usually from anagram clues. I scanned the whole of the first page, and the second page looked like it as well, riddled with letter combinations, trying to figure out how to remove a letter to get these.

Take 17, for example... definition leading to LANAI, but the anagram fodder is LANAI + MME. Even if I cut both M's, that's not going to work.

Frustration really set in when I had more than two-thirds of the grid completed without having picked the theme at all. I was wondering if I could just finish the grid from definitions and make up a 5-letter brewing ingredient... SUGAR? COTWO?

The penny finally dropped when working on one of the empty spaces... the definition at 23 looked like it should have been TALUS, and there's that weird KHUSKHUS word in there... hmmm

tSAMEalKHs. SAMEKH? That's a Hewbrew letter isn't it? D'OH!!!!!!! tHE BREWer's ingredients.

I should have been all over that... last year a friend of mine who owns a beer store (and who wouldn't be my friend if they run a beer store?) introduced me to He'Brew, the chosen beer. They have one beer that is insanely hoppy that I loved, and can be found on tap at the Burp Castle in New York City's East Village (Ilan, if you're reading, next time I'm in NYC we'll coordinate things better to get a beer).

So I'm not removing English letters, I'm removing Hebrew letters, and there's 22 in the alphabet!!! Interesting that they specified 5 letters, since there's not many 5-letter Hebrew characters.

Bad move #1 - I went to google to get a Hebrew alphabet and found that there were a bunch of different phonetic spellings. I wrote down the one from (even worse) wikipedia, and found that the first clue I was going to try to re-unravel, 40 across (VAKEEL + SIN) didn't have a match on the wikipedia alphabet.

Doofus - there's a perfectly good Hebrew alphabet in Chambers! And it has SIN in it!

Write out the Hebrew alphabet from Chambers and we're back in action. I was actually missing two letters, NUN and ZAYIN (the only Z I could find in any clues was in 43 across). I suspect NUN has to be removed from 6 down? So that leaves me with ZAYIN, which I don't think has anything to do with brewing, but is the lucky last letter, and in it goes.

I thought this was going to be a breeze, but got really trapped until the very very late penny-drop moment. Fun puzzle from Gnomon, but victory to George! I know I'm getting better at methodically working through clues, but I'm still stunned by my record thus far.

2009 tally: George 10, Listener 1. Current streak, George 4.

Finishing this off I was reminded of a Corn Mo show where he did "Hava Nagila Monster". There's no great recordings of it online, here's a handheld from a reasonably quiet show. If you're drinking Bittersweet Lemmy's R.I.P.A. at Burp Castle, try to catch a Corn Mo show, he often performs in the NYC area.

Feel free to leave a comment, and see you next week for some elitism!

A puzzle with a C4 point group!

2009-03-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-03-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

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

2009-03-01T08:22:00.000-08:00

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.

Double-crossed

2009-02-27T07:25:00.000-08:00

If you ever happen to be in the fun little town of Asheville, North Carolina, where I live, a visit to Asheville Pizza and Brewing is highly recommended. They brew their own beer (and have other beers available too), have cheap food, nice specialty pizzas, and their lunch buffet (which I call the Pizza Trough) is a steal. If you want to go the whole hog, join their mug club and get your own pewter mug hanging over the bar (holds more beer than their pintish glasses and costs the same to refill).

The Listener appears in these parts at 11am on Friday, making it perfect timing for printing out and enjoying a liquid/pizza lunch over. Sometimes I leave with nothing at all filled (like with Sabre last week), sometimes I leave with a few answers filled, sometimes I get distracted, meet someone I know or get into a random conversation that keeps me from getting much Listener time in at all. On the day that Raj came out, I left with an almost complete grid, the theme and one of the two things to highlight.

Which probably means I've done something wrong or rushed like in Pilcrow's puzzle last year. This was either kind of easy, or right on my wavelength or both. Llig's puzzle last year was a tribute to Ralph Vaughn Williams, and I didn't know much about the theme, but found it pretty easily. This time around I can't match the title to the puzzle, but it's a cute theme. I just noticed that Llig's was 3996, meaning that only 23 listeners have come and gone between Llig offerings - is that a recent record?

Crossword time - extra letters in wordplay. Let's hope for a lot of anagrams! Entries will be normal, so Chambers can be used as a crutch. And early on here's my juicy anagram at 10 across, anagram of SPENDING - N gives me DESIGN + P. Nice place to start, since that crosses 2 down - A,DIE,U, 4 down - SIR(i)LOIN, and an anagram clue AGARIC at 5 down. It was a pretty steady fill of the grid, without looking closely at these extra letters, I had over a half a grid in short order.

I like Llig's clues - they're quirky and very fair. Several of the extra letters made me laugh..

15 down - MAY STOP CELL leading to CYTOLPLASM + L is a surface to behold
36 across - STRAD,DHA with the extra T
30 down - ST(RR)EEL with an extra R

Near the end of my bar lunch session I had a full grid except for a few in the upper left corner (the hippy corner), and the lower right corner (Florida) - funny note is that I scanned the grid before filling in SEMEIA at 30 across, and had to change the picture using MS Paint before putting it on Flickr. From the middle set of clues the message became obvious - A PAIR OF STAR-CROSSED LOVERS, from Romeo and Juliet, and there were both JULIET and ROMEO in the grid, and running across them POLLUX and COMET, making the two Xs.

Took a little while to squeeze out the last few answers, but I was all done by Friday night, incredibly rare for me! Victory to George and we're in thoroughly unchartered territory with 6 in a row! 2009 tally: George 6, Listener 0. Current streak, George 6.

Nothing to do with this week's offering, but I noticed during the week that Dogbowl has a youtube channel. It doesn't have any of his songs from his European tour where he fed his lyrics to an online translator and sang the results unfortunately, but here's a jerky and compelling video of "Hello Helen". Feel free to comment, and see you all next week!

I can't move for this apple in my room

2009-02-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

Sabre usually means nearly empty grid for me (and in the case of "A Paradox, A Paradox", TWO completely empty grids!), but I got a few pointers last year on how to tackle a Sabre crossword and I was waiting for a crack at this one.

This was the first Listener grid I printed from the new Times Crossword club, and I was a little concerned, because it put a huge gap between the across and down clues which meant it printed on three pages. It also used a font that choked up my printer (if you squint closely at the preamble or click on the image to see the full-size at flickr, you can see what my printer did to it). These were all resolved by the next week and I not happily print things on two pages.

Back to Au Contraire. There's one cell in each row where things clash, and they have 180 degree symmetry, which means column 7 has no clashes. Lots o checking letters! A first solving session and I'm starting to see more of these clues and tricks, I can see the aim is to get a few columns and rows where I know both words and piecemeal the grid together from that.

My first solving session (bar) was an amusing one - I've become a regular Friday fixture at a local brewpub, and the bar people get a laugh over me staring at a crossword and doodling while I stretch the limits of what my day job will allow me for lunch. There was genuine concern when an hour had passed and nothing at all was entered in the grid. At the end of the first session I had two rows (2 and 8), one column, and what eventually turned out to be three completely wrong answers - a guess of CHAUD for the second clue in 5 across, and a pretty confident CONSEN(t)SUS which now makes no sense at all, but did at the time, and I was bummed later on to find that 6 was more complicated than just PA(la)CE. And in column 7, the only one I had was the wonderfully clued ENEMA (AMENE reversed). I wrote the words I knew along the columns and rows hoping that something would come to light, which didn't happen.

Over the next few days I pieced together one or two more clues - anagram-checker gave me ROSE-HUED for the other half of column 11, and hunting around for 9 or 10 letter rodents turned up SPRINGHASE to give me the rest of row 1.

To put together the grid (I've gone over my original pencilling with pen to make the scanning easier), I started with row 2, seeing that ARENA fit nicely between columns 5 and 9, and there were lots of S's in 12 and 23. If I was right with that, then NARRE at 9 provides my N for SPRINGHASE and I'm in action. Enter in all the rows and columns that I could. Some guesswork involved here, I initially had ASOCIAL in the wrong spot, and it was now that I figured CONGRESS was definitely a no-go.

I suspected the misprints were along or close to along the diagnoal, and the first one I found was between the C of ASOCIAL and the I of RUSSKIES, so I took a punt and circled where I thought misprints would be.

At this point column 7 looked like RENEMA-RI--- and RENE MAGRITTE came to mind. The hint about ignoring accents. GRITTER turns out to be the answer to the other half of 7 (and adding PARALYTIC and MISERERES to the grid). That fits the theme - Magritte's paintings of pipes and things.

And my clash of CI fits in (I also had the PA from the intersection of 5s). CECI N'EST PAS UNE PIPE doesn't have enough letters. Is there a French word for crossword or Listener? Altavista Babel Fish translator has MOTS CROISE, which is still one letter too short.

However now I'm armed with ammunition to find the last few answers - thanks for all those checking letters, Sabre! The last few were some rather amazing words...

There really is a wingless insect called an ERGATANER!
A LWEI is a unit of currency
OVERSAILS are projections
CONGREE was the word for of our own accord
and the lucky last in was TRAPROCK.

So it looks like CROISE has two S's (it wouldn't be CROISES, that would be plural, so I guess it's CROISSE) and the phrase is CECI N'EST PAS UN MOT CROISSE and RENE MAGRITTE is highlighted.

Wow! That's some mighty fine gridwork, Sabre, and a lot of fun, even the hunt and pecking at the end was cool. And even better I've finally gotten a Sabre Listener (I've been told there's one I should get in the book of Listener crosswords, which I haven't started yet, waiting for a few long plane trips coming up in the next few months for that).

2009 tally: George 5, Listner 0. Current streak: George 5 (equalling my record)

I'm going to put another piece of shameless self-promotion up to finish out this week's blog. I write for a lot of short films, but I rarely act in them, I'm a horrible actor. But last summer Drew McDermott came up with an idea that he thought I'd be good in. So I worked on the script, got into some horrible clothes, put on an accent that was meant to sound creepy but came out kind of French, and put together this little film that we debuted last August - Vending Love. See you next week!

Hunt and pecking with Loda

2009-02-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

Loda time needed to complete this one! It appears Loda is a regular setter but has been missing for a few years so welcome back, I looked back over the list of Loda crosswords and didn't recognise any. Succinct preamble, but a daunting title and an asymmetric grid with LOTS of little words, and hence a lot of clues. Everything has a misprint.

Good news is it was clear early on that there weren't going to be clashes in the grid and we're looking for real, if short words. Like in "Motion" a few weeks ago, some words stuck out as ripe for changing letters, but what really got me liking this crossword were the first three across clues...

10) NILGAI - anagram of AILING and misprint of (L)ives in India
11) TRAINS - anagram of RATS IN and misprint of Grav(Y) - and a great surface in both cases
12) UP,AS - misprint of st(U)ff

However these across misprints are not helping me deduce the theme at all... I have a new system where I print off the crossword on Friday morning and take it to the bar at lunch, at the end of a lengthy bar session my across misprints looked like this...

LYU-NBY-FOY---XFY-NY-M

I had more of a problem with the down answers, but things looked more promising

-DVNN--T-EA--OSSMIS-R-N-SB-S-X

Looks like ACROSS MISPRINTS is a part of it... DVNN can't be right.

THE ACROSS MISPRINTS - B-S-X? BY SIX? ADVANCE THE ACROSS MISPRINTS BY SIX?

Looks promising, and would fix up 1 across - SNUB, p(A)rt in bar, that N is an A -b(A)le, and a few more downs are sorted out.

Across misprints are DE--VRO-KZD-SCWL-Z-G--, and advancing them by six letters gives me LY-NBY-... nope. Did Loda mean corrections?

LYU-NBY-FOY-MH-F--NYLM becomes REA-THE-LUE-S-DL--TERS - READ THE CLUES S-D LETTERS?

It's END LETTERS and 32 is bu(Y) and not bu(M) for TAKE. Good news - from getting those missing letters, I've now got a complete set of across answers, woohoo! And the last letters of the across clues read

ADDDOWNCAPANDANSWEREND

So I can finish off the grid by putting ANSWER in the top row... where do I put DOWN CAP and END (or AND). That's 10 letters and there's only 9 checked?

Is this like Conflict Resolution? Am I adding the capital letters in down clues to their answers? Do I include all the capital letters? Turns out no - and as I'm writing this I find that I don't have the notebook where I did this, but it told me what the unchecked letters were - and entering them in made words of the top and bottom lines

SEE ODD ANSWERS CENTRES TO DRAW and a G goes in the very middle box.

