Listener 4517 - In Transit By Agricola

[Flocker14]

This was less fearsome than the preamble suggested it was going to be. All done and dusted apart from seeing how the switching of letter and symbol works - I'll leave that till tomorrow. An odd mixture of extremely simple clues and ones I still can't parse even with a full grid. I enjoyed the excursion into Playfair at the end but I'm not quite sure what the point of it was other than adding an extra layer of difficulty. But good fun all in all and not a theme I was familiar with. Many thanks to Agricola.

[Philoctetes]

A nicely taxing puzzle - and the symbolic switching does work sweetly. A nice smattering of thematic material, cleverly depicted. No complaints here!

[Hagen]

When I saw the dreaded Playfair square I was tempted to take another week off, but I'm glad I didn't as I've learned some fascinating stuff about the source material. Wicked of Agricola to give us a couple of complete codings, knowing damn well that when we go to Quinapalus we won't find anything! Still, the Playfair element was fairly negligible, and the keyword easily guessable from
a search of the various thematic elements.

I'm not entirely convinced I've got the moving of the symbol right, but I've gone for the most obvious option.

So very good, despite initial fears. Can we take it that that's Playfair over and done with for this year? Please?

[sunny-dave]

Very enjoyable - and a nice read in Wiki when I was checking things.

I echo Hagen in his comments about the Playfair - very sneaky, but also very fair.

Thanks Agricola

[Alekhine]

Why do people post here when they haven't finished?

The switching of symbol and letter is obvious if you understand what is going on.

Next week I think I'll post when I have printed the puzzle and sharpened my pencil … "Hmm, an interesting one. Haven't quite finished yet, but I think you might have to put letters in the squares."

[Philoctetes]

Alekhine, Now you've blown it. Putting letters in squares? Nothing so simple. We're doomed

[Hagen]

Alekhine, I don't know if your observation about posting before completion includes me, but I had finished the puzzle when I posted. I just expressed some doubt about the required symbol/letter switch, despite there being a single obvious way to do it based on the theme, due to some of the content of my final grid looking a bit unusual. I still have a slight feeling that I may have missed something, despite being satisfied that I have fulfilled all of the puzzle's stated requirements.

Still, thanks for the tip about letters in squares. I'll try that one next time I get stuck!

[12barblues]

It’s all already been said! Comes together very neatly. I guess that the Playfair ensures that the theme is hidden until some of the overfilled cells are known and by their nature these are unlikely to be solved early, at least that’s how it fell for me. Thanks to Agricola.

[emcee]

I thought this was a good puzzle with an interesting theme. The Playfair phase was pretty trivial as the codeword was deducible and the two codings in the preamble helped to justify which of the two possibilities the codeword was.

I seem to remember a previous discussion about a puzzle which required similar symbols and what exactly was deemed "conventional" !

I thought everything fitted together very nicely at the end. Thanks, Agricola, I enjoyed it.

[pushmi-pullyu]

Alekhine, this time I've finished, but so often when I'm stuck I find that posting to say "I'm stuck" unsticks me. And it cheers me up when other people say they're stuck too.

[jim360]

I think the symbol-letter switching was complicated by my doing things in the wrong order -- I suppose that's why the preamble says what it says.

Amazingly, a Listener actually attempted and completed! was rather thrown off by finding a "plausible but wrong" answer for 1ac, but tidied up loose ends I think. Also briefly held back after I thought I'd got the theme, but the resulting Playfair decryption was a mess, until I realised I was missing part of B's full form.

[upsetter]

An excellent puzzle.

The playfair probably made it much more difficult to compose but didn't make it less enjoyable to solve.

[IainGrace]

I see no harm in posting before one has finished, provided that does not become the dominant practice in this thread. I have done so myself. There are no strict rules as such so far as I am aware other than the obligation not to give even a scintilla of a hint that might give any assistance in solving the puzzle.

[Alekhine]

IainGrace … I don't think I ever suggested that there was harm in posting before completion … merely that I don't understand why people do it. Pushmipullyu has offered one reason why he/she does it and, although that feels fairly tenuous to me, if it works, that's cool.

I agree with you that there are clearly no rules ... hence my facetious attempt to highlight that with a ridiculous example.

You've reassured me hugely anyway with the revelation that
you yourself have even posted before finishing. Well ... that's good enough for me.

[olichant]

Posting from a thematic stage - I loved this. I also couldn’t quite see the point of the playfair, and I had to guess it from context, but it didn’t diminish my enjoyment. Finding the clashes was fun.