Listen With Others

Two things with this puzzle: number one, it’s by Sabre, so a shiver runs down my spine, and number two, what the hell is Whirly-Birly? Chambers gives ‘birl’, a verb meaning to ply with drink, so we’ll see.

Sabre had an identically structured puzzle back in 2004, 3799: Fireworks. The theme then was volcanoes and I managed to finish it although it was a bit of a struggle. In each set of four symmetrically placed answers, two are entered normally, one jumbled, and one in code. Plus there are ten thematic entries, each of which can be entered using one of the three methods. Some people have a problem (ie whinge) about jumbled entries, but I think of them as a setter’s valid attempts to make our weekly adventure that little bit more exciting. Personally I don’t like Playfairs, but you won’t find me moaning about them (not this week anyway).

A quick pass through the clues reveals a surprising number of answers. The first is for the sandy areas AREG, a favourite word of mine although I never owned an A-reg car. 17ac is an excellent clue, an anagram of YOU MIND ME … ‘turning silvery grey at 60′ leading to NEODYMIUM, atomic number 60. 19ac WIT, 32ac RAISE CAIN, and 37ac EIGNE (First-born’s regularly weeing in bed), and I’m off to a flying start. Not that they can be entered in anything other than a light pencil yet. Ann Widdecombe stumps me for a bit as I thought her name was Anne (all these variations on names are a pain, especially come Christmas card time!). Anyway, I get ANNATES at 38ac and manage OUTSTRESSING across the bottom; except it’s two words, so let’s go with STRESSING OUT. All in all, not a bad start.

Unfortunately, the down clues are a bit more recalcitrant. There’s the canton of URI, STUD-something-AILS leading to STUDDING SAILS, and an anagram of BIRDS GENE meaning pedigrees, or an anagram of PEDIGREES meaning bird’s gene: I guess correctly, and BREEDINGS is quickly unravelled.

Breeding is a word that is not normally pluralised in everyday speech. Anyone who watches Countdown (and I haven’t for ages, pretty much since RW left the scene) will know that some plurals are disallowed by being designated ‘mass’ nouns by Collins, their dictionary of choice. I wish Chambers had this feature. Anyone reading this blog, and wishing to know other setters and solvers views on Pluralisation, is advised to visit the The Crossword Centre Message Board. Most of the debate is about things like whether ‘nine year olds’ should have none, one or two hyphens, but Roddy Forman’s post on November 13 headed “Re(2): Pluralisability” talks about ‘mass’ and ‘count’ nouns.

For a Sabre puzzle, I cruise along at a satisfactory rate, and even find the code fairly easy to decipher. I’m afraid I didn’t make detailed notes of exactly how I deduced all of the code; perhaps Erwin will oblige (although he’s probably getting some rest in preparation for next week’s numerical). I’m also unsure of when the theme was revealed to me. It’s nice to know that my first examination of the title or preamble was in some way correct, although it didn’t help much really. Yes … it is alcohol.

The three clues that stumped me the longest (or at least had me struggling with the wordplay) were EPAULET (terms of the peace pact referring to their last letters), CRIES (don’t ask!), and PODEX (I was convinced that rear entrances was an indication of last letters, and I’d never heard of PX, short for post exchange, the US equivalent of the NAAFI).

A good puzzle, as usual, from Sabre with a few tricky clues, and a framework that I’m sure we’ll see again.

And finally, a quick update on the checking of my Listener entries for this year: now up to 4055, with an all-correct run of 44 going back to December.