A subtle message about gun control?

Welcome back to George vs the Listener Crossword, your source for bad jokes about 500-odd-people’s favorite weekly puzzle.  I believe I read somewhere that Schadenfreude shuns internet crossword commentary, so maybe I should just throw the grid in and be done with it.  Hi Schadenfreude if you really are looking in.

Been a while since we’ve seen the mysterious Schadenfreude – last appearance in 2011 with Brief Appearances, which I couldn’t come close to solving.  Before that was Language Balancing with the Maltese Cross theme, which I got, BAT which I was perilously close on, Terminal Suspension where I spotted the theme but missed the ending, Overhead Reduction (similar pattern).  So watch me be a square or two shy here as well.

Solving in unusual places once again, I was proctoring a 3-hour exam for the US National Chemistry Olympiad

What have we here – jigsaw-style clues, alphabetical order of answers, definition misprints.  Four blank entries, names and a cipher. Hmmm…

Well there is no 1-across but there is a first clue, and a wait a minute, there’s only three letters in the answer but no three-letter answers in the grid?  As the kids say, WTF, Schadenfreude?

Hmmm…

Before solving a single clue, it’s time to start asking questions…  I counted up the number of 8,7,6,5,4 letter answers in the grid, and the number of 8,7,6,5,4,3 letter answers in the clues.  Only two 8 letter clues, only two 7 letter clues.

Hmmm… are we putting two three-letter answers together, or jamming a three and a four together?  It’s a definite that two of the 8 letter entries have to be blank ones, and probably two of the 7 letter entries.  If those 7 and 8′s around the outside of the grid were the blanks, that would give me 6 3-letter entries.  AHA!  I think I know what’s going on with the grid.  Pat on back and let’s solve some clues.

Still couldn’t figure out that first one but with BAD,GE,RED and a misprint O I’m on my way.

Solving the clues was not too bad, and on a first run through I had more than half of them.  With only two 8-letter answers I was feeling pretty good about SIXAINES going on the bottom with the X in the unchecked entry and BLOOPED as my 7-letter in the upper half crossing BRA since it didn’t look like there was going to be a 3-letter entry starting with M to check MALTHUS.  I started building up a grid from those three entries, and that was looking pretty good… since BRA was one of the first that I placed, the names have to start with a C…  and then a Z from BERLIN.  CZ?  Someone CZECH?  O from BADGERED and L from INULAS and I had a pretty stunning (quite literally penny) dropping moment.

CZOLGOSZ was the guy who shot McKinley!

Why on Earth do I know that?  I’m studying for my US Citizenship exam, and since it’s mostly civics, dead presidents are things you are meant to know about!  And this fits – there have been four assassinated – LINCOLN, KENNEDY, MCKINLEY and GARFIELD – I couldn’t remember the name of the guy who offed GARFIELD, but the interweeb on my phone can clear that up – GUITEAU.  So CZOLGOSZ, GUITEAU, BOOTH and OSWALD together have 26 letters.  That’s neat!  Put in the names and we have real words around the outside of the grid.

Not quite done, there’s still this cypher to work out.  I’ll admit I did it backwards, since H could only be T,  C could only be A, and E could only be M, filling in those made it look like DEMOCRAT VICTIM at the end.  USE BLUE SHADING FOR THE MOST RECENT AND ONLY DEMOCRAT VICTIM.  So KENNEDY is in blue, and I think he’d like it that way.

This was a really excellent puzzle, with a theme that probably kept the Brits guessing more than the displaced Australians reading too much about US History.  Sneaky theme, but for once I managed to sneak up, and I believe I have a completely correct grid this time around, so Victory To George – woohoo!

2013 tally:   10-3-2.  Feel free to criticize me wanting to vote over here, and see you next week when Jaques asks me to mind my grammar.

 

More dread

A scene from a surprisingly unshot screenplay…

INTERIOR:  Code room at Bletchley Park, day

Computer machinery and pieces of paper with scribbling litter the cluttered room.  ALAN TURING, male, 20s, is crouched over a notepad.  He doesn’t notice the entry of BRIGADIER NATHANIEL MACTHWAIT until he speaks

BRIGADIER

Turing!  What have you there?

