Listener 4353 A Ghost Story By Kevgar

[trux]

All over rather too quickly for my liking, but I enjoyed the join-up-the-dots picture-forming. Clues perhaps a bit easy for this outlet. Anyhow, now plenty of time for tennis and/or sweltering in the heat....Many thanks, KevGar

[starwalker]

Sadly, I have to agree that the gridfill was rather easy. Still, I can now take my time over finding the quotation and the relevant dots. Thanks KevGar.

[Contrarian]

Agreed. Some rather inelegant clues, too, especially some of the ones with the misprints.
I did like the way that the quotation was revealed though.

[Ruthrobin]

We thought this was absolutely delightful - especially the endgame with the joining of the dots and what we (with a wry smile) put inside. It was great to have a very easy grid fill - we get plenty of tough ones to create a balance. Many thanks for the fun, KevGar.

[starwalker]

My solution has been slowed by there being a typo in the quotation, in my version of the ODQ.

[jockie]

I imagine when this was submitted KevGar didn't advise the Editor that it was time-sensitive. In the immortal words of Kenneth Wolstenholme - it is now!

[Ruthrobin]

I believe, Starwalker, that older versions of the ODQ have a different penultimate letter which is a variant - the 1953 second edition has it and the 1964 concise edition (it's the one I learnt at school - I don't think it is a typo). Current editions have, of course, the one you need.

[starwalker]

Thanks for that RR. I'm on the revised fourth edition which is 1996. Perhaps I should consider updating.

[AHearer]

A nice puzzle with a pretty ending -- just what I needed to get my brain ticking over again after a few days walking in the Peak District (and possibly overestimating the amount of fluid that needed to be replaced on arriving back at the pub). Thanks, KevGar.

I'd only met the quotation in the form used in the puzzle -- I wasn't aware of a variant.

[upsetter]

RR, we beg to differ. OK, so we are at the grid-stare/google phase and are encouraged by your comments about the outcome of this, so will soldier on. But we simply do not understand why the preponderance of easy clues is a good thing and would like to know in more detail why you think this. We have tried to start a debate on this issue in the past, but have failed to engage much interest. Attempting to solve the Listener is a privilege, not an obligation (at least for those of us who are not in the setting biz). Like others, we are grateful to all setters, who if they are remunerated at all would be most unlikely to achieve the minimum wage. We also agree that there can be much pleasure and entertainment in solving easier puzzles (eg the Telegraph quick crossword often has a clever pun at the top). But surely the point is that the Listener has a special role among crosswords published in the main-stream media, which is that it should always present a challenge. There will always been challenging puzzles whose structure demands a few gimmes at the beginning, but that is not the situation here. We recognise the importance of encouraging new solvers, but is that not best achieved by a relatively obvious pdm, whilst at least ensuring that the clues are no easier than those which anyone attempting the Listener will have been challenged by in other publications? After all, you would not expect one of your more experienced students to spend the whole day on the nursery slopes, would you?
BTW on the subject of house rules, we assume the the reference to the quotation is as it appears in the source and not in any subsequent version. Is that right?
The translation has 27 letters.

[upsetter]

The ending was good, held up by mis-remembering the quotation from school.
Had the clues been of, say, a Chalicea level of difficulty this would have been a very good puzzle.

[Ruthrobin]

Upsetter, there are two of us and we are 'middling ability' solvers, and, even though we had the source after about an hour (which, of course, didn't at that stage help much except suggesting the endgame long before we had a full grid) we were solving for nearly three hours. That, for me, makes a fair Listener of the 'easy' end of the scale. The lovely, unambiguous endgame (with the slight hitch, for some, of a variant in all earlier versions of ODQ but it is totally unambiguous in Chambers - which is, of course, the recommended source) added brownie points.

