Listener 4344: Fast And Loose By Ifor

[olichant]

Not nearly as scary as the preamble suggested, and a really nice sequence of PDMs leading to a satisfying final grid. Thanks Ifor, and I hope everyone here (in the UK, at least) has a nice long weekend.

[AHearer]

Indeed, a very pleasing puzzle. My solving route was a bit peculiar. I found the bottom half of the grid easier than the upper, but once I'd solved the lower half I could both work backwards with some certainty to identify the extra words in the remaining down clues and treat the extra phrases to give me additional help in solving the top half. All of which sounds more complicated than the preamble! Thanks, Ifor.

[sunny-dave]

Very gentle - nice clues and all thematically very tidy - excellent.

My expectation of some ghastly grid-staring and/or manipulation turned out to be unfounded - many thanks for that Ifor.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, indeed, what a fine sequence of PDMs. The grid-fill was speedy but we have been very slow to perform the neat and most satisfactory endgame. I think this was just the right level for a Listener - enjoyable and rewarding with our usual smile on completion. Thanks, Ifor.

[Pasquin]

An enjoyable slow and steady solve. Confused myself by finding some treatable extra phrases that however didn't suggest anything meaningful. Spent a little bit longer than I should have grid-staring before suddenly seeing what had to be done. Thanks Ifor.

[Cruncher]

Indeed, a gentle straightforward puzzle. Confess I didn't know the author

[perseverer]

Only figured out what the extra phrases were about after getting the word completed by the barred off cells, the titles, and the author, and how to treat the grid. Still baffled by a couple of wordplays.

[aldanna]

A pleasing puzzle, not too hard clues (still can't fathom 32ac, but only one word seems possible) and, has been said, not as complicated as it first looked. Thanks, Ifor!

[upsetter]

This is a reasonable introductory Listener - not all of the clues were too easy.

[starwalker]

I also found the bottom half easier to fill and then allowed myself to be distracted and came up with another author that I had never hear of. All sorted now. Thanks Ifor.

[doctormatt]

Fun, and a good challenge. I'm just unsure, as there appear to be two ways to finish off the new grid, or is it just me?

[AndrewG-S]

Great fun, just the right level for me and lots of time to enjoy the long weekend. I particularly liked some of the surface reading for the clues. I don't think there is any ambiguity over the endgame. Thanks ifor.

[Scorpius]

An enjoyable puzzle that turned out to be a lot easier than I'd feared after last year's Search. I agree the clues were nicely balanced between easy and somewhat tricky, and clue surfaces on the whole were rather good. I quickly saw what to do with the grid before attempting to make sense of the extra across phrases, a couple of which I'd misidentified anyway. And the grid construction, with all real words in both grids, is impressive.

I do have one minor niggle, however. The requirement to write the author below the grid seems totally pointless. If solvers fail to get the theme they'll fail to complete the blank cells correctly. What is the point of asking them to interpret 'traditionally' correctly in their choice of one out of two authors? In general I think boxes are appropriate where it's necessary for the solver to show fuller understanding than can be shown by the correctly filled grid alone, but that's not really the case here, especially as in one sense the placements of the letter pairs in the extra words are not thematic.

[jim360]

"The requirement to write the author below the grid seems totally pointless. If solvers fail to get the theme they'll fail to complete the blank cells correctly."

I managed to fill the central two cells before understanding the theme properly. The revealed word isn't too hard to spot, but I wasn't sure what to make of it or what its relevance to the initial/ final grid was until rather later. I don't agree that adding the author is irrelevant, then, and seems to me required for a true understanding of the theme.

[borealis]

Nice puzzle - thanks Ifor! Some good distractors for the phrases.

Agree with Jim360, here; I needed only the "two" rather than the "traditionally", but there were alternatives and the thematic nature of the last pdm was good.

[IainGrace]

Well structured and good fun. Reminded of an unusual death.

[olichant]

IanGrace, yes - which in turn puts me in mind of a Listener setter!

[icynorth]

I too solved it from the bottom up. I've just finished by interpreting the title.

Another enjoyable challenge - thank you!

[IainGrace]

Indeed, olichant. Not previously known to us, I have to say.

[Scorpius]

Well, niggle was the wrong word, more like a cruciverbal Occam's razor. Of course I'm happy to supply the author as that's what's asked for. Perhaps I'm assuming too much, but I thought the word revealed in the grid was so inextricably linked to synonyms of the title words as to be semi-automatic collocations.
Jim, if you didn't fully understand what it was all about i don't see how you could be sure that you'd applied the 'treatment' correctly to produce the final grid (there's more than one interpretation). I still maintain that a solver could not produce a correct final grid, and be absolutely certain that they'd done so, without understanding why.

[jim360]

I was pretty much 95% certain about the grid -- the extra phrases in across clues seemed to me to leave little else to try. And I was 100% certain about the extra two letters. I think the link to the two works is a bit tenuous, so I found that a final grid could be obtained with a very high level of confidence without appreciating the link to the revealed word. I felt the "leaving behind real words" instruction was enough.

So in conclusion I feel that including the author was necessary to ensure that solvers fully appreciated the theme. I guess I can see your point a bit but I suppose our solving routes were markedly different so it gives us a different way of looking at how things fit together.