No snips or sticks allowed!

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

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

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

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....

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

(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

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.