Big M!

First off, I'm sorry about the yellowness of the image. I print my crosswords on the back of recycled paper and sometimes a non-white sheet creeps in. I'll make sure it's white (or at least not such a garish colour) paper that is used for the rest of the blog.

Another titanic struggle here - I remember trying one other Wasp puzzle that worked out to be a game of Cluedo. I found most of the thematic parts, but didn't get the complete grid.

Given my recent failure and chastisement on 3973: Collusion, first thing I saw was that there are two unclued vertical entries. Note this down and don't be caught later on.

Some across answers entered modified, some have extra words, downs have wordplay leading to extra letters. I'll take extra letters for a start, and see how many downs I can jot in, and maybe get the message. That worked out OK, 2d is pretty straightforward, LAVE being (NAVEL)* + N, 4 is STEE(L)+R, 5 is CALENDS+E, 6 is AC(T)HIEVE. Lots of nice dangly words to get me going. Then a huge run of drawing a blank until a few near the bottom, 26 is HYDRO(T) and 30 is DORY(D).

Thanks Wasp for lots of juicy anagrams to get me started!

I don't usually talk about where I solve, but it's generally either late at night at home or in bars, or during random breaks. My first stab at the across clues was the first time I tried crosswording at Waffle House. I got a lot of curious looks, and my coffee cup was filled up a number of times. More waffle house solves will be forthcoming!

To the across clues. Another juicy anagram to start, and we have an extra SCANTILY. And in keeping with a recent discussion on the crossword centre, the clue has the proper surface even if SCANTILY is removed. 10 looks like it should be MAGENTA and all the checking letters fit, so it should go in as normal - I'm still stuck on whether MEETS or ESCAPING is the extraneous word. 11 is CARTA (extra barely, and again the surface works... so it's a safe bet removed words don't leave a clue with a poor surface), and 12 is DELHI (extra LODGINGS). I'm going to kick ass on this one! Found a few that are going to need modification, 21 is ISSUE, 22 is SEWERS, 29 is LADEN, and then two more that will go in unaltered, 32 is ISLAM (I was just in Louisiana) and 34 is NEONATOLOGY which is a magnificent construction!

Came back a day or two latter to attack the rest of the downs with Chambers and Bradfords. I have most of the right hand side (though I originally had REINED - REIN+(R)ED) for 23. My extra letters in the down make -N-LET-ER--LORT-D. ONE LETTER somethinged. Whatted? Whered? --LORT-D doesn't give anything in Word Wizards. Aaaargh...

A few days later, I'm determined to finish this beastie. Calm down, relax, breathe...

Penny-drop moment #1: none of my "entered as normal" answers cross those unclued down entries. Could it be that all of the altered answers intersect them? Looks likely... I enter in IRON ORE at 33 and DIODE at 31 (and unfortunately MISHIMA at 18). The checking N gives me TAINO at 27.

Sooo... presming one letter has been altered (and it looks like moved, not substituted) in those across answers, the unclued entry on the right is -H-(U or V)(S or W)-(L, E or N)-. Not many words fit those (particularly looking at the first five), but THOUSAND peeks out at me. Thousand can be written as a symbol, M (Roman) or k (kilo-). Entering THOUSAND gives me a complete right hand side of the grid, and I smack myself for not getting (C)REELED for 23 earlier. That clears up the message as ONE LETTER RELOCATED. Unfortunately I have a myriad of possibilities for the left hand unclued entry.

And I'm stuck again.

This is so annoying. Think, George. Don't let this beat you. Thematic words complete the missing element. If two of those words are the thematic ones, then maybe they're joined by something. Is it going to be a big H? No... a big U? DIODEI. No... would you believe it took another full day before thinking it could be an M? And there is MAIDEN, sitting right in front of me... THOUSAND is M, MAIDEN is M. Let's go to chambers and find 8-letter words that can be abbreviated M. MONSIEUR!!!! Could it be? Yes, move the O in LEMON, the N in UNLEARN, the I in ISSUE and we have MONSIEUR, MAIDEN and THOUSAND making the big M in the middle.

And Big M was my favorite milk drink when I lived in Australia!



I still have a little solving to go - final head-smacking moment - the letters relocated are relocated to the unclued verticals. 3d is NEU(E)ME, 18 is TIL,LIM(E),A, and I don't know why it eluded me so long, but 16 was MANTIS.