You know I am a setter (obviously from your charming comment) and I would say that it is difficult to fundamentally shift one's level of cluing difficulty. The Sharks, Elgins, Sabres, Quinapali, Ilvers, Artixes and Wans of the crossworld will continue to be Magpie D and E setters and the Chaliceas, Samuels and Nutmegs and probably KevGar will enjoy filling the Magpie A, B, C slots. (Magpie plug - there are always six more challenging crosswords available for anyone who suffers from our crossword obsession and has time to fill http://www.piemag.com) but I am convinced that the editors have got it right in admitting the full range, as long as the unching, word-length etc. fit the rules.

Expert solvers like you, Starwalker, Trux, A Hearer et al. have to live with mild disappointment sometimes, knowing that we will all be seriously challenged by next week's or the one after it.

I agree that if a grid is filled by us in 30 minutes, it IS too easy for the Listener (and there have been a few like that over the years) but I am sure the comments that accompany entries to JEG for this one (they are forwarded to the setter) will be very positive in general.

By the way - your comment about remuneration; I set weekly for a national newspaper and the other Numpty (yes we are the Numpty bloggers so do have an obligation to solve all the Listeners) commented, not long ago, that the 'hourly' income from it is below what is earned by Her Majesty's guests at, say, Pentonville, if they 'work'. I would say that at least 100 hours probably go into the setting, responding to vetting, working with editors, proof-checking etc. for a Listener crossword - some fellow setters might say it is twice that - so clearly it is a labour of love.

[upsetter]

RR, we feel damned by fulsome praise.
If this took you three hours, you must have been multi-tasking (finding the Higgs and cooking dinner on a unicycle, perhaps).
You often post early on a Friday, and only rarely before completion.
In our case, we have built up such 'expertise' as we have after taking years to get our first puzzle completed and thereafter gradually building up to a 50% success rate. Even now it is very rare that one of us could complete without any input from the other.
The Listener should be a challenge and our test is whether (as last week) we had been 'finally' resolved to give up, before eventually battling through.
We have never tried composing a clue, an cannot imagine how you go about composing the grid, but we think that you are being over-protective of this week's setter if you are really suggesting that eg repeated clues where the answer bridges two adjacent words could not be improved upon.
Keep sewing the mailbags.

[jim360]

The gridfill has not been too challenging for me either. On the other hand, despite having copies of C. and ODQ to hand I still can't find the relevant quote. Since it is going to be hidden in the grid in at least a slightly intricate way, grid-staring isn't helping much either. Wondering if this is going to be the second "endgame-heavy" puzzle in the last month or so, after Elfman's effort from three weeks ago that was something like one part gridfill to five parts staring.

[upsetter]

Jim, this sounds like a generation thing.
Few would lament the days when it was impossible to become a Junior Optime (or better?) without having studied the source and been familiar with the quotation therefrom.

[jim360]

I knew the cunning strategy of posting here would help the penny to drop.

Aren't there technically two French words, rather than just the one, formed in the final grid?

But anyway, thanks KevGar. In the end not quite so endgame-heavy after all, although I did end up having to read rather more of the source material than I'd expected. Apparently ODQ thinks that it's quote-worthy in abundance... I think they're overdoing it at least a little.

[jim360]

I actually did know the quotation in the end, including the comments on its inaccurate translation, courtesy of its appearance in an episode of some 1980s comedy or other. I just wasn't aware of its source, so it was possibly the last one I found in ODQ.

[upsetter]

Jim, we assume that French means "French and not English", in which case there is one.
If we are including all words for which the entry is the French word (pace The Forty) borrowed from another language, then we suspect (without the benefit of a French dictionary) that there are four French words, three of which are English (per BRB).

[upsetter]

Gosh, Jim. We were around in the 1980's and the sitcom passed us by.
Has it been revived as a cult?

[jim360]

I don't think so -- my Dad, however, liked it enough to have a copy of the book version, and one day I opened it up and found it hilarious. Been a while since I've watched any of it though, but that is partly because I remember quite a lot of it.

[aldanna]

Yes, pretty quick, even for the likes of me. But fun, I felt. Like Jim, I initially quailed at the number of possibilities in the ODQ, but once I had decide to go for what I felt was the most well known, it all fell into place. Where I did halt for a while, until I roped in Himself, was the final step, as a French word leapt out at me, but was the wrong one.