Listener 3981

[cruciverbali]

If you'd rather not pay for Lip Service by Sabre, here it is.

[Rapparee]

Thanks for the link, Cruciverbalist. I reckon this should keep me quiet for a while.

[mad max]

many thanks for link
mad max

[cluelessJoe]

many thanks as usual C ... I'd heard there was a Sabre coming this month - time for a fight back hopefully - I failed on three of Sabre's last five Listeners!

[midazolam]

tough one this week with some extremely well thought out clues.

grid finished but even using a number of deciphering programs from the net, the code has beaten me

well done sabre!

[Scorpius]

I also have all but the unclued entries, and so far the code has eluded me. It won't be a question of trial and error. There's something odd in the wording of the preamble. Hmmm.
Having solved all of the last 8 Sabres I'm not inclined to give up.

[starwalker]

I too have reached the point of staring at the code. Any tips or hints will be most welcome.

[Mysterons]

I haven't been doing this one, but do enjoy cracking a good code. What are the words you need to decipher please ?

[Scorpius]

That would involve revealing an awful lot of the grid, Mysterons, and to be honest, I don't think the code can be cracked from the entries alone (they're not words). The possibile permutations are far too numerous. I've seen a few possibilities, but I don't see how any of them fit the description "general suggestions" in the preamble.

[Philoctetes]

There are a couple of useful patterns in the "words", two in particular. I have tried to use these to find real words that would satisfy both patterns, and come up with a few possibilities. But none seems to have any logic or connection - yet. And which is the "principal" diagonal?

[Mysterons]

It sounds like you are on the right track, Philoctetes.

(Principal Diagonal)

[Scorpius]

The principal diagonal. This was the oddity I noted in the preamble in my first posting, since there are two main diagonals. I began to wonder if there was something cunningly cryptic about the phrase "the principal diagonal", but in the end decided that it meant the left to right diagonal. Thanks Mysterons for the link confirming that meaning.
I've yet to work out how the clue to 18 across fits what I have in the grid from crossing answers, and I don't understand the wordplay to 26 down. Anyone else puzzled by these?

[Scorpius]

To answer my own question in part, I've just worked out wordplay to 26. Clever. 18 still eludes me.

[Philoctetes]

Look at the definition of "nut" in Chambers

[Scorpius]

Yes, I sorted it out just after posting my message. Thanks anyway. A typically devious Sabre clue (ie brilliant).

[growf]

For those that fancy a crack at the substitution cipher without completing the grid:

Though these are not the actual letters in the grid, the two encoded entries without unchecked letters have the patterns ABCDCBEF and ADAD.

The, presumably encoded, principal diagonal then has the pattern GHDDGFIJKKHD.

I presume from the preamble that there is a unique one-to-one mapping between encoded and unencoded letters.

[growf]

For the record, I turned up just one pair of possible answers: POTATORY and PAPA - which I can't see being correct and suggests that either we're not looking for English words or we're not looking for single words.

I explored the avenue of "general" meaning "of or relating to a genus" this morning - with no success.

[Philoctetes]

Add to that Dada/dicacity caca/citation mumu/misusing toto/tenoners
Any hint from "Lip service"?

[growf]

Alarmingly, "Lip Service" is the name of an infamous Listener crossword from 1980 - that received zero correct submissions.

See http://community.livejournal.com/listener_xwd/ 19391.html .

[Mysterons]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that the only possibility for the diagonal is LITTLE DORRIT, which doesn't fit with any of the above suggestions.

Do any of Sabre's previous puzzles shed any light on other possibilities ?

[growf]

I got LITTLE DORRIT as well (also LITTLE RABBIT, etc.) - but that makes the short unclued entry -T-T which doesn't seem promising.