Listener 4680 Manhunt By Shark

[Hagen]

Utterly brilliant! Tough clues and uncertainties in the placing of entries made for a slow, but steady grid fill, and this was rewarded many times over by a stunning endgame. Usually I quail when I see "code" in the preamble - the only job I'd get at Bletchley Park would be as lavatory cleaner - but in this case the decoding was fun. It helps that there is useful and accessible material online to confirm the final stages. Many thanks, Shark.

[NickorWan]

I had the pleasure of testing this last year and thought the same as Hagen, quite brilliant.

[HawkCrossword]

Yes, this would be impossible without the old information superhighway, wouldn't it?

A very rich theme, and the setter's managed to cram about as much material into this as Listener space would allow, but all the important details are in there, and the decoding was great fun - thanks Shark!

[olichant]

This is just as good as it gets. What a stunner.

[perseverer]

Doesn't make it easy, does Shark. Obscure words for answers, coupled with unexpected meanings of common enough words. But very cleverly put together.
I certainly needed pretty obscure reference material to carry out the final stages. Not sure where I would have looked without the internet.

[emcee]

This is a brilliant piece of work. Tough but infinitely more enjoyable than the Spice thing a few weeks ago.

The only weak point was the final letter change but I guess as the grid was already crammed with thematic material there was no more satisfying alternative.

Very many thanks to Shark.

[sunny-dave]

I agree entirely with emcee - a classic Shark puzzle and one of the toughest/best of the year.

It was, indeed, everything that the spicy borefest aspired to be, tough clues, arcane vocab and a tricky gridfill - but it was always scrupulously fair and the thematic PDM and content were well worth the effort required to unravel them - rather than the tortured limping towards a not very interesting conclusion which 4677 required.

Thanks Shark - excellent Listener.

[pushmi-pullyu]

Wow! That was terrific and the final outcome well repaid all the head-scratching.

[upsetter]

That was tough but in hindsight, given it was obvious what the extra column would contain, we could have reverse engineered most of the entries.
Thanks, Shark.

[Cruncher]

Well, that was a blinder. I found the clues very hard and mostly had to reverse engineer them from likely answers - and even with all the across clues solved I struggled to figure out where the down answers were hiding.
I wonder if anyone else was amused by the presence of the "small boy", mentioned in one of the main sources, who intervenes at a crucial point in the proceedings and effectively saves the day. Who was he and how on earth was he there?!!