TURING

Terribly sorry, Brigadier, didn’t see you come in

BRIGADIER

No problem at all, old chap.  Been quite the week, hasn’t it?  You’ve cracked the Enigma code, ensured safety for Allied messages, predicted artificial intelligence, and taught young Mr. Benaud how to bowl a googly.  Whatever next?

TURING

I guess a quickie is out of the question?

BRIGADIER

It certainly is, Turing, it certainly is.  That’ll get you into trouble, you know?

TURING

Well Brigadier, I’ve been working on a new code, but I don’t think you want to see it

BRIGADIER

Whyever not?

TURING

I fear it makes no sense and will just frustrate the men even more sir

BRIGADIER

How does it work?

TURING

I noticed that you can make a square using all the letters in the alphabet

BRIGADIER

Hate to stop you there, young Alan, but there’s 26 letters in the alphabet

TURING

True, sir.  But we don’t use J much do we?

BRIGADIER

Don’t think I’ve ever used it in my life.  Carry on

TURING

We come up with a code word, but it can’t have any repeated letters.  Then put the rest of the alphabet in the remaining squares.

BRIGADIER

And how does this make a code?

TURING

You break up words into two letters at a time

BRIGADIER

But what about words with odd number of letters?

TURING

You’ll just have to avoid using them.  Every odd-letter-numbered word has an equally useful even-numbered word.  AIRCRAFT instead of PLANE, STUPID instead of IDIOTIC, BORING instead of TEDIOUS

BRIGADIER

So all our messages will have to have no J’s in them and only use even numbered letters of words

TURING

Yes, sir.  So when you want to encode a word, you use the two letters at opposite ends of a rectangle formed by the letters

BRIGADIER

I suppose now you’re going to tell me I can’t use words with two letters on the same line next to each other?

TURING

That was my original idea, but now I think we can just move the letters one space to the right… or up and down

BRIGADIER

Wrapping around the edges?

TURING

Wrapping around the edges, as it were

BRIGADIER

Turing, this has got to be the most obtuse, convoluted and repugnant code ever made.  What do you call it?

TURING

I was thinking of Playfair

BRIGADIER

You’re mad, Turing!  Mad!  There’s nothing play nor fair about it?  I insist you cover up this cipher at once.  It’s horrible!  No man must ever see it.

TURING (downcast)

Understood sir.

BRIGADIER

Good man.  Now about that quickie…

 

Count me among the target audience for this, I guess.  I do hate using Playfair codes, and the only puzzle I actually “solved” that had a playfair code, I did it by the solver in Quninapaulus.  So as soon as I saw the little square, I was ready to tear up the grid and resolve myself to a week without a Listener.

Mordred’s last Listener was just before I started this blog, though I thought I had done a Mordred puzzle somewhere before.  I started this on the worst flight I have had in a long time – I was going to a conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.  There’s a stereotype of the Louisianian as as gumboot-wearing, sweaty, thick hick, and I was wedged right in next to one who I think was blissfully unaware that I needed a little bit of seat.  I’m not the smallest person in the world, but I was perched on the edge of the seat and twisted about 60 degrees to minimize surface-to-surface contact.  I was just able to prop Bradford’s under the crossword.

What can I say?  All clues normal, all words in the grid (at least before the moving) normal, it was just down to solving and finding the “playfair” square.  WORDPLAY jumped out at me, and it was before the flight landed that I had figured out WORDPLAY GIVES FUN as the three-word code.  I was pretty impressed that there was only one of the rest of the 9 letters scattered somewhere in the grid, which means Mordred set a challenge of a grid with only one T.  I was kind of hoping the replacement scheme left real words but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I didn’t get back from New Orleans in time to submit this, so it was two missed submission weeks in a row, sorry Mordred.  It was fun while it lasted, and was probably the closest I will get to actually enjoying something involving a Playfair.

