Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Has anyone looked at the game in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable? The diagram shown there is apparently Twelve Me** ****** and not as captioned (according to Wikipedia). The four diagonals do not appear in the true "nine" version. If they are included then there would be 20 lines added and not the 16 required. So does anyone agree that the diagonals must not be included?

You're right - the one in Brewer does appear to be the 12 version. All the versions of 9 online are without the diagonals and this fits perfectly with the 16 lines, so I see no cause for concern.

Re krauton's unnecessarily explicit reveals earlier, I was one of those who asked to have two separate threads months ago to avoid blatant spoilers. I have to say though that it's been refreshing, on the most part, that a second thread has been unnecessary as people have generally stuck to hints, certainly until later in the week. I for one have really appreciated that.

lexawkward (#76), brendan (#77) et al, apologies! I should have said "contiguous" rather than "consecutive" and yes, it starts at 33.

Hi, I’m relatively new to the Listener so am still struggling to see how to resolve the clashes with the given instruction about adding values so would be grateful for a steer as to what exactly to do once the two letter values have been added together. Are they then converted to letters? And also, I made the final added lines run through the middle of letters which seems to show the paths better - is that how others have drawn it?

If you assign numerical values to the letters of the alphabet, a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, etc and then add the values of the two letters in the clashes you will find that they all add up to one of two values, and if you then subtract 26 from the higher value it comes to the same as the lower value. That is the number of the letter that "resolves" the conflict, as Loge pointed out in reply no. 24 (or 23) of this thread. You will see that your lines run through all the examples of the letter on the grid.

I think the misdirection with the symmetry arises because we first encounter (I’m guessing) full sets of four symmetric clashes. We realise they can’t all be fours, so we expect a two. But in the end it’s two fours and three twos. The symmetry they exhibit is EXACTLY the symmetry exhibited by the grid symmetry: so perfectly legitimate, just a little bit misleading, a little red herring to throw us off the scent in that middle area!

Ah right, thanks Barretter. I did read Loge’s post but to be fair unless you know in advance about the ‘letter values’ device, including the 26 subtraction, the instruction Is lacking somewhat imho. I then wrongly assumed that that letter would then create new real words, rather than seeing it as adding to the thematic representation. Anyway with your help I think I’m there now so I appreciate the extra hint and thanks again.

To the person who posted earlier asking for a parse of 5d (and who presumably got sent to the naughty step for creating a duplicate thread)

Yes it's VEIL (def. "Nun's headgear")
"in church really" is VERILY
"limited" so you drop the final Y, leaving VERIL, of which R is the extra letter.

Many thanks. you were right about naughty step.