A game I’d play if I lived closer to the Centipede and Vishnu

Welcome back to George vs the Listener Crossword.  Nothing like a popular fail to get the old comment board going, eh?  Let’s see what happens this week when Mohawk comes to town.  I could swear I’ve done a Mohawk puzzle before but nothing is coming up on the Listener crossword website, so hi Mohawk if you’re checking in.

There’s a game, and three four of clues – normal, misprints in definitions, wordplay missing a letter, wordplay one letter too much, and that tells us the game and the rules.  Looks like another week of all real words in the grid!

There is a 1 across, and at first glance it looks like it should finish ERED… having strap on leg is probably GARTERED or GAITERED – GART is a Shakespearian cause and we are away!  The only crossing clue I could get from that was THAW, so well great, I haven’t found any of those strange clue types.  How about the next across clue… SHARP(ei).  That’s normal too!  Next up is a misprint – ARCH so whatever we’re dealing with starts with a P.

The grid fill was a series of fits and starts… I didn’t get any really good long solving sessions over the next day or two, and it was a bunch of short peeks with a few clues going in at a time.  The next breakthrough came when I.KET appeared in the across letters, and I already had a P.  P something CRICKET?

Isn’t there a thing called PUB CRICKET?  According to both google and Brewers, it is a thing!  Points for arms and legs on signs or something like that… now this message could start making sense – PUB CRICKET A LEG IS A RUN.  Aaaah… there’s rather a lot of animals in normal clues – like the SWAN, DUCK and DOG.  There’s also a helpful set of pub signs in Brewers.

Time to get out the highlihter and figure this out – I highlighted the in/out/in and out clues in one colour, and the parts of the inn signs in another.  Across seemed to be having the better of this, with four signs to the three in the down, but down did better with limbs.  Poor across must have gotten all excited to see STAR AND GARTER or ROSE AND CROWN from a distance, only to find disappointment.

All that highlighting helped a lot for the final step – since that TWO and ONE are sitting in an empty space.  Across scored SIX and down scored TEN which can replace those original numbers to make real words.  Woohoo!

Now watch this be a complete disaster – I can’t make out what the end of the message is – it sounds like it should have something to do with wickets… possibly NO LEGS WICKET?  That might make more sense since it would be TWO for SIX in acrosses and ONE for TEN in downs.

Both of which sound like scores Australia was regularly getting over summer.  Sigh…

Tentatively I’m going to call this a Victory to George, and a lot of fun from Mohawk.  Next time I’m on trains in the UK I’m going to give this a go.

2013 tally:  2-1-0

Feel free to tell me how I ended up with an extra O somewhere in that message (I think I had it in 11 down – oh, it’s probably the of = O) or leave any other comments and see you next week when Kea takes us to a pole