Listener 4342 Triskaidekaphilia By Bero

[Monkmonk]

What a brilliant swansong. Interesting and fun.

[tilbee]

Agreed Monkmonk, a lovely final offering from BeRo, but I made much harder work of the endgame than really necessary.

[jockie]

Done the grid fill and identified the authors and what has to be written underneath, but still to work out the middle row and the message in the shapes. Better sleep on it ...

[TheBear69]

A fairly easy grid fill (aside from the 7 unches in the middle row, of course). Then it became a really good challenge. First rate!

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, we found the end a challenge too. Indeed this was a fine swansong. I simply cannot imagine how BeRo compiled this and managed to construct his 'unbroken, multiple, thematic sequence' in the grid - what an astonishing mental feat!

[perseverer]

Brilliant construction, clues perhaps not as difficult as they could have been, but spiced with wit, and fun pdms. A great epitaph for BeRo.

[AHearer]

Indeed, a delight. I couldn't resist doing the Q&A bit first, then most of the clues worked out quite easily (B, 14 and 18 being the last to fall). Another chuckle at the wording of the instructions when the writer emerged from the clashes. Sorting out the sections/sequences then took much longer than it should have. BeRo will be sadly missed.

[doctormatt]

Very enjoyable!

[tramart]

Whoops! Shirley's blog has already appeared! Sabotage?

[Ruthrobin]

No, it was a dreadful Shirley error that was corrected as fast as possible - result of using a new version of the system we blog with and not fully understanding the differences. Just hope you were the only one to notice it and that no damage was done.

[jim360]

Have been staring at a full grid, on-and-off, for a while without any PDMs of note. Fairly confident what the shapes are, up to maybe one square, but no idea what the thematic progression is. Ho hum.

[jim360]

And, just like that, the pennies drop. All of them.

[jockie]

A splendid end game, but I think it can be uniquely finished without actually identifying the shapes - the correctly grouped row sums are sufficient. This doesn't of course detract from the puzzle's elegance in any way.

[x_word_fan]

Eight of same shape??? Similar shape?

[IainGrace]

Well, the clues ar pretty easy and we have (we think) readily identified the theme and the thematic work but........

[Philoctetes]

Aaargh - my old Chambers CD rom has stopped working. Anyone else having problems?

[Ruthrobin]

No, Philoctetes - I use the 2005 version (2009 edition of the dictionary) with the red cover and it is working as usual. Which one do you use? I can't see why a CD rom would stop working.

[Philoctetes]

Same here, RR. Some evil overnight update has interfered, no doubt. It's amazing how lost I feel without it :(

[TheBear69]

A long time ago my CD-ROM disappeared. After the panic subsided I figured out how to correctly update the Windows registry so that the exe still works as long as I have the full set of data files in the Chambers folder. SO far that has worked for me thru several new computers - I have not tried it on Windows 8 yet, but I expect it will continue.

So if you still have your Chambers folder (C:\Program Files\Chambers\TCDT) on your computer, I might be able to help you get it working. [email protected].

I'm considering switching to a MacBook. Has anyone successfully run the CDROM, TEA and/or cxml on a Mac? (If so which windows emulation solution did you use?) Thanks

[EAChaplin]

It works fine on Windows 8. My current Laptop/tablet doesn't have a CD drive so I just transferred it over on a USB stick. I haven't used the actual CD since first installing it, but there has been a additional patch.