Odd answers centres There's not many odd answers in the grid.

A S I N F S O R I N F I N I T Y

Surely that's a sign for infinity? Use the G and the top and bottom row aren't answers, so they shouldn't be there! The odd-number-of-letter answers are spaced out where you can draw the infinity sign (for which we have to thank John Wallis).

That was a lot of work, and it took four really long solving sessions to get through but it was an admirable effort! I suspect Loda had a lot of fun hiding all these steps, in terms of number of things that have to be done to get to the finish, it reminded me of Key Cutting. The huge number of instructions helped me with the clues, I had a lot of gaps, but each step closed a few off at a time, even after entering in the top and bottom rows I had one or two stray letters to find. Great challenge, Loda!

And victory to George! 2009 tally: George 4, Listener 0. Current streak: George 4.

Let's finish it out with some ABBA - On and on and on...

Because we're... going to the blacksmith and we're... gonna get married

2009-02-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

And away we go with another Homer Listener. Last year's was really impressive, took me forever, but I felt really good about finishing it. The first thing that hit me about this one was the preamble. There's a few unchecked squares that would need two letters. Some need to be deleted and some need to be moved (presumably to that juicy-looking unnumbered across space two lines about that curious dotted line.

Good news is that we have grid entries so it's not going to be completely up to me to determine where these doubly-occupied squares go. So let's get a-solvin!

There's a lot of clues with short answers, which often trip me up, so care is needed. Of course the first word in was D'OH at 17, but the real start in filling in the grid came at 19 across (hidden OSSA) which crossed OHMMETERS (anagram of SOME,TMMER - nice clue), RIDE SHOTGUN (TO HIRED GUNS)*, and SHERPA, meaning the rest of HOTGUN went in. And we were off on filling in the grid, looking for places to put the double letters.

It probably makes the scanned version unreadable, but I put all the possibilities in some places to try to help me get crossing letters... so for example, I had

P,I/L,L/O,O/W at 1, R/I,I/D,D/E at 10 down, S.H/E,E/R/P,A at 3... that helped in spotting ODORATE at 13 and confirm that the doubly-occupied squares are together.

With the letters I had at this point, I entered the unnumbered line into Word Wizards which suggested TELL A SECRET and TELL THE TIME. Neither of which seemed to mean anything.

AHA! Penny drop moment #1. There's nice rows of unchecked cells in the second row, third row, second row from the bottom and third row from the bottom (but it doesn't look like the last set is doubly occupied). Add that to 21 and 23 across, each of which has to have two double letters in each of the unchecked squares.

First thing I spotted was in the second row from the bottom. Starting from 20 down, I had

E/E, N/L, G/O, ?, E/A, R/N, ?. So ENGLAND is one of them. ENGLAND sounds like something familiar to be left behind. So what's left over? ELO?ER?. ELOPERS!

Someone is eloping from England, and I have to the letters from ELOPERS in that line (and I scour Chambers to get those last two entries as TRIPLE and PUDSY). TELL?OPERS. Huh?

How about these other doubles.

Second row... I/L, I/R, C/E, H/E, N/S, ?, R/E - LICENCE or LICENSE... damn... don't you need a licence (or license) even if you elope?

Google time - since ENGLAND is below that dotted line, they're probably going north to elope, which means Scotland. Googling "Elope to scotland" throws up this page. GRETNA GREEN!!! Homer, you're going to drive up the sales of green highlighters! And there's GRET?A just above the border. Back to Chambers and 26 (after a lot of picking through) is KNEIPE, and TELLKOPERS is really TOLLKEEPERS. The Gretna Green page was invaluable, because it had BANNS, which took care of the cells at 21 and 23 across. More picking through the S section of Chambers gave SCOTOMIA for 5 down. But there's one bit left...

That third row...

?, R/C, B/O, M/E, S/A, R/T. Huh? Nothing matches from these pages - although it turns out the blacksmiths do the weddings, so if you don't need a church you don't need a PRIEST! So BOWMAN which I had for 14 isn't right... more Chambersing and there's GIGMAN (and of "course" 18 across is GOLF, nitwit), leaving 6 to be UROPODS. Highlight GRETNA in green (yellowy-green, closest I could get), and we are DONE!!!

In a similar fashion to Carte Blanche, I learned a lot completing this. I don't think everything that is left is a real word, but I liked finding the bits and pieces. And victory to George!

2009 tally: George 3, Listener 0. Current streak, George 3.

I wasn't feeling musically inspired this week, but a regular reader sent me a site of deliciously twisted animations - here's my favorite (pity it won't embed). Comments welcome as always, see you next week!

But were Robert's Rules followed to the letter?

2009-01-30T07:12:00.000-08:00

The next two weeks are going to be intriguing - Samuel was one of the first people to get in touch with me when I started this blog, and is in a large way responsible for my getting better at these things. Not to mention I managed to solve his offering from last year. Will familiarity breed contempt? We have 27 misprinted words and 10 words that need some sort of motion. That meant a little more than half of the clues needed some alteration. 5 and 19 are unclued but lead to some non-resolution and resolution... OK.

Since I didn't know what would be moved and what wouldn't, I started entering in words faintly - I prefer pen to pencil because when I write in pencil I tend to smudge, and I can always print off a new grid, so light penning it was (when it came to scan-time I went over a few I thought wouldn't show up too easily on the scanner).

Oh, and this finally came in the mail!

Couldn't make anything out of 1 across, but 7 looked like a good starter - (r)EGRET. 7 down looked like E,T,CHING (much later I changed it to E,T,CHANT once I figured out what went at 19). If 9 down is T,END with RAPT becoming TRAP I've found a moved letter and another normal entry.

I managed to fill out quite a lot of the grid in the first go-around. Maybe it was because I was looking for them right off the bat but a lot of the words that had motion stuck out in the clues, such as 10 across - small YARM branch has to be ARMY.

When I got as far as I could with the grid, I looked at 19 and 5. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO could fit ith the letters I had in 19 (I still had the I from ITCHING) - is everyone getting on a train? Are we moving Lana Turner?

I turned to the lettets from the misspellings... T T HERIGHT stuck out - something is going to the right. The L in 29 across made me think something else might be to the left.

That fit with a few that I couldn't work out... 41 across was N-G-E which I was drawing a blank on, but if it was GNOME with the NO moved it makes perfect sense. NOES TO THE LEFT. Now is it EYES to the right or AYES to the right? 32 looked like it should be E-LAYER from the clue, but I had E-R---E... so move the AYE to the right and it fits. 24 was already in my grid as SNOB with a question mark (because nothing would fir at 15 down), but move the NO to the left and make NOSB and 15 becomes MESS-UPS and 19 is TING.

Getting there - downs are all normal if motion is only to the left or the right. And 5 down is DIVISION LOBBY! 19 across is either THE AYES HAVE IT or THE NOES HAVE IT (I didn't have 3 down at this point).

I'll admit I abused Things Cruciverbial to get the last few AYES... Entering in 8-letter words using ILTAYE came up with VILAYETS at 11across, and 6-letter words with UXAYE at 38 BAYEUX (I probably should have gotten that without Things Cruciverbial).

Funny thing is that I eventually got that ANTES in 1 across had to be NATES (to give the CAN in CANOPY), but it was another case of entering NOPY + 2 letters to make the penny drop - this also gave me the A to confirm ABOUND at 3 down and the overall message to be THE NOES HAVE IT.

We are yet to have a word that makes its debut appearance in Chambers 2008, I wonder when one is to come? This was a really well put-together puzzle and I liked how the answer came in little bits, rather than one flash and away I go. Victory to George!

2009 tally: George 2, Listener 0. Current streak: George 2.

I'm excited about next week's Vic Chestnutt/Elf Power show and I was going to put a clip of Vic Chestnutt up on here. Checking youtube, would you believe someone took a handheld of a concert I was at last year and uploaded almost the entire thing to youtube. I was standing just a few feet to the left of this guy while he was recording, I think I tried to disrupt him a few times - here's Vic's rather bizarre warmup.

Cogito Ergo Summary

2009-01-23T07:43:00.000-08:00

According to the Listener page, Adam has been setting puzzles for over 50 years! The only one I remember trying, 3930: Double Entry, I got absolutely nowhere on. Apparently there was a mess when this first appeared online without the preamble, but by the time I got to download and print it, the preamble was there. Cells with asterisks, all around the perimeter, and a letter exchange later on.

I took this with me on a lunch break and found that I was on Adam's wavelength this time, in a little over an hour, I had a pretty decent chunk of the grid filled in, and even better, most of the clues with the asterisks were pretty gentle.

1 across: GO reversed around UT,IN - so I have OUG
5 across: KISMET (MISTAKE-A)* - giving MT
1 down: O,A RING - really liked this clue, Adam - R
9 down: wanTONNESs - so OS
20 down: IMPART(ial) - another nice clue - I
24 down: MANGE,R - G
33 across: TEETER - (THE TREE - H) - E
34 across: C,ENTER - C

So the asterisked letters were ORIEMTOSGCUG. At the bagel place where I had lunch, I couldn't make anything of this - I plucked out CUSTOMER but didn't see anything else (that would leave OIGG).

Back at the computer, I took a stab at the Word Wizards anagram generator, and entering in O as the extra letter threw up COGITO ERGO SUM, which sounded promising, and had the same number of letters as RENE DESCARTES.

The only ambiguities left to take care of were the substitutions of the Gs and Os - I saw RETINA for 1 taking care of both, and the outside was no problem.

But I wasn't finished, and that was frustrating... I had a bunch of no-fits in the top right hand corner. I'd messed up the anagram at 5, inventing a painter KICHENER, which was keeping me from getting 12 and 17 across. Bradford's came through with KIRCHNER, and after an agonizing day or two wondering if I could really blow it, I have a grid and a solution.

Maybe it's a policy to have an easy one to start off with, or I'm getting better, but I found this one a breeze. The clues are nice, very much like I'm used to in the Mephisto, and it was a fun solve.

Victory to George! 2009 tally: George 1, Listener 0. Current streak : George 1

It's far too tempting to put the Monty Python Philosopher's Song up with a Rene Descartes themed puzzle. So here's another French Philosopher, Plastic Bertrand.

Year 1 recap

2009-01-16T08:05:00.000-08:00

A little bit of a story... I spent a large amount of 2007 sitting in hospital rooms while my partner was battling cancer (a battle ultimately lost). I had a lot of time and needed to keep my mind going, so I worked harder on being able to solve crossword puzzles. The Listener was a great one for passing long periods of time in sterile environments, but even with all that time I was a terrible solver. In 2007 I solved three completely (3918: Factory, 3953: Resolution and 3959: Inflation), and got very close on four others (3934: Surprise, 3935: Two Down, 3936: Convert, and 3961: Invitation).

So to go from three to 27 is pretty stunning. And it's been fun and a huge eye-opener blogging the experience and finding there is an audience for write-ups, bad jokes, and success and failure. And also to find that crossword setters and solvers are a forgiving and fun bunch - I was really anticipating some backlash, and got none.

Special thank you to setters who have read, commented and emailed - I am in awe of your efforts. Samuel, Homer, Phi, Ploy, and a component of Mango have all given me some pointers and are always a fun email.

Thanks also to the regular commenters, it's nice to know I'm not alone in struggling with some puzzles.

Here are a few Top 3s...

My 3 favorite puzzles that I solved.

3963: Carte Blanche by Homer - No way did I think I was going to get this... no gridlines, extra words, the sort of puzzle I would have given up on a few years ago. But clue by tiny clue I just got more and more and eventually had it.

3989: Key Cutting by Lavatch - Fear of Letters Latent overcome! Another piece by piece solve (I finished it the night before I wrote it up).

3965: Solitaire by Xanthippe - I never thought that scissors would be used in solving a crossword. I should have taken a picture of myself with all those little bits of paper.

My 3 favorite puzzles that I didn't solve.

3977: City Tour by Mango - I got close on this, but really loved how it worked

4006: We interrupt this programme... by Phi - Phi sent me an email saying that I shouldn't have gotten so much thematic material without solving, and then gave me some hints and pointed me at where to get better at solving his style of clue. Can't thank you enough!

3986: Terminal Suspension by Schadenfreude - I made a real mess of this in the end, took a wrong turn at Alberqueque and it was downhill from there, but I liked the puzzle a lot.

So now to year 2... I'll be keeping up my little blog - the bar has been set and the target to beat is 27. Feel free to add your tally, your comments, and anything else you like or dislike (I promise to not use that ghastly yellow paper I have a pile of anymore). See you next week for the first puzzle of 2009, hope you've got your new Chambers - according to amazon, mine has made it to the US and is in the hands of DHL.

