h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Done! Harry Callahan - Part 2 finished

Part 3 is finished with:
Automatic Firearm - Maxim Gun - Magnum
Effectively - Tellingly - Gently (of course!)

Part 4 was a mystery to me before, but I see what's going on there now

Time Correction - Leapsecond - Pascoe (one half of the partnership Dalziel and Pascoe)

Still struggling, though...

Vowels - Diphthongs?
Immeasurable - Limitless?
Winter-sweet - Chimomanthus?

Chimomanthus is good.

Diphthongs is very close. That prefix needs attention.

Limitless isn't correct.

Ah, a spelling error. Chimonanthus, it should be.

Aha - a breakthrough! I worked a few more anagrams out and then saw the pairs are there

Secrecy - Cageyness - Cagney
Viscous - Treacly - Lacey (added to the grid)
Plated - Metallized - Dalziel
Time Correction - Leapsecond - Pascoe
Immeasurable - Fathomless - Holmes
Nation State - Botswana - Watson
Suavity - Smoothness - Thomson
Vowels - Monophthongs - Thompson
Composer - Stravinsky - Starsky
Winter-sweet - Chimonanthus - Hutchinson (added to the grid)

Now to add the others into the grid...

Aha! Another breakthrough - I noticed yesterday that the relevant boxes in Grid 4 were coloured slightly differently, so I see it is another pair hidden in there

Morse and Lewis



Sorry it took me so long to come back to this, but I'm glad I did. Not easy, as I had to use quite a few different tools to crack it, but very enjoyable as the tools I found were fascinating (I have a good crossword solver and anagram solver at my disposal plus I have learned more about fictional detectives now. Not to mention that in March I didn't realise how useful the online dictionaries were...). The satisfaction of the s was ezcellent!

Thank you very much for putting it together

Congratulations!

I do worry sometimes that these are too difficult, but between you, Gnomon, Bluebottle, Recumbentman, TC, paulh and others, you always manage to crack them in the end.

I'm very keen to find ways to produce original non-cryptic puzzles which have all the fun of Listeners - i.e. hidden themes, multi-layered solving, and achieving milestones on the way which help the later solve. I believe such puzzles would have a wide audience (whereas only 500 or so complete a cryptic Listener each week).

I use this site to test out a few ideas, and the feedback you've provided on this one in particular has been invaluable - many thanks!

Oh, and I can now put another one in the Post (similar but not so extensive)

Thank you

Yes, there are some impressive quizzers on the site (of which I am one of the slower ones...). I can definitely see the Listener inspiration in your puzzles It does make a difference without the added cryptic layer, which is a barrier for people who are not 'tuned in' to the style of the Listener's cryptic clues... Glad my efforts were helpful!

I know where my workings for the numerical Listener are, so I'll have to try to get back to that one some time - I got a bit frustrated with it, but the break from it may give me fresh insights (that certainly worked with this puzzle that I picked it up again and saw it differently )

I look forward to seeing the next puzzle in the Post

To be honest, there are better puzzles around than the numerical listeners. Some of them do introduce you to a new piece of number theory, but most are just trial-and-error slogs.

I just finished Saturday's listener - a real stinker. Two key names are Playfair-encoded in the grid (you have to guess the codewords). If you solve all the other clues then you get some wordplay-only clues for the names. It took me 3 days to guess them.