Listener 4232 A Murder Mystery By Hedge-Sparrow

[dr b]

What a long preamble, but what a fun puzzle. It took me a few minutes to get what the down message was telling me, but the P D'd, all was clear. Thanks hedge-sparrow.

[magichour]

As always, not long after posting, the solution falls into place. An enjoyable romp - nowhere near the horror show it sounded like from the preamble. In response to Alekhine's point about how the name of the correct detective is entered, I think there is only one way it can be correctly entered in the grid (coded) and the decoded name must be an exact decoding of the entry.

[teuchter2]

I left some of this for this morning, just to give me something to do before heading for the 0-0 in the freezing cold blast. I got finished the last two clues ad the decoding without too much difficulty and have something that is in my list of weapons that is the 'most touching', though I can't find five weapons - must have another look. My choice seems a bit unlikely for the perpetrator to be in possession of, but I can imagine a possible scenario!

[jim360]

I believe I've managed this although the highlighting has eluded me until now. Possibly. Never heard of it, which made the search very difficult.

An amusing construction though I've heard of only one of the three detectives so I can't be 100% sure that I've got them all right. Here's hoping.

[emcee]

Well, thus far, it's taken me far longer to find a convincing weapon than the rest of the puzzle put together. I have a few possibilities but I'm happy with precisely zero of them. The word-search continues.

[tenflags]

hmmm me too Emcee .. thought I would check here to see if anyone else had the same trouble.. and so can't be tooo obvious.

[jim360]

D RIKTAIR RIDQ WHQ H FKVEFY LTZZFE WDRI HJ EFEAHJR UKJQRPTURDKJ HJS JDUE UDLIEP ADGGDUC. RIE UKSE DQ JKR RKK IHPS RK OPEHC, OTR QRDFF JDUE RK QEE H QTOQRDRTRDKJ UDLIEP TQES DJ H UPKQQWKPS PHRIEP RIHJ LFHYMHDP.

D WKJSEP DM WE'FF QEE HJ EJDAGH-RYLE UKSE TQES KJE SHY!

[dr b]

^Listener 4195 doesn't exactly use HJ EJDAGH-RYLE UKSE but is in the spirit.

[pushmi-pullyu]

All fell nicely into place once I realised I was making things unnecessarily complicated with the encoding/decoding. Thanks Hedge-sparrow, that was fun.

[contendo]

You've given us a bit of work to do there Jim. Sorry you were unsuccessful in University Challenge, especially falling down on the (somewhat abstruse) physics questions. Better luck in the next round.
As for me, I'm still looking for the weapon. I think it must go round several bends.

[Ruthrobin]

LEPIHLQ DJ H OFOA BDF360

[olichant]

I literally made this twice as hard on myself as it should have been - it screamed lfhymhdp. My favourite Listener to date.

[jim360]

DJ H what, sorry, ruth?

[Ruthrobin]

Sorry Jim360 OFKA!

[emcee]

At long last the confounded weapon has been found! What I didn't like was the use of rie wkps "rktuidja", rk ge ridq gehjq "rhjaejrdhf" which this certainly isn't!

Nevertheless, a nice puzzle. Thanks Hedge-sparrow.

[s_pugh]

A tricky puzzle but enjoyable, however I thought it was spoilt by the dreaded word search. Now I am further confused by emcee's comment, as the weapon I had found does indeed touch the victim as per the preamble. It is however the only weapon I can find! Have I erred?

[jim360]

Those who haven't yet solved the crossword may be interested to know that my ciphered post succumbs to frequency analysis on a single pass.

[emcee]

s_pugh: We may well have found the same weapon but I may be defining "touching" differently from you.

[sunny-dave]

Done and Dusted - a fun outing for a Sunday afternoon

Thanks Hedge-Sparrow, I really enjoyed that.

[Patch49]

Annoyingly I have everything bar the name of the third detective. I have searched Wikipedia to no avail. Does this mean I have a wrong answer somewhere upsetting the code?

[sunny-dave]

Think MPEJUI + LDLE, patch49