Without Solution

2009-01-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

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"

Slipper found!

2009-01-09T08:27:00.000-08:00

I'm on the road, so this is going to be a quick report, and without a grid until I get back home.

My first two thoughts as to what the game could be (since there were other children preventing things having to be done) were MUSICAL CHAIRS and BRITISH BULLDOG, the latter maybe being too violent for a Listener? The second letter in 1 down coming out as a U gave me hope for removing chairs from answers, but those hopes were dashed with 16 not being cot.

The rest of it was fun, and I solved it without having Bradford's or Chambers available (I was in Texas), though googling was needed to find the quotation, which ended up necessary to finish the lower left corner of the grid (apropos for Texas).

Took a little shoehorning to get the title SLIPPERY CUSTOMER since I was looking for some form of COBBLER (I jumbled the letters and tried to make it SUPREMITY COBBLER) in there to the point of inventing a boy's name starting with B for the letters that gave SEBASTIAN... then I realised I didn't have to jumble the first letters of the names and the answer was sitting in front of me (just like it was last week but I managed to get the last bit this time).

Last puzzle for year one coming up next week, but I scraped in success in trying to get half of the Listeners out for the year... current tally: George 27, Listener 24. Current streak: George 1.

The Tally: updated

2009-01-02T08:45:00.000-08:00

My counting got messed up with those two puzzles that I thought I had completed, but I had made a few mistakes in and errors propagated. A glance back through this year, and the tally is George 26, Listener 24 (so at least a tie is guaranteed).

And I'm still kicking myself over missing the quote from 4012.

Still some explaining to do - what did Caesar say?

2009-01-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year (though not the end of last year for George v Listener, that'll come in two weeks time). This week we've got Explanation by Lato - a pretty quick turnaround for Lato, who gave us "Yes" six months ago, which I managed to scrape a finish out of despite missing something from the preamble.

There's a wish granted in the perimeter, expressed by an unclued guy in the middle (dramatically), four clues have wordplay but no definition. OK... looks like we're dealing with real words and normal clues for the most part, let's get solving.

Things were off to a pretty brisk start, though there was a lot of chambersing involved in finding the words - I got more from the wordplay than definition here, but there were some that eluded me

Acrosses:

9) HIE,LAND - from wordplay, checked it in Chambers
10) (MATURE,U) - used the Chambers anagram solver to get TRUMEAU
12) One of my (still) unsolved... --R-RTS - was hoping to find the perimeter to get a grasp on the first letter
13) MALIC (nice easy anagram)
14) Not 100% on this, I think it's YEAH being E in HAY reversed
15) From wordplay again, anagram of RED in THINK making THE DRINK
16) DUN? Double definition?
18) I had DOE before I got this, so AGENT is DOER - checking DO-ER in Chambers shows that DOVE is a Scots word for stun
20) (g)RIMY
22) T in REAR reversed and D gives RETARD, which I'll be feeling like at the end of this
24) SHY (double meaning)
25) Hmmm... I have AE so I think it's AERO from definition?
28) Had -CE, I think it's ICE from the definition, can't see wordplay
29) RA,T(i)TLE - nice clue
32) A in NOH = NOAH
34) OAR (sounds like or)
35) Cute clue - PELE reversed, HAN,T
39) ARES - R in SEA reversed
41) I was relieved to find VAKAS was a word
42) STRETTI (I knew this one without having to hunt for the pretty obviously-clued anagram)
43) (l)ITERATE - another nice clue
44) I think this is one of the four without definition... BEECHAM with F for C would be BEEFHAM

Downs
1) No idea... I was thinking BIS for not once (but twice), with X, Y or Z inside, but can't come up with a solution
2) R in REAN gives RERAN
3) HARED (sounds like HARED)
4) INTRODUCTION (anagram of RUCTION,ED)
5) (p)ITCH - stations identified by their frequency?
6) FREE - FRERE without R, thanks Bradfords
7) IMARI (hidden, reversed)
8) Now I'm writing this, I'm having second thoughts - I had RAINY as IN in RAY
11) ELI(te)
17) Hmmm... now this could be one of the undefined. COBALT without CO?
19) CHARACTER would work from "sign" as a definition, can't see wordplay
21) I suspect another one without definition... E in MAT
23) And this one, probably A,NUT backwards to give TUNA
24) SCOOT - another double definition courtesy Chambers
25) ASTI(r)
30) I saw this same clue in another crossword recently, but liked it both times - PLATO(on)
31) SPAR,D
33) E in HARM gives HAREM which is also a spiritual place, apparently
34) OR,THO
37) Definition would give ANTE?
38) NE(v)ER
40) ETA-????

So the clues weren't that difficult, and this gave me -U--USCA-SA- for the middle, which means it should be JULIUS CAESAR (actually I got that before the A from CHARACTER or S from TENSE came in). 30 and 15 aren't defined either, but P-S- TE--- looks like it should be PAST TENSE

So what did Caesar wish for?

I've never seen the play or any of the films based on the play. I remember something about wanting ears, but looking it up, it was Antony that wanted the ears, not Caesar.

Good news! Caesar himself only appears in three scenes and doesn't have that many lines. One of them must be a wish or "hey guys, wouldn't it be great if..." stuff. I read his bloody lines five times and apart from wanting Olympus to be hoisted, he didn't as for much, and certainly not much that contained anagrams of BEEFHAM,MEAT, TUNA and possibly BALT.

Is it his dying words? ET TU BRUTE THEN FALL CAESAR? Maybe he was asking for a salad? Is it a recipe for Caesar salad, croutons, parmesan, worcester sauce and a fried egg? Nope.

Blazing away at this, even though there's no M's in it, removing the letters in BEEFHA(m),(m)EAT,TUNA,BALT leaves LETTERSCUR. Something to do with LETTERS?

Last gasp... write out the perimeter and look for something. I can make SETTERS from the extra letters, looking on the left hand side there would be room to put DUCK, HOMER, MYNOT, MR E, and then I draw a blank. Since some of those read this occasionally, I'll leave in my unfinished grid their names as my last attempt.

And stuck! Victory to Lato and the Listener Crossword and with two to go, this may well end in a tie. Current tally: Listener 23, George 25. Current streak: Listener 1

The math doesn't seem to be right here, aren't there 52 puzzles in the year? I'll go back and check later, after figuring out I missed here.

Re-solved

2008-12-26T05:36:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone overindulged yesterday and are feeling as good as I am this morning!

I was looking forward to a bash at this, since Listener 3806, "New Year's Revolution" was one of my extremely rare solves a few years ago and a really fun puzzle to boot. And I've been on a bit of a roll lately, so let's see what I can make of Conflict Resolution.

Lots of clashes, symmetrically places (one of the first things that struck me was the extra symmetry of the grid, we have 90 degree symmetry as well as 180). 12 normal clues, 12 with misprints in definition, 12 with misprints in wordplay (we are going for the symmetry), and a method for resolving clashes.

Clues time: I did pretty well the first time around and spotted some clashes quickly. Since there's only 12 clashes, and no more than one per word, confidently write in the rest of the letters. I found the bottom half of the grid easier than the top here, my first clash was 31ac SA,LI,CLAW (misspelling of sEx appeal) and 22 down (CANULA, anagram, misspelling of Narrow tube). Now if the 90 degree thing comes into play, then there is a clash where 17ac (LEAN-TO, misspelling of Power failing) meets 14d (which I didn't know), where 10ac (didn't know) meets 3 down (YOU BET, misspelling of undeNiably), and where 24ac (OPINED, misspelling sAid ones piece) meets 9d (LEASOWED, anagram with misspelling of leo Sawed).

This is looking probable, and means I only have two other clashes to find... NANNYISH at 1ac and ETHYLENE at 4d means there's one where 15d meets 18ac, 33ac meets 16d, 8d meets 21ac, and my last clash is 29a IMP,AWN (misprint of Hock), meets 26d (AMIE, misprint of uS).

At this point I had a mostly full grid, and the correct letters gave

S-MOF---SHESANDMISP--NTS. Sum of clashes and misprints! Seeing the message got most of the last clues, and at this point I had the grid above.

OK, let's add up the clashes and misprints. And to make sure there's no mistakes, let's do it in a spiral-bound notebook

The message looks like it's going to be MOVE ALL WORDS. It's a jigsaw! That's why things are so symmetrical, to keep the clashing/crossing pattern so close. Time for a fresh grid and a completion of the jigsaw...

The starting point here was the top right corner, looking for a four-letter word where the first two letters were also the first letters of six-letter words and then the last letter was the first letter of an eight-letter words came down to two possibilities, but once I saw where NACHOS could fit with AECIUM, ROSETREE and SAHIBA, I took the plunge and was done... almost.

I still had an empty entry at 19down (now at 27 across), and with no help from the movement (since anything that was unchecked before remains unchecked now). I don't have Collins, but they have a 9-day free trial on their website - no end of googling possible combinations gave me a suitable word, so I took the plunge on the trial and found ZILPAH. Sorry to take advantage of your generosity there, Collins.

Fun puzzle, Kea, and even better, a victory for George and a very late charge at the end of the year, might be able to end on a new high! Current tally: George 25, Listener 22. Current streak, George 4! And with only three puzzles left in the year I'm guaranteed at least a tie, woohooo!

Euclid's calculator-button mashing

2008-12-19T07:28:00.000-08:00

We're on to the last numerical puzzle of the year, and it's something I haven't seen before, a circular numerical puzzle. Aedites has given us one circular puzzle this year (the first circular I had ever solved), and after my boast earlier in the year that I can usually do numerical puzzles, I have only finished one of the three (and I didn't get Big Holes either).

First thing, I thought something had gone wrong with my printer when it spewed page after page and most of them looked blank. When I print off the Listener, I usually limit it to two pages (I print on American letter size paper, so it's a bit shorter than A4), but since numericals typically have fewer clues, I didn't bother. And here come the pages!

All entries are 5-digit integers who only have single prime factors 2-79, no factors repeated. Intriguing... trying to do them from memory, I write down the primes from 2-79 and completely miss 41. I'm off to a great start...

Each clue is the common factors, if there are none, there's no clue. Intriguing... so next step is to write out the list of definite factors for each letter and each number. This may not give all the factors (in fact in 24 and C it appears there's no factors in common with anything), but it gives some juicy starting points. I know some have six factors...

Y = f a r t n l (heh, fart)
17 = f t w n k u (heh, ftw)

A bit of poking and prodding on the calculator shows that there has to be 2, 3, 5 present to have six prime factors and still be a five-digit integer. So several pieces of good news... f, t and n have to be 2, 3, and 5. Anything with these three factors is going to end in 0 (multiple of 30), so I can confidently write in a 0 at the end of anything that has f, n, t as factors. Which is only T and Y (and 17-21 that cross Y), and 30. Three whole numbers in the grid!

Now 19 doesn't have f as a factor - so f has to be 3 (otherwise it couldn't end in 0). One of n and t is 2, the other is 5.

So let's see - the five digits of Y...

first digit crosses 1-4 which have n but not t
second digit crosses 5-8 which has neither n nor t
third digit crosses 9-12 which has t but not n
fourth digit crosses 13-16 which has neither n nor t
fifth digit is 0

So look for combinations of those last three factors that give a number that goes...

even - odd - five - odd - zero

or

five - odd - even - odd - zero

30 x 7, 13, 19 gives 51870, but that won't work as 30 x 11, 23, 29 is out of range for 17

30 x 11, 13, 19 gives 81510 for Y, so that makes 17 30 x 7, 17, 23 = 82110 and we have our first two full numbers in!

This means n is 2 and t is 5, so any entry with t in it ends in 5. l a and r are 11, 13, 19 and w, k u are 7, 17 and 19.

Z now looks like -50-5 and has factors l,a,r (don't know what they are but know what they come to as a product), t and k, so 13585,w means w = 7 and the entry is 95095.

And we are off! Most of these were filled by getting the known factors and looking for multiples that worked with the numbers that I knew. I only used the "cross-checking" of making sure the remaining factors didn't cross a few times, notably in getting C (factors of 29, 31, 37).

This was a single-sitting solve, rare for me. Didn't check the time, but it clocked in at a few hours of hunting and pecking. I didn't use a spreadsheet, but I used one of those dinky old calculators that will repeat the last function if you press equals. I'm glad it printed on four sheets, I actually needed to spill over to a fifth to get all of my notes in. Here's how things looked at the end...

