Listener 4131 - Carte Blanche en Tore by Ten-Four

[cluelessJoe]

Easiest one of the year for me by a long chalk. Am I getting smarter, or are these Listeners getting simpler?

[cluelessJoe]

... or am I just forgetting what date it is? No Friday club for me this week (again)

[starwalker]

Far too much cold-solving on this one for an early finish. At the moment I have about half of the answers but not a single entry. Oh well, I'm sure it will come good in the end.

[EagleCountry]

Printed this out earlier and thought OMG! Been for meal + wine, came back, thought the same. Where are all the clever Friday clubbers to give us lesser mortals a start? Hopefully all will become clearer tomorrow when my brain begins to function again.

[Clamzy]

Looks like another Friday finish for me. Next Friday.

[BlackHugh]

Sorry but I really don't like the amount of cold-solving - Clamzy I'm even doubtful of next Friday - and I don't at all like the tense in 1ac (assuming I have solved it right)

[EagleCountry]

Agree about 1 across BlackHugh, but isn't it encouraging to solve any clue?

[EagleCountry]

PS Loved the opening post!

[dr b]

Gee, what's the matter with you people? This was a complete joke, it was so simple... oh, shoot, it's April 2 over there now, isn't it? I guess I need to observe the local time.

This is no fun, really - too much cold solving to start off. I have no doubt the finished product will be fabulous, but I don't see getting there being enjoyable. I have a very good idea of what the extra letters spell beginning at 34ac, and a few tentative grid entries, but nothing more. The answers that run off the page & back on elsewhere make the grid entries very tentative. Off to dinner & show soon, so I'll have to work on this in short bursts over the weekend.

[AHearer]

The way we used to play it, April Fools were only valid before noon. Whayever your opnion on that, this puzzle is no joke. I've solved a lot of the across clues, but I'm still very short of downs so not in a position to put much in the grid yet.

[silversolver]

Greetings, fellow masochists. 30 clues solved, still no idea how to start filling the grid... Not made any easier by the fact that only 1ac/dn and 47ac/dn appear to intersect at the first letter. Back to the cold-solving grindstone...

[Deviant]

I've been getting gradually more ambivalent about the Listener, but this is the first where I've thought, "Why bother?" I hate carte blanches with a passion & to make it a torus too (though I guess that that means that it doesn't matter where you start)...

Time to go & do something more interesting & more useful, like watching paint dry.

[bobbycollins]

Why bother, indeed

[AHearer]

Well, that was fun. I shall now almost certainly slip up in entering the bars and wind up with an incorrect submission.

On an almost philosophical point, given the periodicity on the torus, if a bar appears at the right-hand side or the top, should it really be necessary to repeat it at the left or the bottom?

[Ruthrobin]

A fascinating question. To my mind the second bar would be technically redundant, since the division is already indicated by one bar, but I wouldn't risk not drawing it in.

[trux]

Indeed. How does one draw a half-thickness bar ? (or maybe just stick with being thick and go for the full bar ?). I'm certainly not going to do this one at one sitting ... the cricket beckons ! The 100th 100 for the Little Master ! Or bowled by Murali for a duck ? (And then there is also the small matter of my Neanderthal worthies managing to get at least one point, for the first time ever in the Premiership, from those Russian-fed zillionaires from London). So many things to do, so little time .... (sigh)

[starwalker]

Finally got there. Not sure at this stage whether the setter has got the correct balance between hard slog and bit of fun. Now all I have to do is what I've been told to do - never an easy thing.

[aldanna]

Oh dear. I am sure this is terribly clever, but I can't feel I am up to it. Having very limited spatial intelligence, plan A is to cold-solve everything, then hand it over to mathematician husband to work out what to do. As I am having problems with the first part of this, I may well resort to plan B (give up).

[bellabee]

i have over thirty answers cold-solved and a pretty good idea what the message is if i am correct in assuming that an apostrophe is required between 10 and 11 dn to make sense of it. could someone please confirm? - given the sheer complexity of this i don't think it's giving too much away - hope you agree.

[trux]

I agree, B-la-B ... apostrophe required where you're looking (and another much less important one later on) ... this is quite a slog but at least I have now started upon filling the grid .... which should keep me encouraged for a while

[bellabee]

many thanks trux - i hope i can now start entering some answers at long last.