I felt an overwhelming relief that I got through this, I thought it was going to be a canter, and maybe it was for some of the regulars, but I feel like I stumbled through via some extreme guesswork. The clues were great - there was enough here to get me going, and eventually they all made sense, and I liked the across clues still making sense with the removed words. Wasp, if you're reading this, well played, you kept me guessing for weeks (I finished this near midnight last night).

And a victory for George, and a huge personal milestone of 10 solved. Current tally: George 10, Listener 6. Current streak, George 1.

So near, and yet so far? dhu? tour? fare? aaaargh!!!

This one looked pretty straightforward, words in clues had to be shifted to the right, then afterwards some moving of "words" (curious quotation marks - my first thought was that maybe these are computer words, so I'd be moving bytes around). The last few weeks have been pretty busy, and I haven't had long breaks where I could work on solving. OK, plan of attack...

14 clues are normal, 32 need words moved, so always be looking for words to move. And the initial grid is going to be all real words, so let's grab chambers word wizards and Bardford's and solve away...

I didn't make a great start on this, a few clusters of words, mostly in the bottom half of the grid. There were some clever clues, my first "set of 4" appeared with the last 4 across clues - BOATEL as TOWABLE damaged minus W, VEAL as five each pound, INLY as Milton's entirely, and trashy UNITED STATES, no TUNE (this was an awesome clue) giving DISTASTE.

The top right of the grid turned out to be a heavy slog, and there are a few guesses up above (MEER, ORDE, ARED) where I can't quite get the wordplay together. However I now have a completed (fingers crossed) grid, and sets of 4 where the coordinates have to be. I can't see the name of the creator of the theme, but there's a suspicious TOUR near the top right.

Here's where it gets thorny...

I can't tell in 1ac if the word to be moved is balls (making the definition "battered and deep fried balls") or essentially ("battered and fried balls, essentially). This means the first word to be moved is either at B,R (LA, LAR, LART?) or E,R (FAR, FARE). The latter looks more promising. The other two "words" to be moved start at C,Q (hey, there's my TOUR) and D,P (DHU - that's a type of pilgrimage, so looks probable).

Good news is that the moves do seem to correlate with the letters moved, so I have

BR -> MV, CQ -> HS, MV -> LT, DP -> MT, LT -> DR, HS -> CV and DR -> CV

Apparently HR,HW is useful, originally it reads EVADAS, when I move TOUR there it says ETOURS.

And this is where we come to a crashing halt... no combination of my moved words gives me either of the things I need, complete words in the grid and 18 blank squares. This is the most promising combination of moving around my "words", and it has 20 blank cells

A

f

a

l

a

f

e

l

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m

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m

B

o

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K

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M

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O

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U

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W

X

Y

Z

It's possible that I don't have to move the whole of TOUR, but that just doesn't seem right. I thought I had it, but Mango, you have bested me. I can't think of a better word than ARED at 2D, but even so, changing the number of letters I move there from 2 up to 5 doesn't help with the number of empty cells. It was an interesting battle, but victory to the Listener crossword.

Current tally: Listener 6, George 9. Current streak, Listener 1.

Blog extra: My 100-word crossword story.

If a competition is worth entering, it's worth entering badly. Georgie Johnson on the Crossword Centre site had a competition for a 100-word story that started "Once upon a time there was a crossword".

The announcement and the winners can be found here.

As an example of what won't win a contest, this was my entry, an erotic novel in 100 words or less.

Once upon a time there was a crossword, his name was Gerald. It was a Thursday night, and Gerald was bored. He really wanted to go to the pub, but he was barred. So instead he went to the gym, he to work on his definition. Exercising his bulging anagrinds, a female crossword caught his eye. She was cryptic, and really knew how to work her unches. He asked her out – they bonded well, she loved to talk and he was a listener. He invited her back to his place, and soon they were checking letters. E (3,3).

Shelley went over the Grand Canal to see what he could see...

It's anagram festival! I dig anagrams (as you can see from the grid I do anagrams by writing the letters in little patterns to try and figure them out). In every clue, a definition word had to be unscrambled with one letter removed, the letters forming a statement and an instruction. To me, this means look for wordplay in clues and then retrofit the answer. Take for example, 1ac. Ashlar's smashed in streams of dump is screaming out for the answer to be an anagram of ashlar (nothing comes to mind) and the definition to be dump jumbled with a letter removed, so probably mud. Let's find one I can actually do...

