Listener No 4414: Quads Ii By Shark

[AHearer]

I really enjoyed this one. I was held up a bit in the north-east corner at stage one, got my coloured pens out to keep track of what had to be preserved at stage two, had a chuckle at the elegance of stage three, and spent too long staring at the grid before the final penny dropped. Many thanks, Shark, for another great puzzle.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, I was highlighting my grid to keep track of what had to be preserved at stage two and was delighted at the elegance of stage three but am now still staring, waiting for the final penny to drop - lovely so far, though - thanks to Shark.

[Hagen]

I guessed we'd get something like this after last week's nice breeze, and boy was it hard! I was punching way above my weight here but made it to the final bell battered, beaten and bloody. Actually the gridfill wasn't as difficult as it looked (superb clues) but the next stage was a total monster.

After filling the grid I resolved to leave the rest to leave the rest until tomorrow, so I could sit down and listen to Verdi's Otello. After the end of Act 2 I decided to give the blacked out squares a "quick try" (I never bloody learn) and even using a grid-filling program it was a VERY long time before Verdi made a reappearance. At least I got the final two stages quite quickly.

A terrific crossword and this is what the Listener's all about, but as the Gumbies used to say, "my brain hurts!"

[Ruthrobin]

Well, the clues were indeed a lot easier than we expect from Shark but I grid stared for longer than the original solve before that penny finally dropped. Great stuff, thanks.

[AHearer]

Oh yes, the Gumbys. For them it was banging bricks together, for Douglas Adams it was keep banging the rocks together. For me with the Listener it's banging my head against the wall.

[Encota]

Loved it - thanks Shark! Had most of the grid finished last night and coming fresh to it this morning the rest became clear pretty quickly. Especially liked some of the wordplay in the clues with letters omitted.

[AndrewG-S]

A truly excellent puzzle with lots of different ways to attempt each stage. This is what the listener is all about. My favourite this year by some margin.

[olichant]

Wonderful puzzle. And many a clue (great tight clues) that raised a big grin. Thanks, Shark. I really enjoyed that.

[Cruncher]

Smart puzzle. Liked the different challenges of the different stages. And, whilst I'm here, a big thank you to Mr Olichant for acting as proxy submitter for the last couple of months whilst I was in Asia. Well at least I hope he submitted the puzzles I sent him otherwise my stats are going to look rather bleak...

[s_pugh]

Wow. That was so good on so many levels. I did wonder if the blanking out and amendments might lead to ambiguity but they didn't, the whole thing was logical from start to finish. Brilliant, many thanks Shark. I'd have changed my avatar to a shark in honour but I haven't yet nailed a good enough pic of one ;¬)

[upsetter]

Great Listener, but the admin and the repeatedly taken opportunities for unforced errors made this more of a slog than it ought to have been.

[emcee]

Great puzzle -- a vintage year for quality Listeners.

I thought the penultimate stage was the most enjoyable. The grid construction was much easier than anticipated; the overall construction was brilliant -- even the final grid had real words throughout.

The AGC is going to be mighty difficult to predict this year.

Many thanks, Shark.

[icynorth]

I enjoyed this one too. I found the grid fill the hardest part. Even though I had the phrase early on, a few unchecked letters gave me sleepless nights. The blacking-out was a lot simpler than I'd feared, given the helpful instructions, and I'd been expecting the finale, so it was just a case of locating it. Great puzzle - thanks, Shark!

[borealis]

Very, very nice. Did anyone get 32 without quite a few letters from the grid? Each stage looked hard but turned out do-able. Stages 3,4 and 5 (black cells, lines, four words) got a bit blurred bit bits from each logically affecting the others. Wonderful clueing and construction; looking forward to a setters blog. Thanks, Shark!