What looked like a daunting prospect turned out to be a pretty nice exercise in logic and patience - I had fun with this one. And a victory to George! With just a few crosswords left in the year I've stuck my neck out again, one more completion guarantees me at least a draw.

Current tally: George 24, Listener 22. Current streak: George 3.

If you're doing the holiday thing, have a safe and drunk one! I'll be in Houston next Friday, I'll have internet so I should be able to do the blog, but I may not have any images up, taking the scanner on the plane sounds like a bad idea.

Blog extra: two things

2008-12-19T07:17:00.001-08:00

Listen with Others has a new site, a new look, and some new bloggers. Are they taking a leaf out of my book by blogging failures? Not yet, but I'll be curious to see how it goes. I may submit a more "Listen With Others-y" style blog for a puzzle in the future, I might have to make a lot of it up...

"Sunday, 3pm, in Lear Jet passing over the FA Cup final while drinking 2003 Brunello de Montalcino. Solved the first 18 clues without thinking, looks like Bastrad's giving us an easy week. Put it down so I could get an eight-handed massage. Next morning, in conversation with the Aga Khan, he reminded me that TIA can be a Spanish aunt, so 8 across has to be 'whaT I Ate last night gave me the runs'. From there it was brisk solving remembering that letters from the names of the Pakistani openers from the 1980 (Taslim Arif and Sadiq Mohammad) went into the Playfair backwards, revealing, as I had suspected all along that alternate letters in the perimeter read 'If enough alcohol you do sup, rest assured you will throw up', and allowing MONK D'WALLY D'HONK to appear in the opposite diagonal. All finished in time for port on the deck of the QE 2".

I love Listen With Others - check it out!

Congratulations to Gordius for getting a Sarah Palin reference in today's Guardian crossword. I haven't laughed so hard at a clue in months.

OK, now to work on the blog for 4010.

A dangerous crossword!

2008-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

Franc is back! The setter of the first crossword I made a blog for here in the battle. And a round grid, which used to terrify me, but I've had a bit more luck on them this year, with good efforts on Babes and Squaring the Circle, but made a real mess out of Past Times.

Extra words in clues, first letters giving names. Jumbles, inwards, outwards, a name in the middle ring (an inventor with 12 letters - Thomas Edison came to mind). Second ring has others on the bill - is it an inventor who is on money? Ernest Rutherford is on New Zealand money, but he's a scientist, not an inventor. Let's try some clues.

The "wordplay only" clues in the second ring gave the game away pretty quickly... 2 is C,LOW,N, 6 is L(ION)S, and 3 is FIREATER (FIR,TREE,A)*,R. So it's something to do with a circus or a sideshow. Barnum/Bailey/Ringling? Let's try the radial clues.

I made a long slow slog of these clues...

I could often get two or three in each set, but not the fourth - finally I saw 33-36 (TALENT, S(LATE)R, JE(ST)ER, P(UR)EST and although all four have an S and a T, there wasn't two with the S at the start or the end, so I confidently had one letter entered in the grid, a T

Similarly, from 9-12, I had CH,ORAL, L(A,H)ORE, and BORE,AL - so there has to be an L in the center ring.

from 13-16 I had ESCHAR, CHEATS (yay, anagrams!) and INFECT (insect with F for S), so it had to be an E or a C.

From 5-8 I had SAMSHU, HAUL(M)S, and UL,TR,AS which meant either a U or an S...

Hmmm.... (U,S),L,(E,C).....T. Could the first name be JULES (The only one I knew from 1-4 at the time was SWARAJ, and it was very tempting to have J be the common letters).

Googling "circus" and "jules" gave JULES LEOTARD, who made his debut at the Napoleon Circus in Paris, and from the words I knew, I could fit JULES LEOTARD in the middle circle.

Now for the funny part - I had spent days agonizing over clues one at a time... I can't recall a puzzle I've spent longer to crack (I know this is being naughty, but there's one upcoming one that is taking a similar amount of time). I was so excited at seeing that Jules fit that I leapt out of the chair awkwardly and pinched something in my back and was in pain for hours.

Having seen the theme, it was piecing through the rest of the words to the finish. The exrta words kind of helped - I didn't know many of the last 8 answers straight away, but seeing HOUDINI as a possibility helped.

Victory to George! And I've got my nose in front again. Current tally: George 23, Listener 22. Current streak, George 2.

My DVD of this is broken, alas... when I think circuses, I think of the Marx Brothers film "At The Circus". Here's Groucho singing "Lydia The Tattooed Lady"

And here's me as a part of a circus sideshow from a burlesque show last St. Patrick's Day

See you for some numerology next week!

Knit where?

2008-12-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

After my embarrassment of the last two weeks, I'm really eager to get one right... is this the week?

149 is a new setter, so I don't really know what to expect, but I was expecting a preamble. I actually thought that there was going to be a correction that included a preamble, but there wasn't, there was a two-letter correction of the title. Hmmm...

I guess it's some sort of knitting pattern, which could mean changing letters around, moving them up and down. Some of the clues has asterisks, is that where something is cast off? Jumbled? Am I overthinking this?

Cold solving time... 1ac is VALET,A so the answer has the same number of letters as the grid entry. 11 is C,LOW,NS with an appropriately creepy surface. 12 is MOUSER (O in MUSER), 15 is CANT, 16 is TRITON... so far some pretty accessable clues. Do the downs fit with them? No sirree... 1 is DEC,ODES which doesn't match any crossing letters, yikes! 2 is A,L,ARMS which matches a few letters, 3 is FOR,INT which also matches two letters.

This is becoming a mess, and what can the p and k mean?

I cold solved as many clues as I could, and filled in the grid with all the words I was "sure" of, putting the across answers in the top and the down on the side. That gave me almost the grid that you see at the start of the entry. There were some match-ups, and a few promising features...

27 down, which had an asterisk (and I had no idea what the answer was), read WOOLLY - knitwear, hmmm
28 down also looked like a name, ELSIE
8 down was GULLIVER. If I kept the U, then I could turn it into PULLOVER, another piece of knitwear. Does this mean k means "keep" and p means "change"? Is there a logic to why G becomes P and I becomes O. GP? IO?
If I apply that to 6 down, BRAN could become ARAN. Also 26 SWEATER, 38 JUMPER. And since 27 is all the second letter of across entries (which are "kept"), it is WOOLLY. That leaves 43, which is --R-E-... I guessed at JERSEY.

Time for a new grid...

Putting together all the letters that were "k", I then had to fill some breaks and come back to the unsolved clues. 31 down was not ROLLER as I thought, but BEETLE.

This didn't give me a complete grid - there were some squares that were "p" for both halves or were unchecked and "p". Since it's all real words, I did have to poke around in Chambers word wizards to find the last few letters to go in - I'm not 100% convinced about the upper right corner (New England). If there was a pattern to "p", I'm afraid I've missed it.

But I'm calling this a victory (I know I tried that last week) to George, and tying the battle up going into the last handful of puzzles. Current tally: George 22, Listener 22. Current streak, George 1.

I was trying to think of a song that went along with this one, and for some reason I thought Alexei Sayle had a song about wearing jumpers, but I can't quite trace it. I did find this one, where he (and Marshall and Renwick) predicted the demise of Jonathan Ross almost 20 years ago.

Edit: The much hipper and thinner than I Chris Lancaster in the comments (he's working on a newer betterer Listen With Others site), reminds me that the song was "Where's My Jumper" by the Sultans of Ping.

Tempted to keep it at Tod Dylan...

2008-11-28T08:55:00.000-08:00

This is a little later than usual because I'm recovering from a rather impressive Thanksgiving feast. Americans know how to do gluttony and I'm more than willing to do my part. And here we go with Songspiel by Dysart, and remember what happened last week with seeing the theme almost straight away and then finding I couldn't finish the puzzle even with the thematic elements in place... well it may have happened again. Quick start, long struggle to a finish.

This appears to be my first puzzle by Dysart - I see in the Listener archives a 2006 puzzle I don't recall attempting. Edit: I had overlooked "Mercury's Whereabouts" earlier this year in which I got absolutely nowhere.

Down clues, misprints in letters in the definition, alternating sequence spelling out a musical piece (nice twist). Answers to be modified... well I guess it's time to work on that musical piece then.

Promising start - look for odd words... 1 down looks like SMOOCHING should be SMOOTHING - can't see the answer yet.
2 down, the wordplay looks like OIMLA or OIDIA, it turns out OIDIA is the plural of a disease of GRAPES
3 down, misprint looks pretty obvious - LESS relaxed, so TEN(=NET<=),SER Already, my set of misprints/original letters would be THE or CEA... so I know the pattern. I put little circles next to the down clues so I know where I'm looking for a letter to change 4 down - TAME looks like its ripe for the altering, not sure what the answer is 5 down - has to be SITTING SAT, making it TES,TEE 7 down - can't see it, but MIME looks awkward 8 down - the misprint looks like it should be "unstimulating to EAT", an anagram search turns up INSULSE And already we have THE TIME... which makes me think it's THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN' - it has the right number of letters, and the song addresses writers, critics, senators, congressmen, fathers and mothers - six groups! So I write the alternating misprints/in my circles. We've already had "lost time" this year so it seems reasonable that we should have some changed time - either the letter T or words meaning time.

So I charged through the down clues and then back to the acrosses and found I was on the right track - an easy place to see was 37 d (WAN,T - LACK) crossing with 37 across (TEENY). Changing the T to the clashing letter made both entries real words. I still had a real struggle to fill in the grid, I wasn't familiar with a lot of these words so it was multiple hunt and peck sessions through Chambers and Bradfords. I made a lot of this hard on mysef, without thinking I wrote in URINARY for 27, thinking that RARY would be a showy plant, where of course it was the much more straightforward ROSE making URINOSE.

The T's on the top row can resolve themselves into BOB DYLAN, and that left a grid with all real words and no Ts.

The last part... hmmm... that guy who needed the spellchecker SPENSERis in 26 across, so there's the writers taken care of. 39 down GOV is our senators and congressmen gone. ONASSIS is there at 14, I assume that's the mother. 19 or 18 could be our fathers, so I hope I'm right in saying there's no critic represented in the grid - my missing group.

I'm not 100% on that final step, so I might have to correct the tally in the comments, but for now I'm calling this a win for George - current tally George 22, Listener 21, current streak George 1.

I'll admit, I'm not much of a Bob Dylan fan... I can't find an online clip of Eric Bogle singing this song, but this guy with a guitar does a pretty decent job (needs help with his microphone levels).

Am I really this dense?

2008-11-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

Phi has always stumped me, actually I think this is about the furthest I've gotten on a Phi puzzle, but I read the preamble, looked at the title and the date, and I thought this was going to be an absolute cakewalk.

Halloween is the main reason for anyone to live in the US, and I was hoping for a Halloween themed crossword either October 25 or November 1. And this looked like it - interruptions to the programme, the timing, this has got to be Orson Welles radio verson of H.G. Wells' "The War of The Worlds", and the modification is probably adding an E or subtracting an E. And there's the right number of characters in 11, 17, and 29 for "The War Of The Worlds" (maybe broken up or jumbled, since it says "broadcast" in the preamble). And a clue even jumped out at me - 38 is DOSE, and leave the E off and it will cross with 24 down, ASSO(R)TS, 33 down VET,O and that D is in the title of "The War of the Worlds".

So what went wrong...

I just have to get better at Phi/Sabre/Dipper/Mr Lemon wordplay... I can't wrap my head around a certain style of clue and this appears to be it. I can't for the life of me solve any of the "snippets" even once I've gotten a few checking letters (it just occurred to me that maybe the snippets are jumbles and meant to be entered so?).

Even with the few I've put in the grid here I'm not overly happy with AFFLICTS or FOLIO.

So Fie on you Phi! I'm hoping that I'm barking up completely the wrong tree, but I just have this sinking feeling I've worked out the theme and the clues have just left me in the dust. Victory to the Listener Crossword and the battle is tied!

Current tally: Listener 21, George 21. Current streak, Listener 2

Since I understand Phi is in New Zealand, let's see if we can spot him in a video clip from New Zealand's greatest band ever, Split Enz.

Duck duck goose, mine is cooked!

2008-11-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

Warning: this is not correct - it's my grid before the "flight path" changing, which I couldn't work out.

My copy of Bradford's arrived last year in the same week that the solution was published to Tea Leaves' last Listener (Band on the Run), so it was one of the first puzzles that I started to get closer to a full grid on. I was looking forward to this, and although I'm really flummoxed by what had to happen at the end, I spent a lot of time having fun here.

