Listener No 4329 Hedge-Sparrow

[Ruthrobin]

How very appropriate and what fun. Many thanks, Hedge-sparrow!

[Contrarian]

Thanks Hedge-sparrow.

Still awaiting the first stern challenge of 2015 though.

[starwalker]

Latched onto the theme quite early on. Just a little tidying up to do now. Thanks Hedge-sparrow.

[jim360]

Not started this, but breathed a sigh of relief to discover that the endgame in Sabre's challenge was left as a free choice, rather than only one out of the two or three options for entry in the middle column. I wonder what Sabre meant us to put.

[olichant]

This week's was a little trickier than the last two, I thought, and I very much enjoyed it.

Yes, very glad that the editors/Sabre were lenient in relation to Coincidence!

[Zabadak]

Pleasant enough, if early theme-spotting helped greatly with the long entries. Hopefully not giving anything away, I spent a fair amount of slightly embarrassing time researching harassment and horses before seeing sense.

[AHearer]

Great fun, if not a great challenge. This class of words has long been one of my favourites, so thanks to Hedge-sparrow and the rest of the tribe (apologies for the ornithological imprecision, but there seems not to be anything more specific).

[Pasquin]

I got the theme from the title early on, but still an enjoyable crossword. Thanks, Hedge-sparrow. As the preamble to Sabre's Coincidence was quite a puzzle in its own right, it would still be interesting to know whether there was a correct way we were meant to interpret it.

[fyellin]

I've never had a puzzle go from "this is so incredibly hard" to "gee, this is way too easy" so quickly.

[Ruthrobin]

Pasquin, I imagine they have been generous to avoid a monster fuss from those of us who ignored the instruction about word-length and put in both the HOUR HAND and the MINUTE HAND. I was mightily relieved to read that almost anything was accepted down that centre column, even though I had bungled with the Editors' own TAPU/TABU earlier in the year. I wonder whether any 'all corrects' have heard yet.

[olichant]

Ruthrobin, I absolutely agree. I struggled for a while, wondering if the reference to the length of the entries had a special "Listener" meaning that necessarily implied that the number of letters was, or was not, restricted. I'm glad that the marking was lenient.

[s_pugh]

Good fun though once the theme was spotted it was easy to fill in some of the more predictable unclueds. I particularly liked the 3rd jumbly which I spent ages trying to parse as a normal clue before seeing the light. Thanks Hedge-sparrow, gentle but most enjoyable – and unambiguous to boot.

[aldanna]

Fun, but perhaps fairly easy for the third week in a row. Then again, it might be that at last my crossword skills are improving significantly....

[Pasquin]

@Ruthrobin, yes, I assumed that was the reason for the generosity, especially as the last Listener of the year, but I spent about a week more on 4326 than I usually do and it would have been nice to feel that I had arrived at the correct solution through sheer intellectual brilliance. I've been doing the Listener since the mid-1960s, and I thought I knew what 'Lengths in brackets refer to grid entries' meant, but like olichant I wondered whether this phrase had some special meaning that had hitherto eluded me. I'm still puzzled, that's why I'd like to know what Sabre's thinking was. I took my final decision from 'Before entry into the grid, each clued answer...'
@s_pugh, my last clue solved was also the 3rd jumbly, which was all the more ridiculous as I had already paired up the unjumbled word with its unclued entry.

[doctormatt]

Like Aldanna, I dream that I am improving: fun and with more challenging clues.

[Scorpius]

Ruthrobin, re Sabre, you suggest the editors chose to avoid complaints from those who entered both hands, but the solution grid shows both hands, and the notes accompanying the solution make it clear that MINUTE HAND on its own was accepted as an alternative, presumably because of the poorly worded preamble. Surely the fuss, if there were to be one, would come from those who entered MINUTE HAND only.
Has there ever been another Sabre puzzle with an alternative solution? I doubt it.

I enjoyed Hedge-sparrow's puzzle. Guessing the theme early from a possible entry for one of the longer unclueds enabled me to finish very quickly. I think the theme's been done before, but sufficiently long ago for that not to matter.
Three easy puzzles in succession makes me nervous about next week's offering.

[borealis]

Good cluing and fun. Like s_pugh and Pasquin, I finished on the third. I also enjoyed checking some of the wordplay. Thanks, H-S.

Like others, I am relieved at the reasonable marking range of Coincidence.

[jim360]

I didn't find this easy at all and have only just reached the end after slow progress. Thankfully there was never a point where I was totally stuck, but the various missing letters/ jumbles were sufficiently well-hidden that I couldn't solve a glut at once either. Good effort from Hedge-Sparrow, though.

[upsetter]

We were fortunate in a way to have a late PDM.
Thereafter the unclued lights filled quickly and it all got much easier.
The strings of letters were very well obscured and many of the clues were tough. That made it a really good Listener.

[Cagey]

Worked steadily through this one. Found hard too, then much easier. I wonder why 20d was clued, perhaps in another generation of the puzzle it was not?

[jim360]

I guess because the thematic definition of 20dn isn't recognised in C?