Listener 4086: Back Gate by Tiburon

[midazolam]

My first listener from one of the Magpie team (talk about coincidences from last weeks magpie pitch).

Obvious misprints made this fairly straightforward to start but tricky to finish. The theme however was right up my street so the PDM finally dawned and then I very much enjoyed piecing it together.

A diagonal red herring having completed the top right hand corner first led me to think of the wrong 4!

Many thanks Tiburon

[email protected]

[Zabadak]

Easylistener: no question, Chambers CD-ROM, available currently on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co....d=1273942829&sr=8-20, a snip at £15. I tried the Franklin gizmo, and it has nothing going for it except portability. Mine didn't even last long. The CD-ROM is fully searchable, and as close to the current edition as makes no odds. And it has the Thesaurus. As long as Chambers is the reference for the Listener, accept no alternatives, unless you're running a mac!

[bobbycollins]

I fully endorse Zabadak's recommendation. A smashing tool that doesn't get dog-eared!

Some mildly irritating quirks (like often taking your search to the following word), but nothing that only the super fussy would complain about. I must have loaded it on a dozen machines by now (mine, wife, children, work.....). An absolute snip at fifteen quid.

[easylistener]

Thanks for the recommendation. Looks good. But it wouldn't help with the final twists like this one. I still can't get the theme - what is wrong with me today?

[qwerty99]

Zabadak, you just cost me a hundred quid! Had to go straight to Amazon to order the Chambers CD-ROM, and then I hung about browsing and bought a load of books. The CD-ROM looks good though, and my old 2003 Chambers is in a terrible state. The hard cover has long since gone, and so have some of the last pages; the "Mathematical Symbols" and "Wine bottle sizes" page is hanging on by a thread, and won't last much longer. I will still buy a new paper version though, when I get round to it.

[Zabadak]

Qwerty: so in penitence here's another money saving tip: just about every classic book, including all Shakespeare, in a fairly antiquated format but still searchable, for 45p! Send all those other purchases back!
http://www.amazon.co....qid=1273953426&sr=1-1
Just don't visit any other Amazon pages while you're snapping it up!
I bought mine when it first came out and it still works.

[Ruthrobin]

Ah, I see! I am so hooked on attempting to decipher wordplay that I miss such a straight reading. However, I am reeling from the sheer brilliance of a number of Tiburon's clues.

[cluelessJoe]

Well remembered bobbycollins and dr b - yes, 1965 (coincidentally the year bobbyc was footballer of the year if I remember rightly). That sequence must rank as maybe the first 'pop video', still fresh, and in place years before MTV was invented.
Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now (oops, sorry, wrong number)

[silversolver]

Thoroughly enjoyed this one - superbly constructed. Managed to fill the grid last night but the penny only dropped this morning with regard to the theme. I have not as yet worked out the relevance of the title.

[perseverer]

Recently bought Chambers CD-ROM from Omnibooks UK for £12 including p&p.

[easylistener]

Finished at last although theme is not something I know anything about. I too struggle to understand the title.
Also puzzled by wordplay in 43a,44a,19d,31d.
Will put the CDROM on my bitrthday list. Thanks for advice!

[Speravi]

The bouquet: great avatar, ClulessJoe.
The brickbat: 'with mutual 180-degree symmetry' seems redundant. Worse, once again, an idiosyncratic understanding of symmetry is manifested: with as liberal an interpretation of mutuality as you like, try locating a single horizontal (because it specifies 180-degree) line of symmetry appropriate to both (it says mutual) curves. It can't be done, IMHO. Rant over.

[cluelessJoe]

Agreed, Chambers CD ROM is now an essential - maybe the essential - part of my toolkit. I found mine for about a quid on Ebay - it's may be worth looking there too (I just saw one now, available at 12.99 post free)

[Clamzy]

It seems to be a pattern for me in recent weeks to complete a fairly easy set of clues, get the theme and then spend 24hours looking for the wordsearch.
As BobbyCollins said, the misprints were a help in completing one or two clues. My problem is that in two of the four thematic words I have an "unknown" letter but there is none such in my grid:-( So - appropriately disposed letters Hmmm.

[Speravi]

Clamzy: there are two sets of four thematic words, the grid set doesn't contain the unknown letter. The 'appropriately disposed' description was more helpful to me than the nonsense about symmetry.

[Clamzy]

As pointed out by others before, a posting seems to do the trick. Thematic names not thematic words. Duh.
Thanks anyway speravi.

[bobbycollins]

great memories dr b & cluelessJoe..............

and you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows (well not on the North West coast of England you don't)

[perseverer]

What about a central vertical line of symmetry?

[perseverer]

...... with the curves rotated 180 degrees.

[Zabadak]

Silversolver: on the title, try checking out the short version of the theme (as featured in the grid - easy to miss that bit of the instruction) backwards (in capitals)

[dr b]

I won't dispute what Speravi said, because I don't understand it. I did not try to apply a physicist's formal definition of symmetry, but just took it to mean that if you were to rotate the puzzle 180 degrees from any starting point, the highlighted cells would have the same shape. At any rate, what's to be highlighted is so unambiguous that I didn't pay too much attention to the wording of the instructions.

Anyway - I'm off to chew gum; don't want to be a bum. Now where's that pump handle?