OK - double clues, one goes in the grid in pencil (I'm not much of a pencil fan, i was going to do it in pen and then start a fresh one for the second part - though I think it probably means things are going to be erased and the final grid has some blank spaces). There's 38 whopping clues to be solved cold with the answers falling into five groups.

My approach was to solve as many as I could and see if I could get the first grid before moving on to these sets and a hidden message. I'm at my best with normal clues, normal entry (who isn't), so it only took me two sessions to come up with the grid before you. Once I started the grid - with the rather helpful starting point being 5 across (CEDAR, hidden and SET,UP) crossing 7 down (HAG,LET - and a bird fitting with the title, PLAN,E-T) giving only one option, I looked through the clues for the half that fit in the grid.

So, complete grid, and I think I know the five categories - I had found five games (four of which are card games- is CHESS a card game too?), five birds, seven containers, five colors (NANKEEN refers both to the cloth and a color), and four trees/plants.

The title seems to hint that the birds are going to be the group of ten (and two of the clues that I have left to solve have types of birds in them, probably the definitions). So if I eliminate CRANE from the first five extra answers, it looks like I can make NEW by taking the first letter of NANKEEN, then second letter of CEDAR, third letter of PAWPAW... and that's it.

Stuck!

Even knowing that I'm looking for birds, games, colors or trees, there's 12 I can't figure out...

Across
13: Plane might be indicating a tree... C-----
15: The second half of this clue is making my head hurt - I was thinking a game with a girl's name
27: Second half of clue again. Do I just have mental blanks on 10-letter words?
29: SOT/SOP in IOU makes nothing
30: Six letter French girl? Maybe the name of a game
33: There's a bird called a RURU that might fit here
34: I thought this was CRATE originally, but I already have seven containers
35: ----ISA = hollow?

my unknowns come in bunches, which is killing me on trying to find that message

Down
2: I can't wait to find out the answer, because that is an awesome surface... "smack heroin in poison"
6: Is this WHITE?
19: Kite is usually ELANET, it probably is here too but I can't see why
23: If this involved the name of a rugby plater I'm done for, the only two I know are Mel Meninga and Wally Lewis
25: completely stuck, can't even find a likely definition.

Tea Leaves, you have foiled me again! Victory Listener crossword and the race is ever so tight with just a few puzzles to go. Listener 21, George 20. Current streak, Listener 1.

I still think that this has something to do with erasing or moving the names of the birds (though I can't find CRANE in the grid), which made me think of the Peter Gabriel/Laurie Anderson collaboration "Excellent Birds/This is the Picture".

now to go find out what I did wrong...

George AND Signal Boxes AND solved NOT easily AND with a lot of fun along the way = 1

2008-11-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

This is the third Ploy puzzle I've tried - I got about a half-filled grid on "Travelling Light" and absolutely nowhere on "Pater and Son" (from a time where I'd print out the puzzle and be too bogged down in preambles to get started anywhere). Five elements have associated points, each has to be set appropriately, four thematic words (are they also the elements?), two names, two topics.

After my last few failures, a big sigh of relief that clues are normal! Not only that, but my "please make the first across clue an starter clue so I can get into it" plea has been heard, so we have a straightforward alphabetisation in 1A - So That Electric Points Use Power.

I enjoued the clueuing - Ploy seems to have gone for long surfaces here, which I think is my style of clue (apologies to Pieman, and also to Charybdis from last week). Theres some juicy substitution clues - DELAWARE becoming DE LA MARE at 13 is very nice.

First hint of something up comes with 2D and 17AC. 17 has to be VIOL, and 2 has to be TABOO. Combine that with a memory from earlier this year that a SIRI is a betel and we have clashing Is and Os... which would go with the theme - it's ON(1) or OFF(0) if I'm not mistaken.

I was giving a friend a ride home and talking about my exploits with the crossword when it clicked... I told him about the 1/0 thing and said "I bet those two right next to each other have a B and an LE in them to make BOOLE". After dropping him off, I couldn't wait, I grabbed the crossword and saw it... TABOO|LEAFFALL and there's my fellow George! And looky - two columns along has PUTLOG|I|C and there's Boole's logic. I have an almost full grid, but working from the other end, there's CERCI|R|CUITTLE (I learned along the way from Chambers that those crazy Italians decided NOON should be at 3pm). So there's CIRCUIT, and two more columns in there's PASHA|N|NONIRON (thanks for throwing a chemist a bone by putting LIGNIN at 34). A bit of googling tells me there is such a thing as a SHANNON CIRCUIT. Thematic words done.

But there's still some clashes, and they're in the middle... hmmm....

It took me another two days to see what was going on... the clashes were every second column, and what twigged it for me was seeing NAND in the middle of SYNANDRIUM. And things fell into place... OR, NOT, AND, NAND and NOR are in between the clashing Os and Is. The whole thing is a logic puzzle! Here's how it works...

the 0 from BOOLE is operated on by OR to give 0, making the PUTLOG/SIRI clash 0.

That 0 and the 1 underneath (from CIAO) are operated on by NOT to give 1, setting the PEREIA/OATY (great clue there by the way)

Had to look forward here... there's an AND and a NAND coming up to give me the O in SHANNON. The only way to get 0 in NAND is to give it 1 and 1, so my AND has to be 1 and 1, setting the CIAO/ILIA clash as I, also setting the CAPITOL/INNERS and BLINI/OCREA clash as I.

The NOR has to give the 1 in CIRCUIT making the RORTY/NON-IRON clash 0.

Brings back memories of Mathematics I from University, and a great "ending" to the puzzle... I still had two to fill after all of this, I couldn't quite verify 45, my guess was from the wordplay and it was being used as a screen name so I guess it's right. I'm still calling this one a very fun victory. Good stuff, Ploy - this was well put-together and a lot of fun at the end.

Current tally: George 22, Listener 20 (still tight), Current streak: George 1.

Nothing to do with circuits, but I'm quite excited that Danielson are doing another show in Asheville. They're either the most Christian rock band ever or they're making fun of it all, but no matter what, their shows are hysterically good fun. If you want to know more, check out this clip, and yes, all those people are in the band and they do use acoustic instruments.

Empty, by George

2008-10-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

No bars, strange numbers, clues in usual order, some misprints in definitions.

Why can I get absolutely nowhere on this crossword? I've stared at it for hours, I've looked up every single word in every single clue in Chambers and Bradfords. I've invented all sorts of misprints and looked them up. I've done everything but cheat...

I can't even get started on this one.

Let's possibly redeem something... we have to guess the name of the setter, so I'm going to presume it's a regular setter. You rarely see someone with more than one puzzle in a year, so let's eliminate all setters going back to October 2007. Probably someone who set last year...

Poat? Maybe... seems to like odd grids. Only set two puzzles in the last three years, so maybe not familiar enough to solvers to use as an identifiable setter.
Arachne? Also not that many crosswords.
Charybdis? Likely contender... set quite a few in the last year but none since "Wot No Lines" (which I couldn't finish, but liked).
Bandmaster? Maybe, but the Bandmaster puzzles I've done have had a lot of clues, and this has very few.
Kea? I hope not, because I really loved "Safe Cracking" and the one with the crazy slanty lines.

So I'm putting my money behind Charybdis, let's see if I can get anything about it.

I am so stuck...

Across...

1. Looks like it might be a misprint definition for "encouraging six", because otherwise wordplay would be hinting at VI,EN, (on?). VIENNESE wouldn't fit a misprint of "encouraging". So maybe EN------. Enticing? Could ON give me TICING?
7. Cut Flower... oh, maybe it's a Dipper puzzle? No idea.
8. Maybe a misprint giving "homelessness"? But can't think of a 4-letter word. American boast cut short for wordplay?
9. If "egg" is "ego" misspelled then I could have N-MO- and something like NO MORE as the miprints. The only word I can think for "operation for birth" is CAESARIAN which isn't 8 letters.
10. FINALLY! ARENA - N gives AREA and a misprinted R.
13. IN out of ORDINARY gives ORDARY which doesn't make any anagrams I can think of.
14. Wordplay looks like NINTH as a hidden word. Nothing that means NINTH seems to fit the definition or a misprint in the definition.
18. Could be long ball? S--- SAIR? SALP?
19. ST-----R? WAYFARER?
21. Anagram of WEST? STEW? WETS?
22. Misprint maybe for "they're trapped"? ORAL in SPAN?

Down
1. EDGAR!! Got one!
2. One of the five-letter muses? Maybe starting with N, that doesn't help
3. I--ICAL? Living woman?
4. A rugby term for error? Don't know any rugby. Wordplay not giving me anything.
5. No idea...
6. EME,US, and we have a misprint of U -bush birds. The grid shape seems to be suggesting this crosses with 1 across, which would mean enticing isn't right. It could go next to EDGAR, I guess.
11. LOSSIER (RISSOLE)*.
12. Making furniture in six letters? CHAIRY?
14. Could be misprint of shunted? -M---?
15. That's an odd surface, I'm sort of running low on inspiration now
16. C(H)ARDS, misprint of R for T in tummy
17. SOMA? That's a wild guess since it's appeared in a Times and a Jumbo lately.

So great... I'm only sure of 5 clues, and I can't really place any of them, but I think 1ac starts EN so I put in EDGAR. Might as well be an empty grid.

Off to check where I failed on this one, but we can stamp it FAIL

Victory Listener crossword and possibly Charybdis. The lead is almost eroded! Current tally Listener 20, George 21. Current streak, Listener 3!

All the Henrys I know except Clay, Matisse and Thoreau

2008-10-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

First thing that struck me after printing off Listener 4002: A Process of Induction by Emkay was the grid. That's a very nice-looking grid, blank perimeter, criss-crossing of three long answers, the word in the middle meaning that it's pretty neatly blocked off into four quarters. I didn't weigh in on the discussion in the Crossword Club, but I have an aesthetic fondness for symmetric grids.

According to the Listener site, Emkay's last puzzle was in 2005, when I wasn't regularly attempting the Listener, and I don't recall that last puzzle, so here's a new setter for me.

The preamble suggests a plan of attack - the long answers are to be entered normally, as are any words that don't touch the perimeter. So let's start with those...

I "cheated" almost straight away... the definition for 15ac sounded like it should be ------SPHERIC... tropospheric isn't the right number of letters, nor is ionospheric or mesospheric. THERMOSPHERIC is, and I coudn't make it match the wordplay, but a search on ------SPHERIC on word wizards turned up CHROMOSPHERIC, which would fit the wordplay as R in C,Ho,Mo,S,P,H,Er,I,C (a degree in Inorganic Chemistry occasionally comes in handy). 35ac is an anagram - CAUTION,THREAT turning into AUTHENTICATOR, and 3D is HORSE,CHESTNUT. Thanks for the three starter clues, Emkay, we're off!

I'd like to stay I stuck with the game plan of filling in the normal entry clues, but since I got the first three I looked at, I decided to barge in and solve as many as I could, and when there were jumbles, write the letters on the side of the grid and eliminate checking letters. The clues were a mix of very tricky and pretty easy - here's my favorites...

6A - DR(ONG)OS(s) - cute little bird, and Australian term of insult
18A - ELD,EST
20A - CLEANER (anagram of LAWRENCE-W)
5D - ORRA - hidden reversed in wheelbARROw
23D - EELS - every fourth letter is a new one for me
31D (deva)STATE - the sort of clue I used to miss a lot, taking a small word away from a long word

After two sessions of solving, I had a pretty decent-looking grid, but still a lot of blanks across that centre, it looked like -O---H-E-R-. Putting that into Word Wizards (I relied a lot on Word Wizards for this one), suggested HOORAH HENRY, and this dropping was too big for a penny - the brick dropped. Are the perimeters Henrys? Look a the first one... FOR,D. We're on to something... if they're Henry's, that (9,two words) would be THE EIGHTH... E in HE in TIGHT,H (nice wordplay, Emkay). Further confirmation, anagram of virgin gives me IRVING.

I wrote down all the Henrys I knew... Clay, Matisse, Thoreau, Purcell, Mancini and tried to retrofit them into the perimeter clues. There's MANCI,NI, and PUR(e)CELL (and places to put them). A wikipedia and google search of Henrys gave me TH(I)E,R,RY as a soccer-playing Henry. That left me with two 4-letter Henry's to find. I thought the mild cheese one was C(LA)Y, but a google search of Cyprus cheese turned up HALLOUMI, and that Henry Hall was a 17th century poet. Finally putting in HENRY -O-D suggested Henry Wood (concert leader), so I presume the bird is a woodchuck without the chuck or something like that.

