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.

Hello Dolly!

Welcome to George vs the Listener – I’ve resisted looking at the other blogs or the solution for 9 to 5 by Zag, even though I know it came out yesterday.  Got really caught up in the day job and then went straight to a They Might Be Giants concert, so a couple of crazy days.  TMBG are still a great show, for a band that was big when I was in university.  Geek rock doesn’t age… no “Ana Ng” but they did break out “Don’t Let’s Start”, “Istanbul (not Constantinople)”, “Birdhouse In Your Soul” from the classics list along with some new ones.

Oh yes, there’s a Listener I was meant to have written about already, wasn’t there.  9 to 5 by Zag.  We last saw Zag early last year with Bias and the story of the Seven Sages.  Lots of mutated words from the wordplay there.   In this one it looks like we have real words in the grid and thematic columns and all sorts of different types of clues to give unchecked letters in the columns and two other normal clues.  Looks tricky – I started off writing the types of clues to the side.

My first instincts was that this looks tricky, having to sort out five types of clues.

There was a 1 across, but my attention was drawn to the two italicized clues – would they drop a hint?  Well they have 9 and 5 in them… but they’re both easy solves – SA,V,ANT and UN(it),IX (a word I use almost daily).  So let’s work around them…   UNIX crosses S,HUNT and so we have an extra F in the definition.  It also crosses DANDELION (misprint F in wordplay) and this is starting to look less daunting. In fact by the end of my lunch break I had most of the left hand side clues solved, and since I knew all of the definition +1 letters, but one, HALF OF TWELVE was looking like a contender for 7 down.

Aaaaah… HALF OF TWELVE is 6, and the title is 9 to 5, so I wonder if column 7 (where I have about half the entries) works out to be another of the numbers… NINE MINUS TWO.  And it’s just before the 7 column, so maybe they are 9 8 7 6 5 in the five 12-letter downs?

Works for 10 – TEN INTO FIFTY… so now I have a full right hand side of the grid, a half-finished left side, and I think I’ve got the theme. Executive decision – let’s not end lunch right now, I may be able to knock this out in one session!

I got a couple of the left-hand side answers (SEXTET, HIRONS becoming HERONS) from figuring the theme and getting FOUR PLUS FOUR and THREE SQUARED for the left two long columns.  At the end of extended lunch, we are all done.  Pat on back time!

And then life got crazy, and instead of making a clean copy to send off straight away, I forgot about it or didn’t have time until it was probably too late to get it to Green Lane in time to get comments back to Zag.  So if you’re checking in, Zag, hi – hope you got the letter, and this was really fun – I liked how every clue contributed to the overall theme.

Now to check if I really can call this a Victory to George…

It appears I can – woohoo!

Things start to even out a little after Tuesday of this week, so maybe I’ll be back on track on Friday, so please feel free to tell me the virtues of not procrastinating (or tell me when you get around to it), and see you next week when Ron gives us a taste of his chromosomes.

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.