Listener 4094: Wet Wet Wet by Lato

[Zabadak]

A much bigger challenge, I thought this week, with some very clever plays involved in creating the group members. Lots of lovely pennies dropping all the way through. I'd be interested to see how soon the theme dawned on other solvers, and whether that helped in the more conventional solving process. Congratulations to Lato on a fine piece of work. Happy solving, everyone!

[dr b]

Hola Senor Z. About 3/4 through the grid; agreed that the clues are harder than last week! I have one unclued light for sure, some ideas about others. As always with extra words/misprints, I have a bunch of ?s on my printout where I may or may not have it right yet. I feel like I'm on the verge of the PDM re the group, but it's off to dinner soon & will pick it up again tomorrow.

[starwalker]

I am now down to the last few unclued entries with the theme and location all tied up. Much more tricky than some of the previous week's offerings and that is no bad thing.
All in all a typical Lato puzzle, and I just love the title.

[midazolam]

Has everyone got sunstroke? this was a typical Lato with lots of unclued entries. Apart from the fact that some of the entries had hardly any checked letters this was very accessible. The combination of the first across and down unclued entry gave it away. Thought there should have been a note to say there is an abbreviation in the grid.

[AHearer]

Yes, that was fun. Despite identifying one of the works very early, I wasn't able to pick up the theme until I had all the misprints. Even then I initially mispaired one of the unclued lights with a part of a group member and spent a while trying to make up an alternative name for the group out of what was left over. The hot weather must have got to me.

[daagg]

Another one with a fair amount of work after solving all the clues. I found 80% of the clues fairly easy and 20% very hard, so I ground to a bit of a halt after a good start. It also took a fair time to get to grips with the preamble. However, once the penny dropped as I found the two unclued synonyms, it was great fun finishing it off.

And I still don't know anything about pop music!

[dr b]

All sorted. I was looking for a slightly larger group till I realized I could not attach one of the "subjects " to anyone in that group. Off to cut the grass!

[dr b]

...and before the grass gets cut, one last thought - another puzzle where it wasn't necessary to fulfill all the instructions in the preamble to complete the grid? The misprints help confirm the theme but aren't strictly needed.

[easylistener]

Golly! This is a tough one!

[daagg]

dr b, I agree that you don't need to solve the misprints - I still haven't allocated one of the correct letters to a clue! I think it's quite fun having a range of ways to tackle the puzzle, so some people might get their break by solving the misprints, while others might use the unclued entries.

[Speravi]

A very high quality offering, I thought. I liked the surface meanings of the clues in particular, so often these are weaker than one would like. I needed several of the misprints to satisfy myself that obvious (only possible) answers were indeed correct. (Lato's recent Inquisitor was also very fine.)

[pushmi-pullyu]

Phew, finished at last though I still don't understand the wordplay of 10 across.

[cluelessJoe]

Surprised to arrive here still on the first page, as this took me ages to finalise and confirm everything. I had the theme / location / protagonists remarkably quickly, but then ended up doing a fair amount of back-solving in order to 'make up the members of the group'.
Got there eventually - a very nice offering, and yes starwalker, a great title.
Pushmi-pullyu .. just check the first two definitions of your answer in Chambers.

[dr b]

The title of the puzzle plus the first word of 1 down certainly could have had you heading off in the wrong direction. Were there any other red herring connections with the title? I have to say that until I Googled the title I had never heard of the band nor the member mentioned in 1D. Given the popularity of the band in the UK (if their Wiki entry is to be believed) it's remarkable they never appeared on my radar screen over here. Of course right at their peak we were busy having our kids so I may not have been paying attention.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, the title and that name led me on a long red herring (but it wouldn't be Listener policy, would it, to use a theme that would require Googling for most of us and certainly isn't in standard reference books?). This has been a very difficult solve and though I have the theme, works, the two unclued synonyms etc. I still have to sort out the group's names.

[Zabadak]

There may be some who are wondering how the first across and down unclued entries give the game away, especially since there are at least four alternative words at first down. I only made sense of first down once I was a fair way through the puzzle, when I had the appropriate superfluous word clue for the answer - actually a delicious pdm (abbrev.) for me. What I liked about this puzzle was the number of associations packed in to a 13x13 grid, including the (strictly unnecessary) but satisfying corrected letters solution.
The Dr Finlay version of 10 ac was unknown to me too.

[midazolam]

I think you were referring to my comment Zabadak. I only got the theme from them after getting the extra word that is the synonym of that complete down entry. I had a lot of the grid complete before I got the theme, at which point I had most of the misprints as well, confirming my thinking.

[Ruthrobin]

It was the misprints that confirmed for me what I was suspecting - and I couldn't have got there any other way - at least, I believe I couldn't.

[pushmi-pullyu]

Thank you Clueless Joe - even though I knew I had the right answer it was bothering me not to understand the wordplay.