This was a lot of fun to solve! The Henrys were fun, and trickily clued, and I enjoyed doing the research to finish this off. There was a real sense of playfulness that resonated with me here. And I managed to get the theme and the answer pretty readily after some slogging.

Victory to George! Current tally - George 22, Listener 18. Current streak, George 2.

Finding Henry Theirry reminded me of an hysterical track by Cassetteboy on their most recent CD, "Carry On Breathing". Warning - while this is technically safe for work, you may not want to play it with sensitive ears present.

Until next week - comments welcome!

Amo = something you fire from a gun, Amat = something you sit on, Amamus = a pregnant rodent

2008-10-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

"Normal" blog resumes, with 4000 stashed away for a snowy week. We have a crossword with an interesting shaped grid by Alban, a kind of a tribute crossword. It appears Alban's last puzzle was in 2002, and was all German words. the one before that was all French, before that more German.

So armed with that little bit of foreknowledge about Alban and the title, I think we're up against some Latin. The first across I could see the wordplay to (12ac - LUC(k),RUM) confirms this - Latin roots that appear with the words in Chambers.

My Latin is pretty terrible, so I turned to a friend who is a Classics professor for some assistance. She liked this crossword a lot (her mother does the Times).

The phrase QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM came to mind almost instantly when looking at 4,4,14.

Something bugged me a little here, after the first sitting I had the theme, the hidden phrase, and probably half of the grid filled in. It didn't seem all that important to fill in the rest of the grid, which meant poring through Latin dictionaries and emailing my Classics friend. There's probably some mistakes in the left-hand side of the grid.

Looking through Alban's previous puzzles, some of them sound truly inspired (a tribute to Douglas Adams!, and a cubic puzzle), hopefully a few will be in the new Listener book that may find its way to the US (or I'll cave and order it from the UK, might have to make it and Chambers a Christmas present to myself).

George 21, Listener 18. Streak: George 1.

I can't vote, but I'm caught up in the US election anyway. I live in one of these "swing states" that is being heavily canvassed, and on Sunday, James Taylor is coming to my little town to do a concert to support Barack Obama. I've got a ticket, James Talyor is a kind of a guilty pleasure, but whenever I think of him, I think of this

Vincent Price looks so happy in this clip.

Listener 4000: saved for a rainy week

2008-10-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

It has not been the best of three weeks. Two illnesses, two trips out of town, writing a show , and a couple of performances have really eaten into my crossword time.

Listener 4000 looks like a work of art, and it wasn't until a second look at it that I realised the "individual" crosswords occupy the same space. I don't want to do a half-assed job on it, so I'm not going to look at the answers, and I'll be saving Listener 400 for a rainy week (maybe a week-long trip I have to Houston in December).

I'm calling this a timed-out failure. Listener 18, George 20. Current streak, Listener 2.

Smoke if you've got 'em

2008-10-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

On a plane from Atlanta to Asheville last year, I got almost half of Convert by Mr. Lemon out - I saw that there was a Harry Potter theme from identifying "Diagon Alley" in the extra letters, and I started to pick up more of the tricks that help with solving Listeners. I never did finish it, but I was looking forward to seeing what Mr. Lemon had in store with Tobacco.

16 answers need metallic changes, remaining clues lead to an answer with an extra letter. A message makes it all clear.

Starting on the across clues, nothing jumped out until 12 - (A1,TITIAN)*,ED makes INTITATED with an extra A, and right after it is DIAL + C (hidden). 18 looks like the first answer that needs changing - LO in SAL giving SALON, and a letter needs to be removed (since I'm writing this well after coming up with that, I'm pretty sure SALON isn't right).

Then a bunch of unsolveables, until I hit 21 across... (OIKS)*,MET gives KISMET + O, S(CAN)S, then (LAIC,TYPE)* gives ECTYPAL + I, didn't know 27, (t)RAIL+S, 32 looks like something...ISHLY, a peek at Bradfords and there's SNOTTY for midshipman, so SOTTISHLY + N, and 33 is a clue I like a lot - TOO in OLEO (appearing in 73% of New York Times crosswords) gives O'TOOLE + O. I have almost all the bottom half of acrosses written in.

Downs... trickier. 4 is SAGINATE and needs changing. 6 is SCREE,N, another change (change appears to be losing one letter, or some modification that leaves a word one shorter). For 7, (ANY,SIOUX)* about AL gives ANXIOUSLY + A, 8 is SE,RA+N, and then a bit of a break.

16 is (KAREN) in SOOT which gives SNAKEROOT, and since I have the K,E,R and O, then the modification looks like it's in the first three characters. Sn and Na are chemical symbols for metals - are we merging the two and getting rid of the N?

20 looks like (LINT)* in GAGS to give GATLING+S (that fits). If 23 is C(LOTH)O+N (fits), 26 is PAOLO+I, and a trip to Bradfords to look up cattle gives GYAL so that's an extra N to finish off.

With the words I've written in, I can see a few more clues - 1 ac is BAR,BAR,Y COAST+T (nice clue). I scanned this a little early, I saw 2 is A,RUN,HEM to give ARNHEM+U. Word Wizards suggests TELEOLOGICAL will fit at 35, it has an anagram of COLLEGE and ALI, but I don't see where the rest of the clue could come from.

Since BARBARY COAST is in place, making 4D start with A, there goes the merging metals idea - are we just losing the S so the word starts with a metal symbol (Ag)?

The extra letters look like this T?BAC?OI?SNO?U?AN?DS?N?I?N. TOBACCO IS NOT(NOW?) U AND S?N?I?N? I've got nothing.

And I am stuck...

Looking at it now, I think it probably is removing the first letter so that answers start with the symbol for a metal, that would explain the metallic change, and although it doesn't match what I have in the grid, my need to change answers can all do this...

SALON - ALON (but that wouldn't work with SAGINATE??)
SAGOUIN - AG
SCANS - CANS
35 may have been STELEOLOGICAL to becomne TELEOLOGICAL?
SAGINATE - AG
SCREEN - CREEN

Dammit - is it S that needs to be taken off?
SNAKEROOT - NAKEROOT

Was I this close?

Well done Mr. Lemon - victory to the Listener Crossword. Listener 17, George 20. Current streak, Listener 1.

Blog Extra: Shameless Self-promotion

2008-09-26T12:08:00.001-07:00

I wrote and starred in a short film that was shown at a few shows over summer, and it's now digimatized on YouTube. Lose three minutes of your life with - "The Perfect Chair" (directed by Wyman Tannehill)

Little boy blue come blow your lur

2008-09-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

Now this is a pretty nifty idea, a circular crossword in a square grid. We had a circular crossword in a crazy-shaped grid a few weeks ago, and the entry method is about the same, words go inwards, outwards and are jumbled, and the ones on the corners go in diagonally - so really this grid is four 6x6 crosswords to fill in, with a quotation and a name running in two squares.

I hadn't heard of Centigram before, and a peek at the Listener site shows four puzzles, the most recent being 1992 (long time between drinks!), and that one of them was the floor plan of a house with 6x6 rooms. Centigram, if you're reading, I'm really curious to see that crossword, it sounds fascinating.

The diagonals touch every entry (and none were jumbled), so let's start with them and work on these 6x6s.

Couldn't get 6, but 17 is TUPI in SD giving the lovely word STUPID. 13 is MEEMIE, so the I's cross if MEEMIE goes inwards as does stupid. 14 is a cute clue for CARPET, 15 looks like ASSURE, couldn't get 16, 18 is D,EARTH, 19 is HUMERI, 20 is a wonderful clue for STUMPS. Damn, I just noticed I left the P off the end of 21. 22 is an excellent clue for IMATED. So a little hunt and pecking to get DRUIDS and ETHISM, and I had one corner out quite readily.

This was the approach I took to get the grid completed - the lower left corner (in my Americanized version of crosswording, I call that the Desert corner) and upper right corner (New England) were trickier than the lower right (Florida) and the upper left (Hippy corner).

Getting the quotation really helped in getting out these tricky corners. The second "square" in was looking promising already with DEARTHSIM, and then later on NERSBLOWY. I could also see DONNE, so I knew I was dealing with John Donne (though the only quote I knew from him was "no man is an island"). Googling John Donne quotes involving earth and blow brought up the Holy Sonnets and the quotation I was looking for.

To get the end, there was a little dilemma - the quote matches the crossword well, it's given something round corners - the letters in the corner of this grid were ULRS, which could make SLUR, which would fit rounding square sounds, or LURS, and a lur turns out to be a trumpet, so the blown trumpet is at the corners.

This is one impressive puzzle, Centigram. I was slow to get started, but once I got that first corner out, it was a lot of fun to fill in. I can't heap enough praise on the clues - this is my style of cryptic clueing - the surfaces range from smutty to bizarre and for that many 6-letter words, they are presented in any number of ways.

And I'll call this one a victory for George - current tally: George 20, Listener 16. Current streak - George 1.

I've already sent them an email, but congrats to the Google NYC team for taking runners-up in last week's Listener - nice to know a winner.

And since we have a metric setter, here's a video for a song by the late great band, the Centimeters

3507 1

2008-09-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

I scanned my grid last night, and didn't upload it to flickr straight away, so you'll have to wait to see my unfortunate grid for this one.

After saying early in the year that I can usually solve numerical Listeners, Oyler and now Elap have had their ways with me! And I saw what I presume is the theme quickly - the first few numbers I got and the title of the puzzle gave it away, it's calculatot language, entering 07734 in a calculator and looking at it upside down gives "hello". So 53704 918 (or 618 at the end) would give BIG HOLES.

I was off to a really quick start...

14 down (Q) is a factorial, the only 4 digit factorial is 5040 (7!)
6 down: O! plus a few fiddly bits gives a 7-digit number, so O has to be 10 (can't be 9)
3 across: W = 3T = 3O + T, is now an algebra equation 3T = 30+T, T = 15, W=45
32 across: U = TO + 2T, so U is 180
This means since V - OU = 7, V has to be 1807, and goes in 28 down
Having both halves of 32 across, H=18 (and since 26 across is OY + OK + A, A has to end in 1)
35 across is AUU + PQ + U and is ---7-80. The only A that fits this pattern and ends in 1 is A=51
This makes 2D H+A+TH = 339, and since 1D is OOE +2V and has to end --14, E is 19, and 1D is 5514

And that is where I came to a grinding halt... 1ac is EYY + O + E + A, and solving 19Y^2 + 80 = 534-- means Y is 53... from there I tried to work on K and R and didn't get a good solution for either.

The puzzle looks great, and I've racked my brain to see where I could go next, I'm sure I'm missing something simple.

So that's a victory to Elap and the Listener Crossword. Current tally: Listener 16, George 19. Current streak, Listener 1.

Now off to find out where I was wrong and print off the eagerly-anticipated, triple-barrelled Listener 4000 (gulp).

Ready. maestro?

2008-09-12T07:42:00.000-07:00

Oh boy did I make a bosh of last week's on many levels. One thing that I completely spaced on was the second ring from the middle having a letter in common on all three answers, so I shouldn't have been surprised that there were more overlapping letters than I though. OK, enough about that, on to Half a Ton by Llig.

This is the first Llig puzzle I've attempted, and looking at the archive it appears Llig favors music and Germans. It's a relief to see a normal looking grid after last week, we have symmetry, and something running around the outside, and a number of clues are connected to the perimeter.

It appears normal clue entry, making this a regular cryptic until I get to the outside. The clues were fun, I did notice in solving a lot of compound anagrams, maybe more in down clues, but I didn't count them.

Curious about what goes around the perimeter, I worked on the down clues first so I could have some of the top line...

1down - NAUSEA compound anagram of AS JENUFA with F and J
2 - WAS,PS
3 - ENCODE (odd clue, not sure I really understand the wordplay, is it E,D,E around COD?
4 - NAIRA - compound anagram of OCARINA with O,C
6 - CROSS,TOWN
7 - E-P,ROM
8 - DIDO (hidden)

-NWEN--C-ED-- entered into word wizards gave me ON WENLOCK EDGE and the theme was taken care of straight away - I read up on Ralph Vaughan Williams and his "cut out" approach to music, which was interesting (though I'm still not a fan), and see that the rest of the perimeter gave SERENADE TO MUSIC RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.

Got the whole thing done in two fairly short sittings, but I think it helped a lot that I got the theme in quickly, was anticipating music or Germany and knew a little bit about old Rafe. Compound anagrams are one of my favorite type of clue, so I was a happy camper working them out.