13a and 14a were where I really got started. EDAM being a cheese shaped into globes and IMMOLATION being ritual slaughter. The grid filled out kind of from the middle, FORETOPS and SYMPATHY came pretty quickly. A few more I learned from wordplay then finding a definition was that a NALA is a drain, a little opossum is a JOEY and a BIJOU is a gem.

At my usual "Getting stuck half-way through" point, I looked for the message and the instruction. Continuing my luck with wild stabs at phrases, I see ELL from the last three letters in the across clues, and CONTA from the second through eighth down clues. There's some cell shading going on! SHADE CELLS CONTAINING nets me a few more answers, 42 was particularly twisty before that, it's a Gandhi I'm looking for in the definition. There's only one H in 43, so the definition is idle, and 49 is either something about coins or scion. The removed letters from the last 5 down clues that I knew at this point gave me T-T-E, and I've seen a few TITLES around... Wooohooo!!! SHADE CELLS CONTAINING LETTERS NOT IN TITLE. And now I have a complete set of down clues. Really helped out since 16, 18 and 19 down were blank before that.

OK, to the top few... POETC-NBE--NI-R-D. POET CAN BE SEEN IN GRID, my favorite part of that being that that brooding becomes Borodin when a G is removed.

And we have a completed grid, and some shading to do. Say hello to the yellow highlighter of doom. Little square up on the top right. Big mass in the middle, bits and pieces on the bottom. Is it a letter? Is it a face? Is it a message? I can see GRAND running through unshaded cells in the middle. Please be part of a 4,5,4 phrase... no, it's THE GRAND CANAL. Hmmmm....

Isn't there meant to be a poet visible? Oh, dumbkpof, it's SHELLEY in the bottom row, if you were a dog you would have bitten it. Shelley (never read either of them, but I know there were two), and "The Grand Canal". Not ringing any bells... googly time. Shelley spent time in Venice, where there's a grand canal. And it's got a similar shape... oh, the grid is a map of Venice!



It took a little while looking at poems to figure out what could be the phrase, and here is where I may have fallen at the final hurdle... "under days, azure skies" seems to be what Harpy is looking for. So let's write AZURE SKIES under DAYS (there's not a lot of room for that).

I slogged and slogged at this one, but if finally fell. I like anagrams, so puzzles with lots of jumblies are good for me. Very much fun, Harpy, I hope I got your endgame, but I'm still going to claim this one as a victory (and a big 3-in-a-row!) for George.

Current tally: George 9, Listener 5. Current streak, George 3.

Take that, Newton!

My grid before required movement of answers



And after the movement



I solved most of this while I was away for work, so I didn't have my barrage of dictionaries with me. I had the interweebs, so I could use Chambers Word Wizards and google a few answers. My first query was to whether the "above" clues needed the letter removed in order to solve them. Fortunately this didn't take very long, as the first couplet was gentle, I got 5ac first, the Listener standard of the long anagram with missing words (SECONDARY PICKET) - (RED TONY) jumbled gives ICEPACKS, a means of reducing sWelling. When a message starts with W, then a H is soon to follow, so looking for a suspicious H (or lack thereof) in the next two clues gave me (h)eight and rut(h). The top half of the grid filled itself in pretty nicely, also aided by the long anagram at 26a (and yum, I was in cajun country, so some andouillettes found their way into me).

I came to my usual standstill with a little less than half the grid filled in. Most of the SW corner was empty, and there were some annoying gaps in the NE. Time to take a wild stab at the phrase, since so far wild stabs at phrases have worked pretty well for me. WHAT G----PM-S---M--WN. WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN??? Looky, there's a ROCKET and a BALLOON in the grid. I sense victory!

This is one of my favorite parts of a Listener, reworking the clues based on the preamble. Now I knew which letters had to be moved, it was fun re-writing the clues. Duress becomes dress and sites becomes suites. Gorged becomes gorge and off becomes doff... now the grid is getting close to full. Getting home and having Bradford's handy helps with the last few clues (TOOART, NICKAR, RETENE).

Five things that go up need to come down. By how much? All the way to the bottom or just a little bit? Let's try all the way to the bottom... I rewrote what the bottom row looked like with ROCKET, BALLOON, LIANA, LIFT, and COPILOT moved to the bottom. SITNNITANTITED. Ummm, no. Let's print off a fresh grid and start again... BULLET nearly appears. Aaaah, but here is almost the word GRAVITY... GRAVITATION... APPLE needs to move down almost to the bottom so GRAVITATION appears. Supposed event, the apple hitting Sir Isaac on the noggin.