I think I can call this one a Victory to George – putting me at 9-3-2 and finally getting things back in order.

Feel free to tell me why my screenplay was never picked up, and see you next week when Schadenfreude pays back his slaves.

 

Lions and tigers and squares, oh my!

Welcome back to George vs the Listener Crossword – one man’s attempt to show that mental capacity peaks around the time he decides to start a blog, and it continues on a downslide ever after.

This week it’s Ron, with a carte blanche.  Almost a year ago to the day, Ron gave us Breach of Contract which made it into my top 5 of last year, so I was looking forward to this one!  There’s some twists I don’t think I’ve seen before – some extra letters in definitions, some extra words, alternating letters of which spell out a bit of a poem.  On top of that, down answers in alphabetical order, and 90-degree symmetry.  Phew!

There was a problem here – this arrived at about the worst time for me, and I barely got a chance to look at it over the next week.  So I didn’t even get started on it until after the deadline to send it in (a pattern that continued for another week).  Damn you real life getting in the way of me doing crosswords and mailing them across the ocean!

Well, with carte blanches, it’s worth trying to figure out some of the pattern, and since the enumerations were given, it looked like there had to be two across answers on each row (so the extra clue must be in the downs).  There is a 1 across, and it looks like BASS,I with DAMNEDEST being the extra word, so this poem looks like it begins AND S – it has to start in the top left or one square in, which means the fourth square has to be an S.  Yes!  One letter down, 143 to go!

Didn’t make much of the next clue, but then there’s an anagram for PEINS, which means the poem could be AND SO ME or AND SOME… this is looking promising.  Didn’t get the next clue, but “low-fat” seems to be sticking out, and could be added to what I’ve got to make it AND SOME OF T… O,PAL makes it AND SOME OF THE… couldn’t make out 6, but GALL,I,C and now we have AND SOME OF THE BIG, which is ringing a bell – a Googling later and there’s AND SOME OF THE BIGGER BEARS TRY TO PRETEND THAT THEY CAME ROUND THE CORNER TO LOOK FOR A FRIEND!

The title of that poem is LINES AND SQUARES which sounds appropriate!

I know it’s solving things back-ass-wards, but I used the rest of the poem to find the removed lines and started solving the removed word clues first, working from the end of the downs up – I saw S,ILLS and SEA L,ACE quickly, which confirmed the positions of BASSI, PEINS, OPAL and GALLIC and making the first down clue look like APPAYS.

The 90 degree symmetry was generous – I could slot in most answers as I got them – the last part of the grid to fill in was the top right, having no real confidence at putting in PIGSTY and AMIGO and needing to get to a dictionary to confirm GALA, KA,GO,S and the extra letters in TALI and COGUE.

Why were PIGSTY and AMIGO such a pain?  There had to be an extra letter in the definition.  No there didn’t… there had to be an extra CHARACTER in the definition… aaaaah… the 4 and 9 are the extra characters, giving 4 X, 9 Y and that means 4 lines and 9 squares – the grid pattern is a noughts-and-crosses grid!  That works – there’s two grid lines in each row and in each column.  The rest of the extra letters give CUT TWICE ALIGN SILLIES, and clue 42 is our solutionless one.

I thought we could have been looking for Winnie The Pooh characters in the solutionless clue, but we’re looking for sillies that can also be found in the grid… well SILL is there to make SILLY, and underneath is NUTTER – but if I slide the Y along using the new grid lines as guides, that moves HA over UTTER to make HATTER and NU to MPTY to make… well another blogger with far better artistic skills than I probably let out a squeal at that point.

There’s also DINGBAT or DINGBATS, but there’s only one S in the clue so it’s got to be DINGBAT.  That leaves me nine letters for two more sillies… FOOL looks like a possibility but I can’t find it in the grid – there’s GOOF and a good old Australian one GALAH!

Since it was past the deadline, I didn’t prepare a send in-version, so here’s what my original looked like with scribbling and circling.

