Listener 4303: Qvwke Vbcfa By Nutmeg

[AHearer]

Good fun, with sufficiently straightforward clues to render it not too challenging. I think 'across the grid' must be interpreted as 'all the way across the grid' to resolve ambiguities in entering the highlighting. Thanks, Nutmeg.

[upsetter]

Feeling a bit smug, having been unaware of the Playfair cracker.
In hindsight, if one were to solve 2 or 3 of the starred clues and then make an educated guess at the title, all would be revealed.
Does Playfair have a future?

[petefoxes]

I enjoyed this very much, with only a momentary distraction as last night's heavy rain caused part of my ceiling to collapse. A dirty smudge on my BRB: how horrid.

Tidying up the endgame here was much more pleasant and far better in terms of construction ... thanks, Nutmeg.

[UglyUncle]

Very enjoyable, and reminiscent in its final stage of a fiendish Listener from many years ago by Columba.

I clearly wasn't the only one who tried the 'obvious' two-word code phrase first (how long before another setter uses it now that it's 'out of the bag'?), but the correct one came into my mind unbidden, in two stages; otherwise I might have been tempted to resort to Quinapalus - which I've resisted so far.

I've never seen intersecting Playfair-encoded lights before: is it fair to increase the unch count in this way, I wonder? It's certainly bending the rules (in a different way) to have the definition in 2dn presented as it is.

[UglyUncle]

Very enjoyable, and reminiscent in its final stage of a fiendish Listener from many years ago by Columba.

I clearly wasn't the only one who tried the 'obvious' two-word code phrase first (how long before another setter uses it now that it's 'out of the bag'?), but the correct one came into my mind unbidden, in two stages; otherwise I might have been tempted to resort to Quinapalus - which I've resisted so far.

I've never seen intersecting Playfair-encoded lights before: is it fair to increase the unch count in this way, I wonder? It's certainly bending the rules (in a different way) to have the definition in 2dn presented as it is.

[jim360]

Playfair does have a future if used well, because the Playfair cracker at quinapalus relies on words or phrases appearing in a dictionary. A while ago there was an EV puzzle by Nod, "Snapshot", where the Playfair codeword was "Flash picture by nod" which the cipher can't crack, so that some hand work or some inspiration was needed. Also if it helps to disguise the theme for just a little bit longer, as here, then it's rather like misprints that online crackers can also provide suggestions for.

If it's just "four theme words are encoded by a playfair square to be deduced" where the theme words are duck, spin, bowler and wicket with a codeword of umpire then yes it's nothing to write home about, but here or in the recent Magpie with a Playfair cipher going on (Enimga Variations by Ferret), it's a little bit more than that and adds a nice touch to the puzzle.

[tramart]

30-odd years ago, when Playfair crosswords were much more common, I wrote a simple program for the BBC Micro to assist the (de)coding, and used it at every opportunity. Now, with several online aids, I'm not inclined to use them and actually quite enjoyed solving manually. Slightly surprised to see a Playfair appear in the present 'instant gratification' era. Okay, some will say "life's too short", but where's the satisfaction in asking a machine?

[jim360]

But then using the machine leaves time for so many more important things!

Back later, just settling down to watch some more stuff on Netflix that I've seen before.

[PureListener]

This is a classic Playfair and very well constructed I thought. I had no idea that Playfair crackers were available - I have always managed to crack the code eventually and to me that is the best part of the challenge. We haven't had too many Playfairs recently, unfortunately. My favourite was the Shakespeare-themed "Faulconbridge" code (a long time ago now). Great Listener, Nutmeg!

Scorpius: Not sure how 26a could break the rules.

[doctormatt]

Just finished: a very clever construction. I got one row of the playfair square quite quickly (with a tweak which took a while to spot), and the rest fell into place ok tonight after not being able to look at it during the day: I enjoyed the journey on this one, and once again marvel at how long these must take to set!

[Cagey]

I also thought that one row of the code was fairly quickly spotable. The tweak also came quite quickly too. I have not done these things for more than a year or so, and not had much exposure to playfairs, but I thin they are fun when they crop up.

[Mesnilpat]

I wish I'd looked here sooner. A quick visit to Quinapalus and I'm done and dusted. Though the playfair code is blindingly obvious once you know it, I had been clawing my way towards it by deduction. An incorrect assumption meant that I was still miles away though. My thanks to all who shared the info about help with playfair codes.

[contendo]

Finished this yesterday but no thanks to Quinapulus. I found that if I typed in words with dots for the unknown letters it just ignored the dots and shortened the word, which wasn't much use. I found the other decoder, whose website I quote above, more helpful.

[Cruncher]

I thought the Playfair decoding was the best bit actually. Not very difficult, especially if you take an educated guess at the title

[sunny-dave]

All done - nice ramble

Thanks Nutmeg

[the_heisman]

Excellent crossword. I don't like Playfairs so thank you Quinapalus too! Yes Cruncher I guessed the title too so quinapalus produced the code word instantly without any problems with dots.