See you in 'ELL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boustrawhatnow?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Comments welcome, and see you next week!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Double-crossed

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

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

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

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!