Wow!  Ron had the setting bar high there – a fully-symmetrical grid of real words that could be manipulated this way, two different types of clue manipulation (and very few surfaces were ruined by removing the extra words).  Sorry I didn’t get it done in time to send a letter along with a solution, but if you’re checking in, Ron – I really am looking forward to the next one!

I’m going to call this a Victory to George (though Mr. Green will be none the wiser).

2013 tally:  8-3-2

Feel free to comment on my tardiness at solving (though the blog is up on time), and see you next week when Mordred makes me do another bloody wiyguapy.

Going to be a day late…

My 9 – 5 (which now appears to be a 7 – 11) is getting in the way, and I’m going to see They Might Be Giants tonight, so there’s not much of a chance I’ll get this finished and up today.  Check back tomorrow for your regularishly-scheduled bloggyness.

In which Wan gets his nickel in a twist

Before we get going – have a looky at this video.  My sketch comedy group was asked to make a video to promote Asheville ahead of Asheville Beer Week.  It was released this week, and my pink suit rocks the entire shoot…

It was also very cold for most of the shoot.

Welcome back to George vs the Listener Crossword – a battle that the Listener seems to have the edge on this year.  However when I read the preamble for Elementary by Wan (Wan appearing to be a new setter or a newdonym, so hi Wan if you’re looking in!) I knew I was going to be on the side of this puzzle.  That PhD in Chemistry is not going to go to waste, no it isn’t.  Two-letter symbols for elements are transposed between clues, and there’s something hidden in two rows.  I’ve seen a few things done with element symbols but this is a new one for me.

If you’re in Asheville, and now that you’ve seen the video, you know you want to be in Asheville, there are two barbecue joints of note. One is 12 Bones – it’s the flashy, award-winning, President Obama visited multiple times establishment.  However I have a soft spot for Luella’s – it’s open longer and later, has a far better bar, and is walking distance from my place (and has smoked wings!).  And it was there I went on Friday for a triple-L (Late Liquid Lunch) armed with the Listener.  Hey, that makes it a Late Liquid Listener Lunch!

There is a 1 across, but I couldn’t see it straight up… the first obvious answer came with 14 across – swap Te for Nd and get P,AND,A.  With that I was away… this was a very fun solve, and three beers and a plate of wings later, I had most of the grid, and just needed to clear up a few fiddly bits down in the Florida corner (though I was pretty sure of LONELY, JUMP and HELM, I wanted to make completely sure).

I started matching the elements together beside the puzzle, but ended up once I got home having to do it in Powerpoint to make sure they all matched up, and it appears that they do!

Not a plethora of penny-drop moments, but a really fun workout by Wan, and I think I can claim Victory to George!

2013 tally:  6-3-2

Feel free to tell me I really did waste my degree (or my time in getting it), watch the video again, and see you next week when Zag finally puts Dolly Parton in a crossword puzzle.

murder mystery

Welcome back to George vs the Listener Crossword – busy couple of days, and so I’m getting to this well after the solution is out, so not sure if I have that much to add to the general conversation, but here goes… it’s Hedge-sparrow, making a sixth appearance in George vs Listener world.  I have to say that Hedge-sparrow has made quite the impression on me, with the really tricky clash-resolution tour de force  Here and There, before that was some super colliding in Mass Production, the speed of light  in Metrical Variations, Charlie Darwin in S, and wormholes (hey, they popped back for a visit recently) in Travel Agents.  The first four had pretty sciencey themes, so in my note to Hedge-sparrow I beseeched a return to scientific or scienfictional themes.  Was I to get it with A Murder Mystery?

Three detectives, ciphers, evidence in the grid, a few DLM+1 clues (I may have coined that phrase, the device was in a Spectator puzzle a few months ago as well).  Side by side clues for down answers concealing a long message explaining the cipher.  OK… sounds like a wealth of thematic stuff, let’s get into it.

