Listener 4519: X By Schadenfreude

[Alekhine]

Pencil sharpened, letters entered. Puzzle done. This approach seems to work!

The finish was intriguing and the clues were OK, although I wasn't totally convinced by the approach that Schadenfreude used for 29A. I also thought that 3D was a bit odd. 10A and 15A on the other hand were great fun.

[Hagen]

I'm a great admirer of Schadenfreude, and his last puzzle (the prime numbered presidents) was a masterpiece. In all honesty I didn't think he was quite firing on all cylinders with this one, enjoyable though it was. After such a complex preamble, I found the big reveal to be a bit of a let-down, and one or two clues struck me as a bit less neat than is usual with this setter. Such as the unnecessary link word in 20 down, although there probably is a roundabout dictionary justification for this.

It must be said that it was a remarkable feat to find words with second and penultimate letters which suited into both the message and the context of the clues. And, of course, even not-quite-top-form Schadenfreude is still pretty good stuff.

We only got six replies last week, so let's hope that we'll get a few more this time!

[Encota]

An enjoyable solve - many thanks, Schadenfreude!

[12barblues]

Enjoyed the gridfill and the way the extra words worked out, especially the novelty of the commonalities, which must be quite a constraint for the compiler. However, I found the endgame rather underwhelming; I’ve come to expect more from Schadenfreude!

[kdgs2]

I'm on my wind band's annual pilgrimage to the British's Open Brass Band Championships, so my solving has had to fit round travel, spectating and hangover... nevertheless, it still took longer than it should have to get on Schadenfreude's wavelength on the clues. In particular I found a completely sensible wrong answer to 21A when removing the wrong word! A nice neat finish after sorting out the unclued entries too.

[HappyUncle]

I share the feeling that the puzzle fizzled out (just getting those Zs out of my system after not finding any use for them while solving). The message starting at * took a bit of staring, as I had been misled by the references to the unclued 'entries', which suggested that there would be four, overlapping at the corners.

What I do think was clever though was the application of 'not using any Zs' in the endgame.

[olichant]

I found this pretty tough to get into, and I wasn’t sure about the endgame for a while - I was probably being slow but didn’t really see how it all came together until the end. Very enjoyable way to spend a good two or three hours, though.

[Philoctetes]

I found the bottom half straightforward, but moving upwards trickier. It all made perfect sense in the end, and took less time than anticipated. I wouldn't say either 29 or 3 were at all odd, but I agree the other two were fun

[emcee]

Have completed the puzzle, doing it in dribs and drabs, hence my tardiness in reporting here.

I thought the puzzle was OK. The clues were good, but as someone else has mentioned, I don't think Sch... was at his optimum best.

The endgame was OK too; it was more like a riddle at the end than a puzzle though.

Still, I enjoyed it and that's the main thing! So thanks to Sch...

[Scorpius]

Like others here my reaction to the puzzle is distinctly tepid. The clues were sound (as one expects from Schadenfreude) but mostly uninspired. 10a and 15a were possibly the best, none of the others were worth a appreciative tick. The puzzle lacked much in the way of thematic coherence, being a loose connection of ideas more than anything else, and the endgame left me with a feeling of "Is that it?"
The most interesting bit was as I tried to fathom the meaning of the final message and working out how the last six-letter word was to be revealed. I did soon realize that it wasn't a six-letter word.

[upsetter]

An excellent crossword where the compiler was rather hemmed in by his construction.

[sunny-dave]

Another "paper and pencil" holiday challenge (no BRB and very patchy interweb) dispatched - nice puzzle - thanks Schadenfreude.