Listener Crossword 4462 : Squares By Phi

[starwalker]

No, I am not a genius - the simple truth is that the puzzle was put up on the Times website this morning, albeit originally without a title or setter.
New theme to me, and some difficult clues, but once I found a home for the first square, the rest followed fairly easily. Thanks Phi, that was a good workout. Now for the coloured pencils.

[Ruthrobin]

Same here, someone told me it had appeared early and it is great to have the rest of the evening to do other things. I really liked this one. Now for the coloured pencils indeed. Thanks, Phi.

[mjld]

so how did you discover the title and the author? The xwd club hasn't revealed it to me, and gave me three or four pages of printout before I reformatted the wretched thing.

[starwalker]

The title came up in the forum thread about the rework of the site and is also available by selecting "Specialist" and then "the Listener". In truth though, it does not yield any extra info.

[kdgs2]

If you go to this page, there's a version that's formatted like you see in the paper: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/puzzleclub/crosswordclub/news/the-listener-crossword

[Contrarian]

Excellent puzzle Phi. I loved the idea of making the solver deduce the boundaries of each square. Thanks.

[Hagen]

I too stumbled across this early in the morning, but was happy to leave it to someone else to decide when it was appropriate to start a thread.

I took ages to get a foothold, and once I had a few tentative entries progress was still slow until the PDM came at last. It was one of those revelations that makes these puzzles a joy to solve, and the endgame wasn't too difficult although I'm not entirely confident I've got the four thick lines in quite the right place. I've understood the theme and I don't send in so I'm not too bothered about that. Great stuff as ever from Phi.

As for the new Times website - I can't say what I really think as don't want to be banned from AB for obscenity. I just hope that once the people responsible for the "upgrade" lose their milk teeth they will start to learn how to design a website.

[Encota]

Even though I could see what it was about from a very early stage, this took me HOURS to get exactly right! Enjoyable all the way! Thanks Phi :-)

[Scorpius]

A very enjoyable puzzle, perhaps a bit harder than average because of the unknown lengths and position of answers, but not as hard as it looked at first. It was some time before I got even one of the clues for Square 1. I should have guessed the thematic name from the start but my mind was focused on another discipline.

[upsetter]

Very good puzzle. Hard clues.
For once we got the PDM before solving any clues. Much cold-solving still needed.
By the way, hoping to see AHearer back soon.

[contendo]

Only four thick lines?

[contendo]

Yes, got it. Only four.

[s_pugh]

After initially despairing at what seemed impossible, figured where two of the 'others' must go and a crossing square entry soon showed the way. Great fun and a nice solid unambiguous finish. Still lack artists pencil collection so suspect will have to approximate with one colour and appeal to JEG's better nature! Thanks Phi

[icynorth]

Guessed the theme from the preamble. No PDM, unfortunately, but an impressive treatment of the theme, and a fascinating logical challenge. Thanks, Phi!

[Philoctetes]

A good tussle, which had a couple of entry points, neither of which occurred to me until I started banging my head against a brick wall. It didn't help that I chose the wrong option in one answer. Still some to parse, but happy with a proper Listener

[emcee]

Super puzzle, as is usual from Phi.
My gripe this week is about the new Times Crossword site *which I can't even access* . It immediately redirects me to the Times "store" page, showing me all the different subscription packages. Logging in to a somewhat basic entry page pretty much does the same thing. I rang them on Friday, she checked that I was a valid subscriber, reset a few parameters and the net result is ... "it's one for the tech department and they have probably gone home".

I don't have much faith in computer technicians so my electronic version on a Friday may well be kaput.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem and solved it independently?

[olichant]

Sorry, emcee - it is working fine for me.

This was a terrific puzzle.

[JustinTime]

Nice Crossword.
Rather slow to pick up the theme.
I always struggle when the word lengths are not included.

Phi ~ Thanks for the work-out.

[Cruncher]

Seemed impenetrable for 24 hours - maybe 10 answers but not sure where to put them - but then it all started to fall into place. Really enjoyed it

[Scorpius]

As soon as I started to prepare my submission copy I realized there are two ways of drawing four thick lines that seem to me to be appropriate. One must be wrong, but I don't see which, and the multiple examples on the internet don't help much since there are illustrations of both. I must be missing something.

[olichant]

I'm just filling in my proper copy now. I agree with Scorpius that there seems to be an ambiguity on the lines which I hadn't initially spotted. I can't see any way of resolving it - both options seem to fit the preamble.

Still think it was an excellent puzzle, with some really superb clues.