There is a 1 across, but I couldn’t get it on a first read-through.  No luck with 12 across either, but at 13 I hit the first of the DLM+1 clues with CAPO and we’re away.  That crosses 2 down, which has to be SWANS or BAYOU, but only one fits, so I can place both SWANS and BAYOU.  I got lucky with a number of the down clues that way, it seemed if I could solve one half I could solve the other half so it was a two-for-one.

With seven of the DLM+1 clues worked out it looked like it was going to be the HOUSEMAID who was the victim.  I was missing the I and S which helped confirm BUTTER.  The longer message took a bit more working out – I had KILLER and LETTERS and then tried to make the message meet in the middle.  KILLER FIRST THEN UNUSED LETTERS.

Moderate panic when I thought this was going to be a Playfair square!  But that wouldn’t work, not all of the messages are even numbers of letters.  Phew… So maybe it’s a simpler cipher – write HOUSEMAID then the rest of the alphabet and match it… Aha – now we have DRAPED OVER FLOOR, FLOATING ON LAKE and AT BOTTOM OF GARDEN, and we can work out the detectives as MAIGRET, FR BROWN and WIMSEY.  I’d already spotted BODY in the middle, and GROUND above the body.  So maybe it’s under the ground and Wimsey is right?  But there’s MERE under the BODY.  So it’s definitely floating on the lake.  Hmmm… I guess the bottom of the garden doesn’t mean under the garden does it?  So I changed my mind to B. FR BROWN.

Now I see I’d missed EDEN as the garden.

One long session later and we’re done – I think I had this in the mail on Monday, and I believe I can actually call this one a Victory to George.  Very fun puzzle (but how about the sciencey stuff next time, Hedge -sparrow?).

2013 tally:  5-3-2

Feel free to tell me that I need to get on to these earlier (I know I’m out of town next Friday so I should write it up before I leave), and see you next week when Wan gives us a puzzle in which to find my dear Watson.

Hey – I forgot the funniest part… I really do need to write these up earlier.  Looking at the conversation on the Crossword Center, and the note on the Listener site – looks like I lucked in to the weapon in a funny way – I saw DRAINO and thought “Oh, he’s fed her DRAINO and tossed her on the lake”.  Then looked at Chambers and saw that DRAINO isn’t there.  But it was still nagging at me, so I looked up  ?ONIARD and there was PONIARD!

I still think it should have been DRAINO

Three microscopic grids walk into a bar…

Welcome back to George vs the Listener Crossword.  Time to right this ship, eh?  It’s been a pretty miserable start to 2013, with four failures already, ouch.  Let’s see what happens next?  It’s Elfman!  There’s only been one other Elfman puzzle to appear in George vs Listener (though I have it on reasonable authority that Elfman has contributed to at least one other puzzle as a grouponym), and that was the Rudyard Kipling themed Requisite Knowledge, which I solved without too too much trouble.

First thing I noticed was that this printed on one page!  And that’s one US letter page, the (probably appropriately) shorter and wider bastard child of the A4 page.  This feat was managed by there being a short preamble, no break between across and down clues, and a tiny tiny tiny long thin grid.  What is this?  Three 7X7 grids next to each other, with something joining them through the middle.

Stone cold solving again – it looks like half of these clues have  a lie in them.  Hmmm

There is no 1-across but there is a first clue, so let’s start there… and not be able to solve it.  Fail on the “1 across” test.  Ditto the next few.  Hmmm… a first scan through all the clues only yielded a dozen or so straight off, but fortunately the words that could be lies tended to stand out in the clues.

A few more runs through and I have a few places that could be a starting point – there’s only six 6-letter clues (though there’s seven clues that have 6-letter enumeration… aaaaah… one of them isn’t U PRISE, it’s U PRAISE and the lie is in the six letters!).