And after last week, I'm back on track - victory to George! Current tally: George 19, Listener 15. Current streak, George 1.

Here is a "recording" of a part of "On Wenlock Edge" by the Perverts' Chorus

The stuff of nightmares...

2008-09-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

Let the excuses begin... this puzzle came out in a week where I was away from printers and computers for most of the time, so I didn't get to really work on it until after the next puzzle came out. The grid shaped scared me. There's jumbled words and clues that are listed together. The only real words in the radials are thematic ones with no clue as to how to get them?

Crikey!

I present you with the effectively empty grid. A few years ago there were a lot of these, but since I started the blog, I haven't had a paltry effort like this. I'm dying to go back and see what it was that I missed.

I think there's something to do with the letters in the quadrants - I tried to figure these out by solving as many of the radial clues as possible and looking for extra letters. I thought I was off to a good start - the clues for 1 gave me CINERARIUM (anagram of RARE,I,CUMIN) and DIABLERIES. Both of these are 10 letters, meaning they're not the long entry in 1, and the common letters are IEAR, and the entries in 2 and 3 all have to have these letters. That makes the second half of 2 REANIMATE, but didn't help me with the rest of 2 or 3.

I think the second part of 4 is OBOVATE, but the rest of 4 and 5 elude me. 6 I do better on, DE(n)SO,LA,TE and SE(STET)TO. Each are 8 letters long, so there should be three letters in the quadrant, common ones are OTES, and if 4 is OBOVATE, then it's OTE.

7 Gives me JET,PLAN,E, and TULIPANTS - 8 letters and 9 letters, so JETPLANE goes jumbled in the middle one, and there's only two letters in the middle. Common are T,P,L,A. 8 gives me PENALTY for the last half, which has all of TPLA, but the first half of 9 is LIASE so it has to be LA in the quadrant.

10 I'm stuck on, the first half of 11 is DEMOCRATIC (10 letters), and it looks like the second half should be IDIOMISM (9 letters), not sure of the middle bit. The first part of 12 is INDAGATOR, the three words have IDO in common, and that would fit in the middle unless there's an 11-letter thematic word.

The rings don't help me at all... the answers for ring 5 appear to be INSURES, UNSEAMS and ENVOI, but that's only 19 letters and there's 36 space in ring 5?

I'm lost...

Well done MynoT, I am soundly thrashed on this one, I can't wait to find out what I missed.

Victory to the Listener Crossword: Listener 15, George 18. Current streak: Listener 1.

Blog Extra: Guardian and Listener

2008-09-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

The Guardian's Crosswords are now available free online.

I've had a go at the dailies this week and printed off last week's Azed but haven't had a chance to try it. Their interface is really nice, and the .pdf version of the crossword has won me over - it prints perfectly on one sheet of American letter paper, and has some white space under the crossword for scribbling.

I'm on the road for the next two days, so my blog of 3995 is going to be a day or two late.

dum dum dum dum ping ping dum dum dum dum dum ping ping bzzzzzzzz

2008-08-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

I scanned my grid this morning but forgot to upload it to flickr, so I'll have to update this later.

Zero had one nifty puzzle in 2007 where the grid turned out to be a map of Italy, and I got absolutely nowhere with it. This one has an odd-shaped (but symmetric grid) and a very short preamble. Shading and affected cells - in the Italy one I think it was clashes?

On to the clues, I found the clues pretty tough - made even more tough by 24-27 across being omitted by my printer! It was obvious quickly that most answers were too long for the grid entry - the first two I saw were NEMESES for 13a, ON A PLATE (A PLAT in ONE) for 14a, ETUDE for 15a, CZAR for 17 and EXCERPT for 18, so it's likely to be dropping letters or multiple-letter clashes. Since I had three close together, I want to the downs, saw INEZ for 2 (INES and INEZ being on the brain since popping up in Yes by Lato), so something is fishy with that AR. 18 down is EXAM (AXE back with M) which works with my EX in EXCERPT, so maybe it's many letters crammed in the one spot.

Big penny drop moment was ON A PLATE... if it is two letters in each square, then I have ON, AP, LA, TE - and those fit with the downs LONER, NEAP, BLASTED and HAUTE. So a lot of checked spots have two letters, cool! In an hour or so I've got a grid filled more than half-way with a lot of double letter clusters in the middle, and none around the outside. I thought there was probably none at 1ac either, which left me with a problem for a while at 10ac, thinking that ET (from HETES) went there.

40 is unclued... and from assuming that there were no doubled-up cells in the bottom row I had -P-CE-N-ADERS... SPACE INVADERS! And shading in the doubly-filled squares, there's one of the little beasties!

This took me two sittings, so it's probably easy by Listener standards, the end was very fun though, making the grid so that the shape of the space invader fit checked cells and having the grid still have 180-degree symmetry when the space invader itself doesn't is a really nice touch. I had to browse through Chambers to get a few of the last clues (like SOKEN at 30D). This one is a victory for George, and back to a little breathing room. Nice puzzle, Zero, if you're looking in.

Current tally: George 18, Listener 14. Current streak: George 1.

This made me think of when New Zealand ruled new-wave music, so here's "Computer Games" by Mi-Sex

Argentdum

2008-08-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

The dreaded Palyfair square... I have not even attempted a crossword with such a beastie, and I didn't even get to filling out the square here.

This is the first Radix Listener I've attempted, I wasn't doing them regularly in 2005 when the last one appeared, but I have read some of Radix' postings on the Crossword Centre. And it looked like it had some elements I could get into - words needing to be removed, leding to a phrase.

But time really caught up on me these last few weeks with a move, a couple of big shows and some other commitments and this one kind of fell by the wayside. I only spent two long sessions with Chambers and Bradfords and couldn't crack all that many of the clues, and no enough to start to make the message appear.

And after a few good shots I'm starting to feel like a beginner again. Sorry, Radix, it looked like a really nice challenge that I wasn't up to. And with the corrections that were pointed out for last week (I thought that was LAR+DO at 22 down), that makes two in a row that I've missed!

Current tally: George 17, Listener 14. Current streak, Listener 2.

La symbol phallique

2008-08-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

The preamble didn't leave masses to the imagination - clues start at some point in the grid entry (and as turned out useful later on, every clue was affected, so none could start at the same point). 12 letters to shade at the end (in this case I've chosen the green highlighter of doom).

I'll jump to the end - this was one of the fastest finishes I've had of a Listener crossword, a little over an hour after starting I had the grid filled in except for 26, which took a little guesswork. The starting point was at the bottom - with 32 being COLLEAGUE, 28 being TALC (and the C not able to be the checking letter), and 23 being HOURI there was only once option available, and I worked around the grid from there. There were some very nice but not too-challenging clues - I liked 7D, and the anagram at 2.

As for the finish, with 12 letters and LA TOUR staring me in the face, it took a moment to find the EIFFEL making the shape of the tower. This was a well-done grid, I don't know if the preamble had to give away the method of entry so quickly, maybe hinting at it would have provided more of a challenge?

But I'm over the moon thanks to Pilcrow - that is a new record 5 in a row for George!

Current tally: George 18, Listener 12. Current streak: George 5.

Here's the song that I couldn't get out of my head while solving.

At last, a crossword with the flowers removed

2008-08-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

I've tried (and failed dismally) on two previous Dipper puzzles: 3946 (Growing Pains) which had clues for vegetables as extra words and 3895 (Where and Tare). A distinct horticultural theme, as well as title. Grid entries in across clues are shorter than the clue answers, and grid entries in the downs are the same length.

So either a flower has to be removed from the answer in the acrosses, or the across answers are flowers derived from the across wordplay somehow? Alternative arrangements makes it sound like downs could be jumbled (ack).

I started on the acrosses. The first one that caught my eye was 14, if we have MAR,S and a 12 letter word for sweets, that's likely to be MARSHMALLOWS. MALLOW sounds like it could be a flower, so it's either MARSHS or MALLOW. I can't figure out the rest of the wordplay in the clue. 16 looks like KEROSENE, with the wordplay giving KENE (hidden) and ROSE the flower unindicated by the wordplay. But which is the grid entry? 24 provides the answer to that - three letters in the grid are the wordplay OT,E and there's SCILLA missing to give OSCILLATE. Anything else in the acrosses? The wordplay for 26 looks like BIN,O,ID, so (CANNA)BINOID. 40 looks like a compound anagram in the wordplay, SHE,ISN'T less IT gives HNESS... (IRIS)HNESS. The definition and 15 letters in 41 make it look like AMERICANISATION or AMERICANIZATION (depending on if you Americanize it), ERICA the flower, and the wordplay is A,M, IS in NATION. 42 looks like INTE or RRED, neither of which are revealing anything, and 43 looks like another compound anagram of RETNAIN...

With my acrosses filled in, and some odd letters next to each other in downs, it appears the jumble guess is going to be right. Oh - it helped that I went back to another compound anagram, in 11, which I'd thought was probably STATIC ELECTRICITY and found that a STATICE is a flowering plant.

The down clues are normal, but from the first one I solved (2 - P,OLDER - which had to fit into -L-E--), it was clear that things had to be jumbled. A few down entries had more than one unchecked cells, so unless there was a hidden message (and there wasn't anything hinting that in the preamble, repeated letters in a word have to go in those unchecked cells, i.e. for ETHICISE as 18d, an I was already placed, so the unchecked cells had to be Es.

I made heavy weather of this one, and put it down for a day or two at a time, getting one or two clues here or there. The real penny-drop moment that helped me get most of the right hand side was seeing DIS(ASTER)AREA for 17. I made two sheets at that point of the acrosses and downs to try to fill in the downs by looking for words where I had some of the letters, and the acrosses from the choices of letters available from the downs...

And crawled home after a lot of hunt-and-pecking. The flower theme had a few great moments - the clueing of IDA(LUPIN)O as IDAHO without H was classic.

There are two I'm uncomfortable with - I have 25 from wordplay alone - caLls fOr toWel... is it LAID-LOW? Or DOWN-LOW? And 27D I'm torn between SONNET and SENNET, I've gone for SONNET in the grid, and off to check.

However this is another victory for George, and a new solving record with four in a row!

Current tally: George 17, Listener 12. Current streak: George 4

Listener 3990: YCHJCYAROD

2008-08-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

I hadn't heard of Syd Lexis when I printed off this crossword - the Listener site suggests more than one pseudonym, but this is the first Syd Lexis puzzle for me.

The first word in the preamble gives me the willies - resolving makes me think that I've got to solve the thing twice, however the magic words come up soon - all grid entries are normal. Yay words! 20 clues lead to missing letters in the wordplay (neat trick, we've had a spate of extra letters and words, but no missing letters in a while), one, sometimes two. And there's four closed-off squares, which contributed to my downfall in Terminal Suspension. The four closed off squares are right in the middle, so maybe there's something funny about the middle of the grid.

Let's enter some actual words in the grid...

A run through the across clues and there's some pretty easy (Daily Times level - note, this is not a bad thing) clues.

1 - EASTERN, not sure if there's an E omitted, could be a straight-out clue
11 - IMPERIALISTS, anagram
15 - some old version of GOAL... I wrote in GOALE initially, had to change it later
19 - C in TRADE gives me TRADUCE without a U
23 - Anagram of LEAN gives ULNAE without another U
25 - H,ALE
34 - loved this clue - OX,TONE giving OXYTONE without Y
36 - looks like GED
40 - RE,A,NET giving REMANET without M
42 - IMUE being IMBUE without B

And the down clues were similarly accessible

1 - EIGHTHS, nice anagram
2 - surely AMOK, not sure if there's an extra letter
3 - TEL (LET backwards)
4 - ERES
5 - you can't sneak a RISSOLE past an Australian! Take out SOL (a word I love to use, a colloid of a solid in a liquid, as opposed to a GEL, a liquid in a solid) and we have RISE. Nice clue, Syd L.
7 - I had all the letters here before the correction came out, so I had AIR?, then read in a week that it was meant to read "Advanced Irish melody".
8 - P,S,ON - PSION without an I - bit of a sciencey one today, I'm in the zone
12 - P,GAL making PYGAL without a Y (and making GOALE wrong, checked Chambers for GOYLE and we were off again)
13 - APT,EX making APTERYX and at this point I'm thinking two things - the missing letters can make for some very fun clues, and there's a lot of extra Ys... and a lot of Ys in the middle of the grid. Do the Y's make a pattern?
20 - DE,NT
21 - N,DING making UNDYING without U and Y - another Y, and the extra letters don't have to be next to each other.
22 - more science! COGEN(t) makes CRYOGEN without RY. Another Y, eh... why"?

