Listener Crossword 4240: Forlor By Nutmeg

[trux]

Sheer joy! And wholly agree with her sentiments....skilfully put together, and with many a clever clue amongst them (particularly liked 32a and 17d). As ever, gridfill speeds up after PDM and with crossing letters. Many thanks, Nutmeg,...now for the snooker!

[Ruthrobin]

I totally agree. I am sure a lot of other Listener solvers will too and will not only applaud Nutmeg's sentiment but also her great skill in putting this together. It has been a challenging solve and I have to admit that I am still struggling to work out the one reason for the setter's wish.

[AHearer]

What fun, and a wonderful attack on one of my betes noires. Many thanks, Nutmeg.

[olichant]

After last week's personal disgrace (and a failure to acknowledge the really charming theme) this was really wonderful. Many thanks to Nutmeg.

[TheBear69]

Thanks Nutmeg! Congratulations on having a Listener published just after an EV. Forlor was excellent thoughout.

I have a question about this site: I first searched for 'Listener 4240' - nothing.
Then I searched for just 'Listener' and got lots of hits, but not this discussion.
I thought it strange that there was no posting yet, so I decided to try one more search, this time for 'Forlor'. That worked. Any idea why the search for 'Listener' misses this?

[trux]

It seems you need to Google "Listener Crossword 4240" and that will work, or Forlor as you say. I'm also surprised that there are so few posts so far - but find no "rival" thread. Yes, the extra letters are difficult to unravel, but one can fill grid without getting them all (or even realising their relevance)....Bizarre.

[Whenland]

The title of this page is "Listener Crossword 4240: ..." whereas last week's was title was "Listener 4239 ..." so I would guess that the addition of the word "Crossword" is what has caused the search requirements to change.

[jim360]

Until the theme occurred to me I found this very tough going -- probably rely far too much on crossing entries which isn't always helpful when the modification is significant -- but when the breakthrough came (guessing at the phrase to be highlighted before I'd filled it all in) everything started to fall into place nicely. Thanks Nutmeg!!

[starwalker]

I also found this to be rather tough going, until the penny finally dropped, at which point, the grid completion accelerated. The sentiment has my whole-hearted support and my thanks to Nutmeg.

[aldanna]

The last two weeks I just about made the following-Friday club, as life has been full of other things than crosswords. Am enjoying this one, had a fairly early pdm as to what to do and now the grid is over 3/4 full - but the 'reason' currently makes no sense at all.

[perseverer]

Everyone will be very familiar with the reason, but probably totally unfamiliar with its actual name (google to the rescue again), and find it difficult to resolve the meaning of the extra letters till you have just about all of them - the first word should raise a chuckle.

[Scorpius]

Pretty tough, with lots of indirect definitions or wordplay elements. Once I got a couple of the thematic answers I made better progress. Despite the apparently straightforward wordplay I still haven't managed to get 5 across. Using TEA reveals absolutely zilch. I hope trawling through the latest Chambers will get me there, but I'm not looking forward to that.

I'm not keen on 2-letter abbreviations being used where one of the letters turns out to be the superfluous one. Seems inelegant to me (and others).

[IainGrace]

Early days but not finding the clueing easy.

[fallster]

Nice challenge. Many clues were hard to crack, but getting two of the "to be altered" answers made the penny drop, and then it got a little easier. Still a couple loose ends to finish up in some wordplays, but otherwise done.

[teuchter2]

I got finished this afternoon after a slow start, due to entertaining last night. This was a highly engaging crossword, with some tricky clueing, but the theme came to me quite early. I made life more difficult for myself, by miscounting my thematically treated answers, so trying to make one more out of an unpromising clue. I haven't got the message from the extra letters, but am quite sure of my grid etc. so might not bother. (I always enter Listener + the number when looking for the thread.)

[tilbee]

Certainly concur with the sentiment, even if it did take me sometime to fully decipher the reason given by Nutmeg. What would we do without Google indeed. As already stated some fairly tough clueing, but getting the theme and the associated phrase does speed up the solve somewhat.

[Scorpius]

Finally got 5 across after guessing the second word. I could have saved myself some time and frustration by using the Chambers CD ROM special search facility instead of TEA. Definitely one of the harder puzzles of the year so far.

Failing to make sense of the message from the extra letters isn't a bar to completing the grid correctly, but those still wanting to make sense of it should google the last two words and a very well-known thematic name.

[upsetter]

We certainly felt a sense of achievement on completing this, even though we don't completely get the wordplay in 9d

[contendo]

I'm bringing up the rear as usual. I've managed to solve 19 clues, all of which seem to fit without modification, so I clearly still have a long way to go. I must say some of the clues are pretty fiendish. 19d made me chuckle.

[dr b]

A very nice puzzle, and certainly one can complete the grid without realizing what the extra letters mean. But, I think this pushes the idea that the Listener should be doable without access to the Internet to the limit. I can't imagine how long it might take to connect the "extra letter message" to the theme without a search engine at your disposal.

I suppose discussion of that idea should wait until the solution is published as it would be too easy to give too much away discussing specifics.

[Alekhine]

This was a delight.

It felt quite difficult at the outset, but then came togther 'all of a rush' towards the end.

There were some imaginative definitions. I liked 8D.