Pictures from the Burbs

A couple of lines in atrocious poetry

The answer is “Ballad”. 

There’s a promo on the puzzle page of the Listener that claims that finishing a cryptic crossword in one sitting increases your brain cell count by 100. If that claim is true, the Listener is still good for at least one thing.

I can usually polish off the Dompost cryptic in a couple of sessions.

The holy grail is the Times Cryptic. I once got within two clues of completion. It probably took days. Often, I’m lucky to get two. Checking the solution sometimes leaves me none the wiser. What for instance, is a “Siskin”? The clue was “Bird is spotted, sitting in hide.” I can almost see how it works, “hide” = “skin”, but I’d never have got it. Other times, any relationship between the solution and the clue remains opaque to me.

Family legend has it that my father & my grandmother would race to complete the Times crossword & neither would take more than 10 minutes or so. As clever as I know they both were, I’d have to have seen that to believe it. For starters, I can’t see them having two copies of the newspaper, and photocopiers had yet to be invented.

Cryptics are funny things, sometimes the clue is so elegant – “Men from London, Washington, Paris and Wellington?” The answer is “Capital fellows”.

Clues are exercises in lateral thinking, they can take you down blind alleys until suddenly, a whole different way of attacking the problem occurs to you, revealing a whole raft of new possibilities. Some solutions are head-smackingly obvious after hours of tossing words and meanings around. Some are instantly recognisable – “A willing account?” is “Testament”.

Sometimes you know the answer, but you don’t know why.

Sometimes you think you’ve got it right, but you pox up a whole section making the wrong letters fit. Clues are by nature ambiguous.

If you’re not familiar with them, usually a word or phrase in the clue signifies the definition of the solution . In the clue in the title to this post, “A couple of lines in atrocious poetry” that word is “poetry”. Other words are clues to how the word is constructed – an “a” and two “l”s in another word that means “atrocious”. Ie, “bad”. “In” is the clue to construction in this instance.

Other indicators, including “badly”, “disrupted”, “out” and “reform”, for example, indicate the answer might be an anagram. Eg, “The early reform could be so tough.” The answer is “Leathery.”

Here are some others, if you see these words in a clue, they might represent some specific letters or acronyms, or heh, they might not:

• Church = CH 
• Sailor/Seaman = “RN” or “TAR” or even “SALT” 
• Nurse = “RN” 
• Soldier = "RA" 
• About = an anagram or “RE” 
• Leader = the initial letter of another word in the clue 
• Queen/Her Majesty = “ER” 
• In = could be quoted somewhere else in the clue 
• Firm /Concern = “CO” 
• Direction/Point = Either “N”, “S”, “E” or “W”. 
• The French = “LE” or “LA” 
• The Spanish = “EL” 
• English = “E” 
• English church = “COE” 
• Backwards/Back/Return = reverse the order of the letters 
• Say/Heard = the solution sounds like something else. 

Cryptic crosswords are a matter of practice; you can get to know the style of the crossword compiler too.

Some inscrutable automaton with a vocabulary the size of a planet compiles the Times Cryptic.

WTF, for example, could “Yours truly had failed to score, say, getting the bird” (5 and 4 letters). I figure the last word might be “duck”. But that could be a red herring, (or, a “Likely irrelevant catch for a Soviet trawler.”)

Adventures in talkback

I'm really, really enjoyng the Newstalk ZB reaction to those three hippie looking do-gooders who were found Not Guilty despite their having admitted to the offence.

The concept is taxing some fine minds out there. Although I heard two of the offenders on the news last night, and dagnabbit if they didn't make some kind of sense. Anyone know if they mounted their own defence? I can't be arsed looking it up. Epic "Succeed" if they did.

Meanwhile, another fine mind is complaining about a headline that says "Hunters gunning for Iwi" or something. He thinks they're literally stalking him with firearms & intent. When it was explained that the hunters had said no such thing & it was exuberant journalistic rhetoric, light seemed to dawn, until he realised "Wait a minnit, that's even worse!".  At one stage he was asked to explain his point, he said "I'll explain my point all right, it's, it's... different to his!."

Right oh.

Happy, hap, hap, happy holiday...

Some years ago, an outstandingly pretty young woman who was on the cusp of being heartedly sick of me asked if I'd ever been on a holiday by myself.

I hadn't as it happens, although I'd travelled plenty by myself, on business. I am comfortable eating alone in a hotel or cafe, and so I dismissed her question as that of someone trying to demonstrate that they're getting heartedly sick of me.

But the idea has stuck with me over the years. I don't know where I'd go, or if I would, even. But I have promised myself that I'll at least be open to opportunity.

I suspect that somewhere far away might be in order. Or then again, a week in someplace closer, but unfamiliar might also be interesting. Is there anything to do around Fielding?

Maybe I should throw darts at a globe, or choose a theme, like visit the places all the Wombles are named after.

This idea may be worth developing.

Something strange and possibly untrue

A right handed person draws a circle or an "o" in an anti-clockwise direction. A leftie draws clockwise.

So what do you reckon? Can some leftie confirm or deny according to their experience?

The person who imparted this factoid, also told me that dyslexics think in pictures, and have the most trouble with printed words that do not evoke a picture.

Anyone? Anyone?

Mean Streets

I'm in the 'Burbs at present. It's not as bad as I expected. Except for some freak weather.

These are the mean Streets of my youth:

Here, I'm standing in front of the site of a house I onced lived in. This was my view on April 10, 1968, the day the Wahine sank with loss of life. That day we had the curtains drawn because all manner of things were blowing about - dustbins, roofs, trees, neighbours, pets and man hole covers. The trees in the picture obviously survived, but a row of big trees that were behind them were uprooted & blown across the park.

A more recent storm saw this tree off. People who were outside at the time, described a tornado. My brother-in-law, nephews and dog, were unable to get home because a tree isolated their street and took out the power. They turned up like sodden refugees & we spent the evening watching the Crusaders beat the Chiefs while feasting on sausages, squid rings, hash browns & some dodgy frozen fish pieces - anything we could find in the freezer to feed unexpected guests.

Some of the roads could do with sealing though. This would have looked grand on the day of the storm.

And this enthusiast needs to get one of his satellite dishes repaired.

I also need

A photogenic trifle, oddly enough.

I need a hobby

I'm thinking Curling. I mean, who knew the sport was such a hottie magnet? I wonder if it means having to move to Naseby though.

Tom Scott thought it combined lawn bowls and housework. What he forgot to mention was the Star Trek uniforms, slippers, brooms & all in glorious slow motion.

A very odd sight, but surprisingly engrossing.

Mind you, a real sport has to have blazers, if Curling doesn't come with natty blazers for wearing in the clubrooms, I'll need to think of something else. Blazers are important.

Meanwhile, Blogger has evolved since I was last here. I left the "Followers" gadget there, but I have little grasp of what it does. Bear with me, the site will grow.