Listener 4512

[Flocker14]

Have finished this more or less and very fine it is too - except that I'm left with several ambiguous cells and no indication that I can see on how to resolve this.
The subject of line 2 also eludes me so far but am hoping a good night's sleep will help me to sort that out. A lot of meat on this and I was forced to do some backwards solving in the case of the tougher clues. All in all a very worthy addition to this year's excellent puzzles.

[Flocker14]

All now resolved without ambiguity- it continued to be demanding right to the very end. Most entertaining! I think I saved myself some time by following the across clue instruction earlier than I probably should have done. This then required some some serious reverse engineering but otherwise I'd have been at it for ever!

[Hagen]

Jumbles are one of my bêtes noires and this was like removing a stubborn sticky label until I got the instruction from the across clues and worked backwards. It was still a struggle but less so than doing the grid fill in the "correct" way. It didn't help that I spent ages chasing a red herring suggested by the message from the down clues.

Charybdis has produced many excellent puzzles over the years and there is much to admire here, but I found it far too much of a slog to be really enjoyable. Sorry.

[Scorpius]

Everything Hagen has written goes for me as well. I'm not sure whether we were supposed to enjoy this or just submit to the torture of jigsawing jumbled down AND across answers. The clues were mostly excellent, but rather overshadowed by the frustration of having only 28 letters in the grid after several hours solving.

[TheBear69]

It seems to me that a key instruction is missing from the preamble. Otherwise there are still unresolved ambiguities.

[Scorpius]

Technically you are right, TheBear69, but I took the puzzle's title to imply what is missing from the preamble. Given the lack of ambiguity in most of the final grid it would somewhat perverse to enter a few unchecked cells wrongly.
Just to add a positive note to my largely negative comment above, the final grid is a very fine representation of the text, so there is an appreciable reward for the solver in the end.

[starwalker]

I'm pretty much in agreement with what has been said here. Sadly, I did feel that it became something of a grind towards the end, perhaps not helped by the phrase and the wordplay potentially leading to another poet and his work. Also, it wasn't necessary to complete all of the original grid - I am still missing a couple of answers. Thanks anyway, Charybdis.

[AngryUncle]

There's enough ambivalence in the comments so far to persuade me it's time to give up. What irritated me from the start was the instruction in the preamble not to start Putting (some of) the World to Rights until the grid had been filled 'as far as possible'. This was clearly meant to be significant as it was italicised, but surely the phrase is going to mean different things to different solvers.

I assumed from the first two words supplied by the down letters, plus the jumble that followed, that poet and work were unambiguous - and made a confident first entry in 1d accordingly. The 34-cell reference matches what I was expecting as well, and the position of the required letters suggests I'm not wrong, so it's dispiriting to find that the possibility of error exists there as well.

There certainly seems to be something important missing from the preamble, but arriving at that destination would leave me not having solved a small number of clues, which is always vexatious.

Charybdis is a fine setter and this is an ambitious challenge that I for one am not equipped to appreciate.

[Cruncher]

I enjoyed the work out with reverse solving helping to fill in the gaps. Tough puzzle but good to reacquaint with the theme particularly having recently read the book that uses a quote as it's title and which was the theme of another Listener perhaps 10 years ago? On a different matter I'm looking for a proxy submitter for the next few weeks. I'll be working in HK in August and wonder if someone would be happy to post my answer if I email a scan. It's a tried and trusted method and JEG seems happy with it. Would save me the problems of posting from HK which for various reasons are tricky. Any kind takers my email address is [email protected]

[tnap]

I don't appear to have come across the ambiguities that others refer to (which is worrying), but I agree that the preamble could (and probably should) have been clearer. Despite having a completed final grid, I still have one clue unsolved, with no checking letters to help! I think that's taking cold solving to a ridiculous degree.

[olichant]

I’ve just finished, with a lot of reverse engineering, and I think I need to have a lie down before commenting.

I did love the theme and the final representation. But I made very heavy work of the solve.

All very clever indeed when it came together, and I’m exhausted!

[Philoctetes]

Hard work, compounded by my missing several quite simple clues. For my preference there was much too much cold solving required. Even back-solving would only produce a single letter or so. The resultant 1d, though a clever spot, was not entirely relevant. Not the most enjoyable.

[IainGrace]

Cruncher, we could probably assist if no other volunteers thus far.

[IainGrace]

Finished after a slog. I think the instruction regarding 17ac resolves any apparent deficiency in the rubric and, echoing Flocker14, there is no ambiguity at all in the final grid fill.