Listener 4061: 50-50 by Phi

[emcee]

Good grief, where is everyone? This week's offering is by Phi, and, my word, I'm having a fair old struggle with it! Has anyone finished it yet?

Good luck everybody!

emcee

[turnerjmw]

thebuzz999, I've no doubt you have the right answer. As for the wordplay, don't be tempted to split the last five words of the clue

[robinruth]

Oh, no! Is it really numerical again? I've got there with this one but found it tough, tough, tough - though the later stages were enjoyable. I must now join the chorus of 'Happy Birthday to Phi!'

[teuchter2]

I'm still struggling, but have solved about two-thirds of clues and am making progress with the top half of the grid, so I guess i'll just have to persevere. I am finding it difficult to see how the room-fresheners answer will fit in the other part of the grid to the one it is paired with, so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. If this is Phi's 50th birthday offering how much more devious is he going to be when he reaches retirement age?

[Scorpius]

I agree that this was tough, probably the toughest of the year, which is unusual for Phi, whose puzzles are usually more accessible. I also agree with Starwalker - I'm not sure whether I liked it because the discoveries (with much help from Google) didn't really compensate for the slog. I'm also puzzled by one aspect of the final grid, in which 2 identical groups of blank cells seem thematically inappropriate. I cannot be more specific than that without revealing too much.

[emcee]

All done but definitely the hardest for me this year (to date). There was very little to get going with and only when I had cold-solved 25 -30 (tough) clues was I able to start constructing the grid.

Phi with attitude... many happy returns, Paul.

[JackDeCrow]

Wow! Just finished (having got very little work done today) and am glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought it was hard. I guess the relative obscurity (at least to me) of B and C is understandable given the need to have the necessary something in common with Phi, but as for the rest - the excrutiating slowness with which the necessary PDMs unfolded was surely testament to an evil genius at work. Happy birthday Phi - I hope that was your hardest one ever!

[Clamzy]

I agree entirely with starwalker and Scorpius that the reward was scant considering the effort required to get there.
Take care, my friends with the entering of the bars etc. It would be a pity to fail through a transcriptioin error after all that hard graft:-)

Clamzy

[daagg]

I haven't yet finished, but I have a pretty complete grid and most of it with letters in! However, I've just realised that the blank areas are extremely relevant thematically, so I think starwalker, Scorpius et al are being a little unfair. There is more to this than A, B and C.

[robinruth]

Yes indeed, Daagg and not only the 'blank areas' but also A, B and C. I totally agree!

[JackDeCrow]

And there was me admiring the shape of the filled in areas - even down to the punctuation!

[kwyjibo]

...and the unchecked letters.

[Silentether]

I love the completed grid! Really impressive. Though the combination of blank initial grid and 50-50 clues was a scary proposition, it was worth it. But very frustrating at the start, I cold-solved most clues.

Was confused for a while by 'Repair one involving hard...' as I linked this to 'Cavalryman' just above. Should have seen the correct answer sooner but felt 'spahi' (h in spa + i) to be a justifiable solution!

[tristram37]

Finally finished this after virtually sweating blood! I'd say the most difficult Phi ever, and one of the toughest this year. But all perfectly fair, as I expect from him. I hope his future offerings are less demanding!

[daagg]

Well I have certainly surprised myself by finishing that. I only managed 13 answers before I decided to start filling in the grid, and my hunch was basically correct, so lots of answers fitted into place. Although it was very hard, and always looked like being so, I seemed to make continuous, if slow, progress. There is still one aspect of the layout which I don't feel I fully understand, so I shall keep reflecting.

[daagg]

Just worked out what the strange links in the middle are doing - it's brilliant !

[Cruncher]

Took this one very slowly. Toughest Phi I've done. Got stuck with quite a lot of the wordplay - for some reason the egg container definition took ages for the penny to drop. The instruction about the barring, italicised and all, makes me wonder about the final solution. My guess is that one is expected to bar along the edges of the blank sections but I can't decide whether to add further barring in one of the corners to continue the theme. Or am I being too complicated?

[robinruth]

Cruncher, I believe you are being too complicated. Simple bars that separate clued words form a normal pattern in reflective symmetry. One does not normally put bars on the perimeter of a grid so I can see no reason why one would here (even round blank spaces). I see it as simply a different shaped grid. We were given the option of shading the blank spaces. Do that in black and you have solved your problem. Of course I might be seriously wrong.

[Cruncher]

Robinruth - thanks for that. Blacking out the empty squares certainly sorts the problem. Arguably if you don't bar the end of an entry where it meets an empty square then it could be regarded as continuing across the gap into the next letter. For those of us fondly imagine we might still be sitting on an unbroken run, such minutiae assume huge proportions!

[Deviant]

I fear that puzzles such as this expose my limitations as a cruciverbalist - if there's one thing I'm poor at, it's cold solving and this is the 5th(?) carte blanche this year (and I for one am starting to find that just a bit tedious!) I'll probably end up giving up on this one because I have better things to do with my time, sadly. Kudos to those who've finished it.

[daagg]

Deviant, I'm not good at cold solving either, which is why I decided to start assembling my jigsaw of answers earlier than perhaps I should. I had a set of 3 answers which could possibly link together, and these, together withthe symmetry and the fact that "clue swapping" answers must lie in separate parts of the grid, allowed me to add all my other answers almost immediately. I then had a basic grid structure which helped with another batch of clues straight away. Perhaps I was lucky, but it was quick to try.