This was definitely fun, and I got a thrill out of it coming together at last. Usually I am terrible at the "perform an action after filling the grid" crosswords (unless it's "erase every letter and write pataphysics at the bottom"), and worse at seeing hidden words. Thanks Samuel, this one pushed my solving skills about as far as they go at the moment. Being able to find the phrase early helped immensely.

Another victory for George, and a little bit of breathing room in the battle. Current tally: George 8, Listener 5. Current streak: George 2.

LOTS = LOS-T?

In last week's post, I said that sometimes I'm on a completely different wavelength to the setter. Well on a rare occasion I'm on the same wavelength as the setter (if Viking is reading, that really is meant as a compliment), and this led to 3974 being the rarest of things, a single-sitting solve. Not a fast one, having had plans fall through one night, I thought I'd have a bash at this one. And a few hours and a huge smile later, I had what you see above you.

The instructions say that down clues are normal, and it would make total sense to start there, but I saw I could work out the first three across clues from a first reading (and 13ac, which was the last clue to print on the first page). So I figured "why the hell not" and went through the acrosses looking for ones that jumped out at me. I had almost half of them at a first glance, and was relieved to see that my answers were the same length as the grid entries, so no adding or subtracting letters, which I'm not good at. And a lot of them had T's. Just a moment... all of them have T's!

To the downs, I wasn't having as much luck, most of the ones I got were scattered, and I was convinced that 9d was ROOMY (MOOR<=+Y). I had more luck with the last half of the down clues, particularly the SW corner, where I had FREET, EO IPSO, ON THE TURN, TRENTO (thanks to my handy-dandy mini atlas, of which I only use the index), OPTION, TUTUS and HUMITE (a good grounding in structural inorganic chemistry never hurts). From there it looks like the letters are jumbled in the across answers, but not too jumbled. The T's are in the wrong place. That would make the last letter in 30 an O, and looky here, we have PROUST along the diagonal. With the A and L already in place, I'm sure this is MARCEL PROUST running down the diagonal and the theme would be "Time Regained", the T is moved somewhere else in the across answers. And ROOMY is wrong. And when you think Proust, you think...

From there it was hunting and pecking to find the answers.

I'm glad I found the name and theme early, and I loved the puzzle. I wanted to call a friend who is a continental philosopher (and is fascinated by me trying to solve these), but it was 3am. An evening for a shut-in well spent, thanks Viking! And the run of the Listener is broken at 2.

Tally: George 7: Listener 5. Current streak, George 1

Collision with collusion - Listener 3973

I did the scan before I left for a conference, and on a plane I entered another 5 answers

6d = BOTHAM, making the extra word either WORD or SWORD
12a = UTTER, making the extra word NAKED
31d = ORISSA, making the extra word BOYCOTT
40d = NEUK, making the extra word DEFLECT
44a = THREADMAKER giving yet another extra NAKED. Double naked.

OK, this is my most pathetic grid in a while, before I scanned it I only had 6 answers entered and some of those are guesses. There are times when I guess you're not on the same wavelength as the setter and this is one of them.

And I haven't a clue what is happening... the preamble tells me that most clues have an extra word, and the rest have a misprint. Usually I'm good at spotting extra words, but the first two clues that leapt out at me were misprints (17a - misprint is Pick up again, giving RESORB) and 39a (On instead of An). And that's where the grid stood for a good week and a half, until I thought more about the preamble - extra words may mean shifting spacing, so maybe clues need to be rewritten...

This makes 1d look like "A group of tents don't make peace" with STYLE as an extra word, and makes 33a look like "Fingal let mill finally around edges of Staffa" with SCORN as an extra 5-letter word. Looking for 5 letter words to remove to complete clues gave me a few more entries, but that was about where this effort died a horrible death.

I write this blog before checking the answers, so I am dying to find out what I missed (I'll add it as a comment). I'm hoping this fell under the category of "intractably hard" because I feel like a real imbecile after slogging away at this and getting nowhere at all.

As a final effort I tried to collate all the 5 and 7 letter removeable words and after seeing BOTHAM (an answer) and BOYCOTT (a removed word) thought maybe "Cricketers I loved to hate when I was growing up in Australia" was a theme and started looking for WILLIS, DEV, KHAN, and AMBROSE. And I have two NAKEDs in the 5-letter column. If one solver wanted to turn in an empty grid, I was way ahead of him.

My lead in the battle has been nearly eroded!

Tally: Listener 5, George 6. Current streak: Listener 2