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In a fit of bravado/madness that may or may not have been alcohol-influenced (but definitely hatched in a sleep-deprived stupor, though), I decided to start solving the Listener crossword. That’s the variety cryptic that runs in the London Times. It’s also recognized as probably the hardest crossword out there. Those that know me, know that I pretty much only solve vareity cryptic puzzles nowadays for fun. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I’m some Dan Feyer of the variety solving world, but I’m pretty good at them. For intstance, I crushed the latest WSJ cryptic in a sitting. That said, the Listener has completely killed my confidence. Now, I realize I’m in for a, uh, challenge with them. British crpytics have their own cluing idiosyncrasies, use completely different abreviations and spellings, and employ an overemphasis on some dictionary called Chambers that appears to have every word used in a nightmare starring Dr. Eugene T. Maleska. But do you think think that’s going to stop me? Well, here’s your answer. Attempt #1 at solving the Listener can be seen above.
Undeterred, I gave it a go the next week and saw a bit of progress, a single solitary answer (second one from the bottom):
You’ll also notice that I got a bit of assistance from Tabitha in the grid department. Though I’m not sure she got those right either. No matter, I haven’t quite given up this quixotic attempt, but inital results aren’t looking too good. So look forward to more progress reports in the future.
Share the puzzle. New one on Monday.
Welcome to me in 2007! I started (albeit with 20+ years of solving Australian and British cryptics on a regular basis) with the aim of getting 50% of the Listeners in a calendar year, and kept a blog about it… the blog started at
http://georgevlistener.blogspot.com/
And then moved to (and is currently at)
http://georgevlistener.wordpress.com/
The two you show here are still technically “live” in that the full solutions are released three weeks after the crossword goes out, though to make the postal deadline I usually have to be finished in the middle of the first week.
Feel free to email me for hints and suggestions, but what helped me the most was
– buying Chambers (if you use Crossword Compiler you can get it as an add-on and search using WordWeb Pro)
– buying Bradford’s Crossword Solver’s Dictionary, which has most of the abbreviations and wordplay elements for obscure words
– reading the full solutions on the Listener page – http://www.listenercrossword.com/
I don’t think I’ll be giving too much away by saying that the one by Colleague is going to be easier and a lot more familiar to you than the one by Samuel.
I bought the Chambers app for my iPhone years ago. Besides being an up-to-date copy of Chambers (and local- it doesn’t go fetch from the web), it does anagrams and pattern matches (not both together unfortunately). Also cheaper and smaller than than a new paper copy. Big, big win.
If you’re looking for something with more checks than the usual dailies, The Guardian’s weekly Azed puzzle isn’t usually a variety one (sometimes), but it’s barred and the clues aren’t too tricky. But the words… There’s always at least one (or a bizarro alternate spelling) that makes me glad I have the copy of Chambers at hand. It was really the puzzle that taught me trust my cryptic sense first and worry about whether I got a valid word second.
I’m sure you’re already aware of the monthly Richard Maltby variety cryptics in Harper’s Magazine. But did you know that subscribers have online access to the magazine archives, which includes all of their puzzles going back to 1976? (Get ready to put a new cartridge in the printer.)
Can someone explain the “digits” answer? Thanks
Oh, just came to me of course. Digits as in phone number? Do people say that?
I was wondering about that too. Pretty obscure 🙂
I’m intrigued. How can I try a Listener without full-on subscribing to the Times? (Not cheap.)