Listener 4115: Invisible Ink II by Sabre

[midazolam]

Invisible Ink was back in 1995, before I started solving the listener, however I have solved a few of Sabre's puzzles, who often uses ciphers and this is no exception.

The grid filling started off well, but there needs to be a lot of cold solving before the decoding can continue. Often I thought "a word can't fit in there", but sure enough there was. 31 down is a tricky clue, one that I had to work backwards to get.

All in all, a nice challenge. Thanks Sabre

[perseverer]

....should have added, the relevant page for subscriptions to Chambers on-line is

http://www.chambersre...D96794B39CEB4A3BF7EFC

but they are not accepting subscriptions!

[easterfool]

Well I thought that this one was fun - but it did need some hunting through the lists (books and online) which is not really as satisfying as working out through knowledge and then checking. Had to be careful on this one- bet I've made another misprint/copying error. What a lot of aids there are online - JEG has strong views on those I know, but I don't see much differenmce between them and a good dictionary (or friend). Finally worked out 31D and 32D having solved them both but doubted my solutions - took longer to sort them out and than finding the strange words. Strange how solutions come to you - went to sleep stuck on 5Across - woke up with the answer in my head. Perhaps I should fall asleep over the Crossword more often.

[BlackHugh]

You can get the CD version on ebay for about £21 including postage - well worth it

[mr-rodin]

Thank you all for your thoughts / help on that

[Scorpius]

mr-rodin, one computer aid that is very useful for puzzles such as this one is the program, TEA , by Bryson Ltd. It was designed by a former editor of the Listener, Ross Beresford. The company seems to have disappeared from the web, or perhaps it's url has changed, but I think it's still possible to download TEA from other sources.

It's a very fast and versatile program. For instance, in addition to the usual partial word searches and anagram solving, it'll return SUSURRUS from the following entry: 12123321, where the digits indicate the letter pattern. Very useful for getting 4dn and 5dn from the unencoded crossing answers.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, Scorpius, because I imagine I was not the only person getting to those by elimination - feeding in, one by one, the most frequently used letters (ETAOIN SHRDLU) into the BRB on-line version to see what came up. Oh the hoops we leap through in order to complete these things!

[contendo]

TEA is available on www.crosswordman.com/tea.html for $39.95.
It would certainly have been a help with this one. I worked like Ruthrobin through the permutations of common letters for 5 dn on Wordwizard. I don't see how this crossword would be possible without one of these online aids.

[rabet]

I have found this a real struggle, particularly 22 across, where I can't even decide which word(s) form the definition. I think I have 5 and 6 down but they don't seem to give me enough info to progress. Grrr!

[BlackHugh]

rabet
22a - the definition is at the end and is not a noun (plus it is hyphenated).
If you have 5d I think you should next look at 8d (which seems only to be in 2008 Chambers & not in earlier editins)

[Philoctetes]

May I invite folk to contribute further on 4114. I have asked on that thread how a solver could be expected to find the theme without access to the internet. Please, if you have an answer, use that thread rather than this.

[rabet]

Thanks BH, got it now. I actually thought of it earlier but it seemed so unlikely I didn't bother to look it up. Queer chaps, these Aussies!

[AndrewG-S]

Philoctetes I think you could look up the theme in chambers, work out the formula based on this and then use a calculator with sufficient digits.

[Eril]

I'm with AGS - fuller reply on 4114 thread

[Philoctetes]

Just finished - busy week and finished 4116 in the meantime. But I was not helped by persistently reading the last word in 31D as "ELF". I know I wear glasses, but the typeface on the new web version is appalling.