Listen With Others

So if you had the 32 character message: THOUSAND AND A HALF THE TIMES LISTENER to jumble to make an apposite phrase relating to the 1500th edition of The Listener crossword in The Times, what might you pick? And what if the phrase was in a puzzle that you and the other humble Editor had created – how might you describe your submission to others? My suggestion is in the Title above, but I am sure you can do better.

I particularly enjoyed the phase of this puzzle where the solver had to deduce the precise location of two 4×4 squares where letters would be confused, overlaid or, most likely, both.

Checking off the shifted-around definitions turned out to be more interesting than it first sounded, especially when the hidden phrases in the 4×4 cells began to help with finding the home for those definitions.

And I was impressed to find that there were two overlaid messages in those squares, rather than one simply being a meaningless jumble of the other – a neat bit of construction work!

Cheers,

Tim / Encota