You know how sometimes you get really lucky?  Here’s how to be a completely lucky bastard in solving a Listener puzzle with about half the clues figured out

- the very last clue is fortunately quite easy – HAP,U (no lie)

- since all 4-letter answers are accounted for, it has to go in the bottom left of one of the three grids

- It crosses two seven-letter entries, which should be somewhere in the middle and have a U or a P as a second letter – I’m looking at you, U,PRAISE (lie)

- That means another seven-letter entry not too far past U,PRAISE has to have a U as the second letter.  TA,BAN,US – in you go

- One of the first 4-letter clues has to fit that B in TABANUS… hello B,ELT

- OUT,LEA,P fits down the middle, as does L(EFT)IE and ST(E)RLET

- Go to Word Wizards to find words that would fit the rest of the grid… EN L’AIR, ANNULET, KE(P)T and of course the very first answer is THE OAKS.  No clues seem to match SUSPECT… aaaaaah… that’s the unclued entry (not the bit in the middle)

- The middle line now reads AHALFTR – to Google!  A HALF TRUTH IS A WHOLE LIE

The luck of the Aussies is smiling on me!  Not only have I got the first grid, it’s the alternating truth/lie grid, I have the entry that goes all the way along the middle, and every other clue I’ve solved can be sorted to their grid by truth or lie!

About 90 minutes later, looks like we’re in action – UPRIGHT and ANANIAS complete our trio of unclued entries.

And if I’ve made a transcription error in the one I sent in, the squares will be too small for M. Green to make out!

Very fun puzzle, Elfman, and a stroke of luck that will hopefully get myself back up and in the solving habit.  The solution will be out in about 40 minutes, but for now I’m going to call this a Victory to George

2013 tally:  5-2-2

Of course it can’t be as simple as all that, can it?  As Dave pointed out in a comment (and misery loves company), it’s OBLATE, not OF LATE.  I even considered OBLATE, but didn’t look it up.  Hang head in shame, and see if we can manage a year with more silly failures than actual successes!

2013 revised tally:  4-3-2

Feel free to let me know that I took horrendous shortcuts and should be punished, and see you next week when Hedge-sparrow kills a mystery

Hercule Poirot and The case of the missing preamble

Another Friday, another Listener – and hi to any new readers (there was a huge spike in views last week, not sure if that was because I posted late, or there was something special about last week).  This is George vs the Listener, where one average solver makes public his hits and misses and transcription errors are the norm (if you missed it, scroll down for a funny postscript on Xanthippe’s puzzle from last week).

This week’s challenge comes from Ilver – there’s only been one Ilver Listener before, Easy Win, which I managed fairly easily with the Pig Latin theme.  What have we here?  Well I don’t know, there’s no preamble. Hmmm…

Now how does one get started when there’s no preamble?  With 1 across of course, and at the time, nothing was coming (even though it was a pretty obvious clue later on).  This was a frustrating start, no preamble and no obvious answers to clues until I hit 16 across… well LA(T)TE fits the clue, and fits the space, let’s bung it in!  The crosses A1,TS so are all the clues normal?  Not sure what’s going on with 19 across, but the next one I can answer is E(SS)E at 20 across, so things are still kind of looking normal.

28 across is a mini-breakthrough.  Clearly an anagram clue, but if it’s NEW+TRADE+AREA it’s WEAR AND TEAR with an extra E or if it’s N+TRADE+AREA it’s WEAR AND TEAR with a missing W.  Almost immediately under that in the clue list is another wonky anagram, this time it’s definitely ARTY with an extra N.  OK, some clues have extra letters in wordplay (D’OH – that makes 1 across SORT).

Now we’re cooking… in go some answers…

OK, what’s this 41 across?  The answer has to be TOPIC, but the clue is SORT FIRST LETTERS OF OTHER IMPERFECT CLUES TO PRODUCE THEME.  Which works kind of as a clue (anagram of first letters) but is kind of awkward.

Hey idiot – maybe that’s a part of the preamble?  Can we make a preamble of these other clues that have a bunch of numbers in them?

BEING IMPERFECT, SOME WORDPLAYS INCLUDE EXTRA LETTERS… well I knew that, but that’s a fun clue for SIN

FIRST LETTERS OF EVERY DOWN IMPERFECT CLUE TENDER INSTRUCTIONS… aaaah  I guess I should read those then…

READ THE EXTRA LETTERS… well I was going to do that, duh – do you think I’m a novice at this.

