Listener No. 4447: Influence By The Tall'n

[AHearer]

A nice puzzle, with a decent sprinkling of straightforward clues to get one started. I was lucky in getting the last few acrosses and the first few downs at an early stages, and that gave me a great leg up. No ambiguity, as far as I can see, about the missing name. Many thanks to The Tall'n.

[Ruthrobin]

Same here. We appreciated the straightforward clues and the first of the thematic answers led us nicely to the others. Thanks to the Tall'n.

[starwalker]

No surprise to find early postings about this very neat puzzle. Very generous, I felt, with the clues and I was staggered to see so many thematics involved. Many thanks to TheTall'n.

[Aloysius535]

A good puzzle but I completed it without answering several clues. No excuse to avoid decorating this weekend.....

[Encota]

Very enjoyable - my thanks go to The Tall'n. I did spend an hour on parsing the last two though (unnecessarily of course - just for fun)!

[Philoctetes]

A very rare attendance in the Friday club for me, helped by the puzzle embracing my area of expertise (for once). 7 down made me chuckle. Thanks Tall'n

[Cruncher]

Echoing the other comments. Took longest sorting out the thematic clues even when I had the grid entries

[icynorth]

Three easier clues in the SW corner gave the game away far too easily for my liking, so this didn't match up to most of the challenges we've had this year.

Thanks, Tall'n, but maybe I wasn't in the target demographic this week.

[HappyUncle]

I'd have been happier to heap praise on this puzzle if the first part of the first sentence of the preamble had been accurate.

[BobMinor]

I thought this was a very good puzzle, with an amazing amount of thematic material packed into a standard-sized, symmetrical grid. Very impressive - many thanks to The Tall'n.

[Scorpius]

Puzzles with an unclued finite thematic set tend to yield quickly once the thematic connection has been spotted,so I can see why some feel it wasn't challenging enough, but I found it enjoyable, and I learned some names that were not familiar to me. Like many, I imagine, I completed the grid without even reading the thematic clues, so I thought it a neat idea to force solvers to solve the thematic clues, or at least enough of them to establish the sequence of words to write under the grid.

[Hagen]

Only just got round to this after a week away, so glad to have a gentle one. Very enjoyable puzzle, so thanks to the Tall'n.