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Crossword Help Forum
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caphrist

7th November 2017, 10:59
Please check my posts Meursault and you'll see that I didn't say that I normally reside on the no-answer-bank as you call it. I have never posted on their site although I do very occasionally visit it and happened to do so when you were making your comments about them before your voluntary exile.
In fact, although I'm a rare contributor to this site, I've been posting for three or four years and have tried to be constructive until now. Your venom about the Answerbank contributors, the setters and editors has finally worn me down. Please try to be a little kinder.
I apologise to the rest of the contributors here for introducing this rather sour note when, I believe, we should instead be celebrating a fine puzzle.
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crates

7th November 2017, 11:50
As a previous contributer to AB, I treat the two forums completely differently. AB to extol the virtues of or show disappointment of the week's offering in general terms, This forum for those who have completed and are willing to give a 'nudge' to those who specifically request it. Hopefully 'normal service' will be resumed.
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crates

7th November 2017, 12:03
Should have added 'additionally' for this forum, Opinions, in general terms, of the merits or disappointment are equally valid.
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gem94

7th November 2017, 12:20
As an occasional contributor to both Answerbank, and to this forum (though not recently,) my thoughts for what they are worth are these. People enter competition puzzles presumably hoping to win a prize, and/or to see their name in print. If people are able to enter these puzzles because they have got answers from someone else, then that diminishes the chances of you winning what is effectively a raffle, so it is perfectly reasonable to feel that these forums should not exist. This of course applies to the Listener and every other competition puzzle.
On the other hand, I want to see the Listener crossword continue to appear every week, so if people can be encouraged to try it, and the weekly entry numbers do not drop, then that is 'a good thing'. As newcomers gain expertise then hopefully they become less reliant on forums. In the past I have argued here that people can be too quick to seek help on this forum, and perhaps undervalue the satisfaction to be gained from puzzling out something eventually, unaided. (I know not everyone may have the time available that I have.)
Answerbank is a forum where people discuss tv programs, news stories, tell jokes etc etc so again it is perfectly reasonable for those who contribute to the Listener threads to consider it as a place where they discuss the latest puzzle, trying not to give anything away. Some contributors want to be first to post, or come across as smug, but you could say that about Crossword Solver threads as well!
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crates

7th November 2017, 12:58
Hi gem94 - Being in the camp of those who find satisfaction in self-solving (no matter how long it takes) and then visiting the site to assist if requested. I have occasionally requested help on a 'blind-spot' parse after completion which in itself would aid others in solving that clue. As I do not submit, the 'prize' element has never occured to me. I now see the problem but not sure of the answer.
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dryden

7th November 2017, 13:02
Meursault, once again you have launched an attack on the Listener editors. You very rarely miss an opportunity to do so. It is clear from setters' comments elsewhere that the Listener editors go to great lengths to iron out potential problems in the puzzles submitted to them. I know from experience that they are extremely efficient, and Roger Phillips responds very promptly whenever he is asked for advice. I am getting heartily sick of your negativity. My previous comment arose not from one critical comment (I criticise from time to time) but from the jaundiced tone of your comments almost weekly.
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orson

7th November 2017, 13:14
In reply to gem94 and whether it's cheating to get help from a forum like this, as I've said before, I don't see asking for help here as any different from asking your husband, wife or clever child for help at home. Sometimes the Listener prize is won by a couple working together so if the editor is comfortable with that, what is the problem?

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caphrist

7th November 2017, 13:55
Orson and others,
I entirely agree with you. This site is about help and it seems to me to do that very well, not usually offering too much, especially early on in the thread. I have occasionally used it to offer help and to seek help.

My quibble was about the splenetic targeting of the editors and the other site as well as Meursault's constant sniping at the setters. Surely some of their efforts deserved unreserved praise.
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dryden

7th November 2017, 15:00
I received an email today from an octogenarian friend who expressed his admiration for the clueing and his sheer delight in the puzzle and it's construction. That's one 'long-in-the-tooth' solver who would have been disappointed if the editors had chosen to reject it because of its 'Blue Peter' requirements. I'm not sure how else the endgame could have been satisfactorily handled. Scissors and paste seems to me the simplest option.
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durban

7th November 2017, 18:59
Thanks to Orson for the rational absolution for visiting this site. I found you a couple of years ago and have since been here a dozen times, twice to offer a general point I had found ambiguous enough to want to clarify, more often for "nudges". Thanks, too, to Dryden, for emboldening me to write this, by his apparent acceptance of octogenarians' thoughts as worth something. I'm a long-term Listeneriste, having sent in my first completed diagram in 1952, the year between the Festival of Britain and the Coronation. I came back to this thread, this late, by pure chance and unusual idleness, and seem to have stumbled into a gang fight. So, for what it's worth, here is my post: come, now, mes enfants, there's more to life than crosswords (yea, including even the Listener) and you'd probably all get on very well with each other in a different setting.
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