I would like to take this opportunity to wish all contributors and visitors to Listen With Others a very merry Christmas and a happy, prosperous and all-correct 2010.

When I took over this site from Chris Lancaster in March, I had no idea whether it would run itself, or need a lot of work to maintain an active readership. I guess that it has been somewhere in between, with the many contributions from both solvers and setters relieving me of too much of a weekly commitment. I would especially like to thank Shirley Curran, whose weekly blogs have gone from strength to strength, as, hopefully, has her team’s Listener solving ability. I hope you have all found her posts entertaining, imaginative and, more recently, artistic. I would also like to mention Erwin, whose treatises on the quarterly numericals have been both informative and colourful.

For those of you who are fond of new year resolutions, may I suggest that “Doing an occasional LWO blog” would be a good one to add, even if it is at the bottom of the list.

With very best wishes,
Dave.

It is about four months since I took over the running of Listen With Others, and, going by the visitor count, it seems that many of you enjoy dropping by fairly regularly, if not every week. I hope that you have also found the site a useful addition to the Crossword Centre message board and to fifteensquared which covers, among other puzzles, the Inquisitor and Enigmatic Variations.

While the site has pretty much run itself, I cannot but thank the efforts of Shirley Curran and the other half of her team for their regular weekly posts which have enabled me to concentrate on my other crosswording activities. I must also thank the contributions of Erwin Hatch for his numerical analyses and those others who have provided the occasional and very welcome contribution. I must especially thank setters Charybdis, Homer, Phi, Samuel and Shackleton for their Setter (and solver) Blogs, as these always assure high visitor traffic.

Having said all that, I am very keen to encourage other solvers to record their experiences with this great series. Whilst I am probably fairly high up the Listener statistics (this year at least), I am not the fastest of solvers and would love to see blogs from those of you (and you know who you are) who breeze through every week like a stroll in the park. I appreciate that other commitments, including other blogs, setting puzzles and the W word (work) get in the way, but please, even if you can only provide one contribution over the next couple of months, it would be read with interest and enthusiasm. And if you’re just a novice, don’t let that hold you back.

If you are interested, please email me at lwo at@ laserbase dot. plus dot. com (I don’t know why I bother trying to camouflage that, I suspect spam software can interpret such feeble attempts, so that’s lwo@laserbase.plus.com!!). Alternatively, if you are already signed up as an LWO author, just post your blog.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Dave.

Welcome to the official relaunch of Listen With Others, and what could be more appropriate for the first day of Spring (here in the northern hemisphere)?! We have a band of bloggers ready to keep you entertained with their successes, and perhaps even failures, in solving the Listener crossword each week. I hope that we will have at least one blog per puzzle to amuse you.

Blogs will be posted at about 5pm on the Friday three weeks after publication of the puzzle. This is the day before its solution is printed in The Times, and about the same time as it appears on The Times web site. It also coincides with discussion of the puzzle on the Crossword Centre message board.

Comments are welcome from anyone … there is no need to set up a WordPress account or log in.

Moreover, if you would like to join the team of bloggers, please feel free to contact me by adding a comment to this post (to be found under the Sundries category on the left).

Best wishes,
Dave Hennings.
20 March 2009.

Unfortunately, due to other commitments, Chris Lancaster is stepping down as administrator for Listen With Others. In order that this excellent site continues, I have agreed to take it on … after all, the Crossword Database (see link on the right) just doesn’t take up enough of my time!

I hope to be up to speed on managing LWO by the middle of this month, and will shortly be contacting all those who have told Chris that they would be willing to contribute blogs, either frequent or occasional. To keep the ball rolling, I have posted a couple of submissions which Chris has forwarded to me from Shirley Curran, for which I thank her.

Before going any further, I would like to thank Chris for his outstanding contribution to the crossword community in general, and The Listener in particular. His posts here and on the Crossword Centre message board have been a source of great entertainment to me and many others, especially his sense of humour, which is very similar to my own … so beware! I know Chris hopes to be able to submit the occasional blog, but his setting of new puzzles is likely to be on hold for a time. Hopefully that will not be too long.

I hope to be able to devote as much time as necessary to ensuring that the site runs smoothly (famous last words). I am open for business pretty much 24/7 … better make that 15/6 … and will do my best to ensure that the site continues to provide pleasure to all those for whom The Listener is more than just a crossword.

Watch this space.

Dave Hennings.

I’d like to thank all setters and solvers who have contributed to Listen With Others in its two guises, but unfortunately due to a change in circumstances I do not have time at the moment to dedicate to running the site and as such will not be posting any more blogs. It’s unlikely this change any time soon, so apologies to both readers and bloggers for this.

If anybody would like to take over the maintenance of the site, please let me know and I will happily pass on logon details for the site administrator to you so that you may invite new bloggers and post blogs.

If this does not come to pass, then thanks again to all contributors and readers over the past three or four years, and I encourage you all to read George’s Heard excellent George vs The Listener blog.

Chris Lancaster