Listen With Others

I read the Preamble. My first thought: “What a monster!” Metaphorical containers (Schrodinger, maybe??); 2 clues side-by-side (I enjoyed co-writing some of those last year for The Magpie, under the {SHARK+ENCOTA}* -> Shakenactor pseudonym). Plus here we have misprints in one half & extra words in the other. Then letters highlighted in the grid in cells, and then drawing curves and then film quotations!!! Crikey!

And as usual, the giant hint in the Title went straight over my head. It was only when I pondered over where those 29 cells in a closed curve might be that I began to get what the subject actually was.

“Life … is like a box of chocolates …” Now how exactly does that quotation end? I had a look round the grid and decided that, since 29 cells were required, then the diameter of an equivalent circle would be approx 9 cells (+/- a bit to allow for the cycloid), and so the letters must be somewhere about there. It soon became clear that it was “…YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GONNA GET”. And, like Toby in that Topic advert, it was ‘funny how I remembered right at the end’.

The ‘almost’ symmetrical nature of a box of chocolates was a nice touch. In our case each pair of chocs/clues had ‘different centres’. Very neat!

There was a slightly worry for us poor solvers where the CLOSED curve needed to be drawn: luckily it only took a little bit of artistic licence at the top of the heart to ensure the curve was closed and so all was well!

This took me well into Saturday, having started Friday evening, so definitely one of the tougher ones of the year so far for me – fantastic!

Cheers all,

Tim / Encota