Listen With Others

Well, I didn’t think Serpent would be able to follow his diabolical Impossible Construction, but Transposition Cipher is a worthy and equally tough successor.

Having battled my way to the finish of this complex puzzle, I have concluded that cold-solving is a process analogous to childbirth; while it is less traumatic (believe me), it has the feature that however painful the journey – and Transposition Cipher did have its moments – all the hard work is forgotten in the joy of bringing forth, in this case, an unambiguous solution.

The struggles to find the extra letters, the toil of solving clues with a jumble of possible crossing letters, and the sheer difficulty of some of the clues – all those clouds are blown away by the relief of finding an online Myszkowski decoder which delivered “Transposition Cipher” and “Serpent” among the garbles.

I’m not sure if I have a favourite clue; they are all tough but in retrospect fair. Thank you to Serpent for this magnificent week-long challenge whose resolution gave me much satisfaction.