[r-t] 23 Spliced Treble Dodging Major (all the runs)

[Alan Reading]

Since cyclic compositions became commonplace for peals of spliced major 
especially for larger numbers of methods it has been a major goal of 
23-spliced composing (at least if you listen to Philip Earis!) to 
produce a “worthwhile” peal of 23 atw treble dodging major with “all the 
runs”. I.e. 24 each 5678, 8765 at the back and off the front (total = 
96), which of course ensures all cyclic rotations thereof. I take 
“worthwhile” to mean not containing lots of trivial variations of some 
sledgehammer method.

I have produced such a composition (see attached). The other attachment 
is explained below. Please note that I plan to ring both these 
compositions so could I please ask that in the unlikely event that 
anyone feels sufficiently inspired to ring one of them you wait until 
I’ve rung it first… or at least ask me into the peal ;-)

Here are a few points about the 23 spliced composition:

.Just 5 of the methods have been rung before with 18 "new" methods.
.The composition is not eld but not too many leads are repeated.
.The composition contains a mix of surprise and delight methods.
.There are no backstroke 87's
.There are no methods with p.n. 78.
.There are no methods with stacks of more than consecutive 3 places (eg 
no 1234 p.n's)
.The only lead head groups missing are C and H.

For those who are interested I include an explanation of how I put this 
together.

The idea didn't actually start out as an attempt to get all the runs 
into 23 spliced. I was initially inspired by some of the work on 
"mega-tittums" cyclic compositions on 10 and 12, and thought of doing a 
similar thing on 8.
My idea for a call structure was this. I started out with the following 
observation: The calling HHBMFI is a round block containing 2 bobs on 
5678’s, the “mega-tittums” c.o. 765432 between the before and the 
middle, followed by 2 bobs on 5432’s. A c-group or h-group method links 
the before to middle in one lead and since the c.o. 765432 is cyclically 
invariant (i.e. the same in all parts of cyclic 7-part) then by 
replacing this lead with anything other than a c/h group method one 
obtains the cyclic shunt. So using this plan you get a palindromic call 
structure for a cyclic 7-part containing 2 bobs and forwards runs, 
2-bobs on reverse runs and one lead of mega-tittums in each part. I 
considered this to be a rather neat call structure. Just had to fit some 
methods to it...

My first idea was to get a palindromic composition of 12-spliced with 
all the runs. Philip tells me that Rob Lee has produced a composition 
like this although I wasn’t aware of that when I was producing mine. I 
look forward to seeing Rob's composition when it comes out.
With my call structure in mind I worked out a structure for the plain 
course which in order to get all 7 lead heads needed to be a mixture of 
8ths and 2nds place methods. The peal starts with a lead of an Mx method 
so the first home comes immediately then when you return to the plain 
course the lead head structure is mbjgdg. This has the classic cyclic 
structure of 2 and 8 alternating pivot leads with the first g acting as 
a cross over lead about which the palindrome pivots. I have used 8ths 
place No Hope Delight Major (A DGH method I believe) for this lead, 
which packs in a lot of runs!

I was keen on using Superlative for the mega-tittums course (Superlative 
produces loads of runs in this course), an idea which has remained in 
the composition all the way through its various stages. So I built up 
the plain course using methods designed to generate as many runs as 
possible in the given lead without repeating any that came in the 
Superlative. I got a lot of the runs at the back in like this and a good 
number of the ones off the front. I used an Mx method called Meletium to 
link homes 1 and 2 and provide a couple more runs off the front and then 
put most of the work into the course between Home 2 and the before. 
Inevitably (when banning 78 or 1234 p.n's) many of the missing runs were 
ones off the front when the treble is in 5-6. I spent hours and hours 
playing with this course and inventing methods specially designed to get 
1 or 2 runs off the front and at the same time linking up the leads 
needed to get the remaining runs off the back, all the time being 
frustrated by things going false! Eventually I did it! This composition 
contains 12-methods (16 including lead head variations). The length was 
4928 so I found a way of extending to 5024, with an extra bit including 
tittums in the last part. I attach this composition also (here I’ve 
given the un-rung methods provisionally names which I haven’t yet got 
round to for the 23).

At was at the point I had the idea to sacrifice the palindromic 
structure of the methods to try and get more methods in - preferably 23. 
So I played around with some of the methods. Trying to get methods with 
a different feel but the same runs as the method they were replacing. I 
hope I achieved this but some similarities between the methods are bound 
to occur. I altered one of the course structures to get the extra lead 
into the part and even got a run off the back (which was convenient to 
take out elsewhere) into said extra lead. I also had to move a few of 
the runs off the front. For example: The method -3-4-2-6-2-5.4.56-7.lh.1 
which was my substitute for the lead of 8ths place Giotto featuring in 
the 16, has one fewer run off the front than the latter. I was very 
pleased with the way I managed to sneak this run in elsewhere! It comes 
in -56-4-56-1-2-3.2.36-5.lh.1 which was itself a substitute for what had 
been Leominster. Note if you replace -56-4-56-1-2-3.2.36-5.lh.1 with 
-56-4-56-1-2-3-236-5.lh.1 the composition is false and if you replace it 
with -56-4-56-1-2-23-36-5.lh.1 the composition is true but you loose 
that run off the front! This illustrates how carefully the new methods 
had to be constructed to do precisely the job I needed them to.

As I say I have tried to make the methods as different as possible but 
I'm sure many similarities can be detected due to the way the 
composition was built up. There are a few incidents of the same overwork 
or underwork being used more than once but then that happens in Smiths! 
I used no software more powerful than a proving program to put this 
together.

Cheers,
Alan