Listener 4356 Mashonaland By Raffles

[trux]

Some excellent clueing, especially where extra letters were unambiguously indicated. The end result may never win a prize for elegance, even with the speakers revealed, but the gridfill speeds up very quickly once you have enough to work with and becomes increasingly enjoyable. I know which of the speakers I prefer to listen to. Many thanks, Raffles.

[trux]

...and, oh yes, forgot to congratulate Raffles on his title! Real giggle....

[Ruthrobin]

How on earth did you manage this so quickly Trux? We have just managed to get our '13th answer' with the help of Wiki and it has been a tough struggle all the way through but an admirable construction. Many thanks Raffles.

[olichant]

Trux, I am equally in awe. A wet and miserable London evening gave me an excuse to tackle this in one sitting (with a few glasses of wine!) but I found it really very hard. Which of course is no bad thing. Thanks, Raffles - great debut (assuming it is a debut!).

[jim360]

Probably two or three clues away from being able to finish this but with all of the highlighting done there's a limit to the amount of extra information I can get to break into that remainder. Ah, well. A nice idea that's been tied together very well, so thanks Raffles, although in general I'm not a fan of puzzles relying on this particular sort of thematic treatment.

[TheBear69]

Very tough indeed! I made certain assumptions to avoid ambiguities; I will have to go back now that I'm done to make sure they are truly warranted. Thanks, Raffles!

[upsetter]

Does anyone else think that there should have been a gap in the bottom left corner of the Trojan Horse?
The published solution appears to be unfaithful to the preamble.

[jim360]

I thought that as well, although in my solution I didn't include a gap either. Seemed more important to complete the horse shape than to interpret the preamble apparently literally and not joining the star and endpoints of the line.

Just a couple left in this one now.

[upsetter]

Isn't that where the Greeks entered the horse?

[AHearer]

I made heavy weather of that, being very slow to get the top and bottom rows (where would we be without Google?), and even slower to fill in the top right quarter of the grid. I takes me 'at off to you, trux, for getting through it so fast, and also to Raffles for setting an entertaining challenge.

[perseverer]

I didn't find it easy either, and it struck me that Raffles wouldn't have found it easy to come up with the 13 answers to fit in with the unching.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, I, too, thought that to be strictly correct, the Trojan Horse should have had a gap but took the risk of joining the letters there, as, logically, it had to have a complete base to stand on and be a complete structure. Of course, that is the kind of small assumption that can destroy a year's record.

[s_pugh]

That was VERY tough, and not terribly easy on the eye either. The spread of the 13 was also a little lopsided meaning that one area of the grid was infinitely trickier than the rest. Not one of my favourites, though the layout of the speakers was neat. I don’t think anyone without access to Google would have a hope in hell of getting the top line unless they were a buff. Thanks Raffles.

[tilbee]

I also made heavy weather of this this afternoon, and indeed also had to rely on Google for a number of the thematic elements. Second speaker identified fairly quickly from a limited number of the extra letters, but the first somewhat later in the fill. Now just need to unravel the wordplay at 15 and the significance of the title. A tough solve, thanks to Raffles.

[tilbee]

OK the title did not take too much unravelling !

[Contrarian]

I really enjoyed this too, but I do think that 1ac and 33ac are borderline unfair.

Does anyone know whether Listener puzzles from, say, 20 years ago might have such obscure references? Or are setters allowing themselves a bit more licence now, in the knowledge that we all have access to search engines?

[aldanna]

This was the sort of thing I rather enjoy, despite being initially daunted by the preamble. I currently have a much-scribbled over (correct?) copy, and a print of a blank grid to check I am right on all the details before I send it in. Trux may find the title a giggle, but it is quite meaningless to me.

[AndrewG-S]

Certainly tricky but consistent progress meant it never became too frustrating. A good work out.

[EV_Solver]

I thought this was remarkably uninspiring. There have been a number of identically themed puzzles before, all of which were better. There's little impressive about a puzzle with not much going on in the grid other than the few thematically-entered entries, and some of those answers were so obscure as to render the puzzle almost impossible to anybody without web access.

Uninspiring theme, uninspiring clues, and an uninspiring execution. This is one of those Listeners that within days I'll have forgotten it ever existed. Still, at least we got a full grid printed in the newspaper version this week, so that's a plus.

[upsetter]

Another great challenge.
We think that we have completed the grid correctly, but have both speakers' names spelt conventionally, leaving us wondering what "not all using thematic spellings" means.

[upsetter]

Sorry you're still cross, EV.
We only rumbled the precise connection between the answers that were to be thematically entered after we had finished.
In this case we knew of 33 but not 1.
However, as the theme emerges, they both turned out to be on very short lists of those most prominent in their category so we imagine that both would have been part of the general knowledge of many solvers.
We do agree though that much of the solving these days is rather dependent on access to the internet.