Listener 4053 Phoney by Wasp

[robinruth]

What a pleasure to have a straightforward puzzle that we could manage. This one was a pleasure from start to finish and great for us relative newcomers. I am glad there is one like this now and then - a fine one to prompt complete Listener beginners to attempt.

[andrewvc12]

I'm being very thick today. Solved all the clues, got all the eight letter words, found the word beneath the grid. However I still cannot work out the "weak theme" that will helpme find the five letter words where there are options. I don't think it is as easy as last weeks!

[midazolam]

take the y off the title and it would give you another potential 5 letter word

[andrewvc12]

Thanks Midazolam. Got it at last. Andrew

[robinruth]

Midazolam - I like the way you hinted without giving too much away and spoiling it for others. It reminds me of your very first message to me when I found this site some months ago and naively said too much in my question.

[Mysterons]

I must admit that I hadn't realised the theme word was a straight anagram of the misprinted letters in the eight-letter words, having used the Wordfinder programme with the 13 possible letters in each of the 8 positions to obtain the possibilities.

So, in answer to your query Clamzy, no I don't know of such a programme, but if you enter [abcdeftuv][abcdeftuv][abcdeftuv] in Wordfinder, it gives a list of just 78, which can quickly be whittled down to 19 by excluding 'repeats'.

[Clamzy]

Thanks mysterons (and midazolam) for your comments. I did try in wordfinder to do a 'letter choice' anagram search and got a message hinting that such a facility may be a future prospect - fingers crossed.

[Cruncher]

Well I think I'm being very thick here. Glad it all seems so straightforward to you lot. I've filled the grid and found a group of 5-letter words that have a connection and can see what the consensus is for the 8-letter word but I must say not convinced that the game's all over yet. I can see no particular connection between the 8-letter words in the grid and can't yet see how the alphanumerical coding extends to any other part of the puzzle. I had originally presumed that the numerical values of the 5-letter words would sum to to the title word, but that doesn't work. And beyond being a necessary connector for the 5-letter words I don't see how that piece of information relates to anything else in the puzzle. There are a lot of possible words from the corrected numbers - one of which appears in a slightly distorted form in the grid - so for now I'm going to sit on this and muse some more. Wasp's previous puzzles were rather tighter affairs - this seems a bit too random.

[perseverer]

Cruncher - I think most of us have decided that the flaw, if any, with this puzzle is that there is no particularly great PDM once you have figured out the connection between the 5 letter words. The 8 letter words do seem a rather random and pretty obscure bunch. The title does relate to the 5 letter words, as midazolam said, and it also relates to the theme word to be entered.

[kwyjibo]

Yes not much of a sting from Wasp. I figured that the encoded 8 letter word would be easier to find than trying random combinations, but thought that it could have been done a bit more cleverly.

[crucifernz]

Thanks VERY much Midazolam for your hint about taking the 'y' off the title as a hint to the 5 letter words. I'd managed the rest, including the 'Theme Word' from the coded words, but was struggling to find the connection for the unclued 5s. This is my VERY FIRST completed Listener Crossword, having graduated from Speccies, Azeds and the UK dailies. Haven't got down to finishing the last 2 EVs, which appear tougher than this apparently easier Listener.

[crucifernz]

I can now see that the 'phone'y hints were all there in the preamble. Hell, it's 1:47am here in NZ - no wonder the brain's a bit dull!

[ABeeBeeSee]

Clamzy, Mysterons

I think the program you are looking for is TEA at: www.crosswordman.com

[shelouse]

I feel much the same as everyone else here. The whole thing seems a little weak in that it doesn't hang together as nicely as one would wish. I wasted some time trying to find an eight letter word that would fit the same criteria as the rfive letter words, and didnt at first necessarioy assume that the letters in the eight letter word were the original correct letters in the 'telephone numbers'.

Funnily, 22dn IS in Chambers 2006 - I deduced the wordplay and checked it in Chambers as one of the first clues I solved.

[Philoctetes]

Feeling unutterably dim on the 5-letter words. Are they all Chambers words, or do i need to know something that my teenage daughter (as a typical example) would think of naturally. For instance, for 7D I have three possibilities, two of which are variant spellings on the unchecked letter - is it one of these, and is there an obvious answer?

[Mysterons]

It is indeed one of those Philoctetes. The common link between all the 5-letter entries, and the title minus the Y, is that they can all be preceded by the same 4-letter prefix - in the case of the title this produces a word of direct relevance to the theme (not the theme word)

[Clamzy]

I've just arrived home to find yet another email from Answerbank berating me for not using it for a considerable time. I wonder if this is some automatic process. Anyone else receiving them?
Shelhouse; I didn't know there was a 2006 version of Chambers. It's bad enough having to buy a new edition every five years, but I would baulk at every 2 years:-)

[sunny-dave]

Thank you mysterons for the gentle 'assist'.

Actually gave me another smile as the compounded 36ac took me right back to my early days in computing. How on earth did I manage to write programs of many thousands of COBOL lines without a screen < shakes head and wanders away muttering > :-)

[Clamzy]

Thanks ABeeBeeSee. I am aware of the existence of TEA (&Sympathy), but they are not on-line programs but have to be purchased at not inconsiderable expense. They're no doubt indispensable aids for the setter, but not for the likes of yours truly.

[Philoctetes]

Thanks, Mysterons. That confirms all my answers - but what a weak ending! A generally unsatisfactory feel to this effort.
And, Sunny Dave, I can trump that, having written thousands of lines in Assembler via such things. Even now I can debug a STH 4,0(4) without my mind going blank.

[tenflags]

Well slow coach again - although this is only my second attempt at a listener (did joint wisdom - Rok). Not enough time last week. I should have looked at this thread earlier as spent ages on the theme - glad to see that I don't seem to be 'missing' anything as it were. I'm always intrigued by the faceless people behind the names and interesting to see that some folk at least have programming backgrounds - I suppose that makes sense. I also was a progammer a long time ago, assembler, cobol, pL1 etc., and it just occurs to me how much I miss that. If these are the 'easier' listener ones i'm not sure I will have the time to do any more until I get a bit quicker at the cold solving. I shall also treat myself to this bardfords reference a number of you seem to refer to .. exacly which book is it and is there any particular version you clever folk would recommend ?