Listener 4100: Table-turning by Kea

[midazolam]

This is what the listener is all about. As soon as I saw Kea's name at the top I knew this was going to be good. This was a real challenge, the like we have been missing recently. Masterful construction with ingenious ideas in both clues and design. The best this year so far. Thanks for the brain workout Kea.

[Staurologist]

1. Having only got around to this after a busy weekend, I have tuned in to this highly entertaining thread. The consensus seems to be that this was an excellent puzzle. I agree. For an extra frisson, I suggest using coloured pens to demonstrate the effect.
2. Those of us who prefer to sip the Listener puzzle, like a good wine, may have had an advantage this time over those who like to gulp it down. As others have observed, those who thought thay had solved the perimeter quickly may have done themselves a disservice.
3. It is true, as S-Martix points out, that the puzzle was [probably] easier to construct than to deconstruct, but that is irrelevant. I could easily create an unsolvable puzzle, or conversely spend weeks constructing one that everyone could solve quickly. There are no correlations among constructability, solvability, and admirability. Picasso once created a bull's head by welding together a bicycle saddle and a set of handlebars; it probably took him about five minutes, but the result was and remains a stunning work of art. Whistler, during his court action against Ruskin, said that he didn't charge for the amount of time it took him to create his painting "Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket" (about half a day), but "for the experience of a lifetime". Kea's effort is not a Picasso or a Whistler among crosswords, perhaps, but it was very good nevertheless--perhaps a John Singer Sargent or a Samuel Palmer? :>)
4. However, before assuming that the grid was so easy to construct, one should perhaps try it oneself. I challenge S-Matrix and other antis to have a go, using the phrase "round about thy table" (Book of Common Prayer) (12 x 8).
5. I have two minor criticisms of the puzzle: (a) that the symmetry was only one-way, rather than two-way (room for improvement there in the challenge); (b) that the clues were presented out of order.

[AndrewG-S]

Staurologist, if I understand your comment on one-way versus two-way symmetry correctly (which I may not have done), then I fear that you may be seeking the impossible. I believe this is the case with the grid here and suspect it may be the case with any grid, particularly when the unching requirements are overlaid. I am not smart enough to come up with an elegant proof/disproof for this, perhaps there is a keen mathematician who can take a look?

[Zabadak]

Hi Staurologist - I too wasn't sure why the clues were presented out of order - I wonder if there's an Easter egg in there that we're not seeing. The only serious complication it caused me was when using two different prints of pages 1+2 where 37ac went awol. I was with an ace of asking AB what the clue was when I realised I had it on the corresponding pair of sheets - twice.

[Philoctetes]

I enjoyed this one - a nice meaty struggle. And I did find my colouring pens helped in the end-game. And the nice juxtaposition of 12 and 13 ac made me chuckle. On to hard sums!

[teuchter2]

I finally finished this afternoon, and really enjoyed the denoument. What a clever construction. I don't feel I got any help from this thread, even though I contributed earlier, mourning my lack of progress. I feel as if the old brain has had a good workout. Are some contributors becoming rather too serious? After all, its only a crossword!

[JackDeCrow]

Glad to get here and find I wasn't the only one who found this properly hard! Struggled until yesterday with the same misunderstanding of the rubric that I see AHearer refers to at the start of this thread (if I had a criticism of this puzzle, that would be it). Having sorted that out, the rest of the clues followed reasonably easily and I thought following the final instruction would be easier still. I have to say, so far it isn't! Thought I'd had a PDM on the train this morning, but no joy - still, a week yet to go!

[JackDeCrow]

Finally saved by Powerpoint - not a solving aid I've resorted to before!

[contendo]

My goodness, what a marathon! I've completed the grid (though with some doubts about bottom right-hand corner) and got the two-part instruction but now I'm stuck on the final geometry. Hoping for light to dawn.

[qwerty99]

Contendo, I'm in the same boat as you. I finished the (initial) grid yesterday, and I'm finally sure that it is correct; I can justify all the letters in the instruction. Can see the makings of a poet in the 1st column, but I've no idea what the poem is. Is the quotation in ODQ? I think if I can find the line from the poem I might be able to work out the final step

[contendo]

Qwerty99 - It's in the latest (7th ed.) ODQ but not in some earlier editions. The poet lacks his last letter and I can't see how to restore it.

[qwerty99]

Thanks, Contendo. I'm still on ODQ 5; it might be that it's there and I just can't see it. At the moment it looks like a toss-up between finishing this and filing my VAT return. I suppose you don't get fined for failure to submit a crossword though! This has made me feel spectacularly thick; I've found it by far the hardest of the year to date, and I haven't been defeated yet (transcription errors excluded). Apart from the sums ones, which I don't (can't) do

[contendo]

Qwerty99 - We seem to have the thread to ourselves at the moment. The blind leading the blind. If the quotation isn't in the 5th edition you shouldn't find it too difficult to find in any collected edition of the poet's work, bearing in mind the title of the crossword.

[perseverer]

qwerty/contendo The quotation is in (as far back as) the 3rd edition ODQ - but not in the index. Googling finds it quite readily.

[Ruthrobin]

qwerty99, you shouldn't feel 'spectacularly thick' - I believe lots of us would rate this one as by a long way the hardest so far this year - as well as, by a long way one of the most spectacular. (This comment was in no way intended to restart the animated debate!)

[qwerty99]

Thanks all, I can now see the poem and the relevant line. And, indeed, it IS there in my ODQ, I didn't look hard enough. So I still feel pretty thick, Ruthrobin! Now I need to work out where to make the first incision...

[midazolam]

This is a link to the ODQ online. It does not give all the quotations from the book, but quite a few, including this puzzle's quotation.

http://www.askoxford....otation_dict/?view=uk