Listener - Redherring

[Patch49]

How many of the second lot of phrases, apart from the obvious 3, are red herrings to be ignored? Should I be able to make sense of the letters in a 4a x 5d grid in the centre?

[pandabear]

hiya -

can this be answered without a copy of the Listener?

[Patch49]

This was the Listener Crossword, published in the Books section of The Times last Saturday. You have to do crossword first to find a phrase which leads you to more phrases and it's these I'm stumped by!

[Quizmonkey]

Patch - did you ever suss this one? The only instructions which weren't a red herring were to focus on the core of the grid and the reference to a 4x5 area. The central area of the grid contained the word TINTINNABULATE (meaning 'to ring') enclosing six letters, two of which were the clashes. These had to be entered as EDHERR ie EDHERR inside RING = REDHERRING.

[Patch49]

Tch! I see it now. I never thought of reading the 4x5 round in a circle - I was trying to do knights moves. Hope to have beter luck with Aah belt this week!

[Quizmonkey]

Patch - how are ou doing with Aah belt ? Virtually filled the grid but now have a coded string which seems to contain the word Chambers... Are you any further?

[Patch49]

I'm stuck on decoding the string. I've got ES.UE.DEIENS.AIHAEMBE..RES. Solved all the clues bar 36ac but not sure about what should be in the gaps. Is clue 26ac a clue to how to decode?

[Quizmonkey]

We're at a similar stage: except I have:

E-OUENDEIE-SEACHAEMBEEARES

I'm also convinced 26a is relevant but have tried Caesar shifting by 17 etc and it doesn't work. In fact it's clearly not Caesar code as no shift yields anything meaningful! Odd too that the diagonals are almost alphabetical in part.

[Patch49]

The number of Es in the string are peculiar ......Hope you've had better luck but I think I'll have to abandon it and start again tomorrow!

[Quizmonkey]

Title is anagram of ALPHABET minus the P (if that helps!).