It was here that things really fell into place. The middle was almost completely full, and looking at the diagonals between the blocked off squares, both of them read URYY...

In 1992 I was living in Hobart, Tasmania (great place), and looking to make more friends I joined a community band, the Hobart City Band. I played clarinet with them for a while, they rehearsed at the Navy base, and after rehearsals, the civilian members could stick around and drink at the base bar. The bar was covered in carved wooden plaques riddled with acronyms, and the deal was to convince people like me to ask what they stood for - there was usually a penalty involved (anything from buying drinks to having to salute the flag with your pants down). One of the ones that did catch me was

YYURYYUBICURYY4ME - too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me. There wasn't really a penalty for knowing that one, it just meant a bunch of guys standing around you shouting the phrase. Might I add I didn't play with this band for very long...

And there it is, going across the diagonals.

So a number goes in the crossword - kind of like in the Ronnie Barker hieroglyphics sketch

I had the theme figured out before entering the last few answers, 46 was a new word to me, so was 6.

I'm guessing the extra letters spelled out the phrase, or something to do with the phrase? I didn't find a missing F.

I liked the puzzle, it wasn't too challenging to me, but maybe that's because I saw the theme very early on. I enjoyed the missing letters parts of the clues a lot, and best of all, that's another victory for George!

Current tally: George 16, Listener 12. Current streak: George 3

Belinda in the sky with twins!

2008-07-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

Want to scare me straight off the bat? "Some of the across clues are "Letters Latent"". Crap. My least favorite form of clueing (I'd almsot prefer printers devilry). And only some of them, great.

My memory is a little flaky, but I think I tried one Lavatch puzzle before ("Fallout") and it was nearly an empty-gridder. What else do we have here...

Down clues are two clues side by side (and each has the same number of letters) with a separator word.

Well so much for my brilliant idea of working on the down and eaving etters atent unti ast.

Breathe easy, the first across clue isn't letters latent, it's A,B in G,BED. The second one looks like a definition of Noble and a Frenchman in P-E, Rene is too short, Alain? PALA(T)INE. I solved a letters latent! And I have a first row. 11 looks like it could be AIR(H)OLE and maybe these letters latents aren't going to be too bad. 12 is a straight out ODENSE. Thinking I'm going to get a lot more of these latent lettery ones, I attack the rest of the acrosses. I like 20 - SA(P)ONIFIES, 33 is a non-latent DAHLS, 36 is a nearly giveaway (H)EDGING, and 38 looks like some anagram of SSSNAT. I've got a decent part of the grid filled in!

Can we guess at some downs?

2,25 - I can see the first half is AIRMEN, which has to be 2. So NUCLEAR is the extra word
3,19 - I can see the second half is BIOLYSIS (Lavatch must be a scientist), which has to go in 19. CALLED is extra
4,24 - some atlassing tells me that PINEGA is a Russian river, and has to go in 24. IN extra

Having the first letter of most of these downs is helping.

5, 32: First half looks like GAES, the other half then has to be DE-- - DEAN?
6,30: POLIO is the rather uncomfortable second half (and fits the first two letters at 6).
7,28: Finally one where both halves appear - LE(H)AR and VIS,OR!
8,27: ANISE (fits 8), INFOLDS is extra.
9,26: WEALD is the second half (remember that one from Carte Blanche!), goes in 26.
10,13: TETRAHEDRA (more science!) is the second half, and goes in 13. A director starting with E and having 10 letters has to be EISENSTEIN, let's write him in at 10. OBVIOUSLY is probably the link word
14,21: ummmm, no clue
16,22: The second part is an anagram of SALE meaning a woman, ELSA or LESA, either would fit at 16. or 22...

This is looking more promising, back to the lers laen. 15 is HI--S which probably means HINGES without an E, and little cokehead Martina Hingis is our tennis player. And hello - this row reads TRIVIAL-HINGS. If 14d starts with a T we've found our phrase!

17 is (R)EASSU(R)E - E ASSUME minus the M.

Penny drop moment at this point... there's four whole words in those across clues, and so far it seems at least three of them don't have letters latent! THER-P-O--H- got to be THE something OF THE. RAPE? Google tells me that THE RAPE OF THE LOCK is a poem by Alexander Pope and it contains the words "What mighty contsts rise from trivial things"!!!! The first letters from the down clue words have to make an 11-letter word that comes before LOCK. I have NCIAMITO... COMBINATION!

Very excited by this find, I bashed out the downs... the B has to come from BRITAIN in 14,21. TENNO is the first part, and confirms my idea at 14d. Chambers Word Wizards suggests BRIAN ENO as a possibility for the letters in 3D (Hey, Brian, you're in Word Wizards!), wordplay words, BRAIN(move the A), E,NO. Knowing I need a latent A gives me TENAILLON (and suggests 4D wasn't BOVINE, but BOVRIL), and ANN(E)XATION for 23.

I have a completed grid!!!!! Now what... replace TRIVIAL THINGS with ALEXANDER POPE of course. That solves... nothing. Something's got to appear in another row.

Looking at the grid, head-smack moment... there's an X in the fourth column. It's a COMBINATION LOCK, I have to move the columns, and rather neatly, there's only one L in the second column, one E in the third and so on. Our three ambiguities are that there's three A's in the first column, two E's in the 8th and three E's in the last.

I printed off a new grid and wrote in the new columns and saw... nothing. Four rows looked like possibilities, so I wrote them out again, with all the possibilties for the ambiguous letters

Still nothing... back to the preamble... the theme's last line. Oh, what's the last line of the poem...
"And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name". There's BELINDA, and if we choose our combination write, she's in GEMINI.

Lavatch - this was hard and fun. I spent lots of time on it, and where initially I was dreading it, the lttrs latnt didn't turn out to be so bad. This is one of the most involved Listeners that I've gotten to the bottom of, many many steps.

This is a long long report, but I really liked the puzzle. And I got it! Another point to George in the battle and a slight lead is restored.

Current tally: George 15, Listener 12. Current streak: George 2.

This blog is in another dimension...

2008-07-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

We are at the half-way point in George vs the Listener Crossword!

This week, it's "Travel Agents" by Hedge-Sparrow. Hedge-sparrow appears to be either a new setter or another pseudonym (a neudonym?) of a previous setter. Preamble time - the grid represents a region containing a number of interconnected entries... across clues have extra expressions, down clues have wordplay leading to extra letters, but are entered normally.

So let's start with the downs and enter normally, shall we? I'm feeling good really quickly, because the wordplay doesn't seem too tricky. If you want to give me hope, start off with an anagram, and here we are, LESS RUST becomes RESULTS with an S, then EC(H)O,NOMIC,S (long aside - any other Hofstadter fans who tried to play Nomic, the card game where the rules change every hand? I nearly failed Organic Chemistry because I'd leave my lab bench to go join the game in the hall.), V,(O),OWING, EVE(R) and AIRN(T), and it looks like the first word in my down phrase is SHORT, 13ac is SOWER, and 17ac is UNI-N--- so if the entries turn out to be real words, it looks like it's going to be UNIONIST.

Got a good feeling, that was doomed to be short-lived. The rest of the down clues came in fits and starts, and I wasn't sure of a few of the extra letters. Near the end of the downs, I had DIET(R), IN(A)RE, P(V)ALP, and D(L)IE, so the last word of the phrase is likely to be ????RAVEL, and with TRAVEL in the title, 36 probably has an extra T.

At this point my extra downs letters looked like

SHORTC--SF--S-AC--IM--RAVEL, and I really want the second word to be CUTS, but can't make anything of the clue.

Acrosses: Found these a little unnerving. 1 is REVERSE.. and REVE goes into the grid, but the next letter is an A. Extra word appears to be BIBLICAL, but I don't know how that fits. 8 is PA,R,S, extra word ROWS, and my grid entry ends RT. 11 is COVE (hidden word), and extra POEM, and I have COVI-. 13 looks like S,ASH with extra word LEAD, and I have the complete entry, SOWER. 17 looks like UNI,ON,S, extra word CUTS, and I have UNI-N-S-.

It appears the first parts of words are intact, and something's got to happen to the second halves.

Stuck for a while, I took a lot longer on the across clues than on the first... until I saw that 25 could be G(ROW)ER - and there's my OWER sitting in 13!

No way... could it be the same deal as in one that I couldn't finish, "Reappearance"? The ends of words are moved? That would make SHORT CUTS make sense.

Back to the downs... SHORT CUTS FOR SPACE TIME TRAVEL!!!!! Guessing the phrase gets me a few more down clues - 7 is NE(U)ST, 26 is MOD(E)I. I then took the acrosses that I knew and started trying to fit in the first and second halves of letters.

Oddly enough, a few hours of bashing at this and I was still stuck for a while, particularly in the middle section. I thought about what needed to be highlighted, actually thinking it would probably be warp hole or wormhole, and there on the diagonal was WO-M-OLES. That convinced me that 22D was ASHEN, still not sure about the wordplay - SHE in (W)AN? and the end of 19 was the ER from DOCKER. And I'm not 100% on the first letter at 47, since everything else in the acrosses seems to be a word, but I can't think of anything else but WEEDING for 47ac.

And we're done. I still have no idea where the extra words in the across clues came in. You nearly had me, Hedge-sparrow, after all those down entries filled in and no clue on what to do with acrosses, I nearly gave up. Eventually I resorted to writing the bits out and crossing them off as I found spaces or words for them (you can see that on my grid). But the slide is halted at two and I'm just keeping above water in the battle.

Current tally: George 14, Listener 12. Current streak: George 1.

Half-time report.

If you told me a year ago I could solve 14 of these beasties I would have laughed myself silly. Off the top of my head, last year I completed maybe 5. Keeping the blog has helped immensely, both in keeping myself on track, and thinking about different solutions. That this blog gets read and commented on is an extra blessing, it's nice to know I'm not alone in solving mediocrity. Seeing themes and taking leaps of faith on phrases is a good thing. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

1, 2, 3, 4, fizz, 6, buzz, 8, 9, fizz, 11, 12, 13, buzz, fizz - when do I get a drink?

2008-07-11T07:55:00.000-07:00

Before I get on with the blog, a little personal sad note, today would have been my partner's 29th birthday. If you have a loved one, give them a smile today.

The horror of seeing a grid without bars! The only crossword without bars I've ever completed was Carte Blanche by Homer. The puzzle is by BeRo - one of the first Listeners I attempted, and one that got me hooked on trying to solve them was an earlier puzzle by BeRo that turned into a letter sudoku.

I remember "fizz buzz" from elementary school, but have never done it as a drinking game. It's too mathematical for my American friends. Answers change direction when they hit a wall (hey, so do I!), or when one of the fizz or buzz letters is encountered. That would be E, G, J, N, O, T, U Y. And they can start in any direction... off to solve as many clues as I can, so I can at least put the starting letters in place.

There's a lot of clues!!!!!!

Some of them start in the same box, so I can get a few starting letters. It looks to me like getting 32, 33, 36 and 37 would be really helpful (though that turned out not to be the case).

To cut a very long story short... I came up way short on this one. I got a little more than half the clues, but not enough to really construct the grid. With E, N, T, and O causing a change in direction, that's going to happen pretty often. I tried fitting some of the longer words with fewer direction changes first (BODHI TREES, TITANOMACHY, LYDFORD LAW), but I think starting from the middle and working outwards might have been a better approach.

My real problem here was being unable to solve enough of the clues to get moving. Sorry, BeRo, you had some clues I really liked, but I'm going to spend some time on the ones that really stumped me. It's complicated on this type of puzzle, because until you get a lot filled in, I can't see where I could get checking letters from, until I know that the twists and turns of the answers get me there.

Here is where I'm truly lost...

1) There is a 13-letter word for "outgrowth" in Bradford's, but I can't fit it to the wordplay at all.
3) I wanted IGNORAMUS or some form of that here, but trying to fit anagrams of IMAGES doesn't help me.
6) Less avant-garde?
12) Is this a subtraction anagram? It must be a well-written clue because I can't find a definition
15) ??? S-M-?
17) -ADL--- -ALD---... help me out, vocabulary
20) baffled
23) also looks like a subtraction clue, but can't see what to lose
25) Both of them. Eeeks
45) Can't wait to see what I was meant to do with this.

So well done, BeRo - it looks like a really nice puzzle, but it's got me today - and you have nearly erased my once-comfortable lead in this battle!

Current tally: Listener 12, George 13. Current streak: Listener 2.