UNCLUED ENTRY IS AN APPROPRIATE TITLE… oh yeah… you would have thought that at this point I would have worked out the middle row, but although I’d poked at it, I didn’t have an answer for the middle row – is it THE DOUBLE CLUE?

To Google – THE DOUBLE CLUE is a HERCULE POIROT mystery, and he’s an anagram of the first letters of the across imperfect clues.

Gentle readers – there are gaps in my education that you could drive a semi through.  I have not successfully finished a novel by Dickens, Peake, any Bronte or Austen.  I have never read a Poirot novel, and really only know of him through parodies on The Goodies.

But I have a grid for him

Much as I was unfamiliar with the subject matter, I loved this puzzle from start to finish.  It reminded me of two fond favorites… In Clue Order On and On… where there was level after level of hints hidden in clues, and Some Assembly Required, where we had to make up clues for missing entries.  Applying it to coming up with a preamble was a stroke of genius.

And the law of preamble average equilibrium means we should be in for a three-page preamble next week, right?  (yes we all know the answer to that).

Victory to George!  2013 tally:  5-1-0

Feel free to criticize my reading abilities, and tell me where to get started on the works of whoever wrote Poirot in comments, and see you next week when Ruslan gives us some ancient Egyptian sewing techniques.

Best transcription error ever!

Good thing the all-correct has already been blown away for 2013 – look what showed up in the mail yesterday…

Nice try, idiot

Guess that limited my chances of winning a prize for Xanthippe’s puzzle!

About as close as we’re likely to get to a Mighty Boosh crossword

Welcome back to George vs the Listener Crossword – and a lateish submission (though I got the puzze in on time, I think).

There are a couple of setters where I smile when I see the name, as I know I’m likely to be in for a theme I have familiarity with, fun clues, and a little bit of work.  Xanthippe is among those names (hi Xanthippe if you’re checking in), having entertained us with a numerical involving licence plates and US states, grid mutilation (but still not burning), rhyming slang in text messages, and a crossword that was a game of solitaire.  All fun, and all finished!

This time we’ve got eight affected answers and a pretty brief preamble, real words before and after.  So that sounds like normal clues at least, and we’ll see what happens from there.

There is a 1 across and SI,GH later we have a big pass on the 1 across test!  It crosses S,PACE,SHIP and clues that appear to be for MNA and R(OT)IDE all reversed.  Hmmm….  those down answers to fit P(ENDU)LUM and A,CAIN so I guess something has to happen to SIGH.  That was about it for the top left, so moving on.  COUNT IN, ED with the U moved gets us going and a lot of the top right seems to come together, but M,EEK won’t play nice.  Hmmm…

The middle didn’t seem to want to come together at all, but working on the bottom – GNAW, MESSAGER, DIRHAM, ASH and EYEPITS put the tantalising prospect of WORMHOLES at 42 across but there’s an L in the way from NUMEROLOGICAL.  Maybe it’s part of a wormhole?

Aaaaaah!  Double penny-drop moment!  SPACESHIP could become SPACE-TIME and CONTINUED could become CONTINUUM, and my NAME that doesn’t play with my down answers could swap the AME with the IGH up the top and make real words.  The TIME could come from WARSHIP.

Out comes the highlighter to find what could move where – the middle of my grid was really only finished after spotting the end-game, and the final touch was to sort out 13 down, which early on I figured could be ADEPT but didn’t write in because it wouldn’t fit with TROOP.  It’s a wormhole crossing another wormhole (doesn’t that make a collapsible continuum?) to leave 25 down eventually as SWEPT and 13 as ADORE.

Here’s the scribbles, highlights and my crib notes on where things needed to go…

 

Well the solution is up now and… I believe I’ve got it.  Woohoo!  Victory to George.

2013 tally:  4-1-0

Feel free to leave comments below and see you next week when Ilver poses the question, does a detective actually work?