Listener No. 4433: Yes You Can By Atlas

[AHearer]

The year is still young, and already we have a new setter: welcome, Atlas. I found this trickier than I expected, with some of the incorrect letters hard to spot even when I had the entry, and deduction of the instruction necessary to resolve one entry. Nice tight clues. At the end it took me a while to spot how to carry out the instruction. Many thanks, Atlas, I enjoyed that.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, what a superb debut (though we know Atlas from bi-monthly New Statesman crosswords). We found this tricky indeed with the lovely range of devices - the moving definitions, the omitted letters and the use of the wrong letters to give us the message. Thank you, Atlas for a most enjoyable challenge.

[Hagen]

Indeed very good with everything falling nicely into place at the end without much grid-staring. I made this more complicated than need be by instinctively noting the corrections rather than incorrect letters in some of the message clues, and it didn't help that in at least one clue there was more than one possible wrong letter. Great stuff and not a puzzle to frighten the horses, thanks Atlas.

[Encota]

An excellent puzzle - thanks Atlas! After completing the grid I dawdled my way for a bit, then finally cottoned on. Well constructed and great fun.

[pushmi-pullyu]

That was great fun. One of the delights of doing the Listener is learning new words - 45ac was unknown to me but will I ever use it?

[Scorpius]

Filled the grid fairly quickly, then spent as long again working out the wordplay to a half a dozen clues to get a coherent instruction. Even then I had to review some other clues where the 'wrong' letter was ambiguous and I had the wrong one. In at least one case the wrong 'wrong' letter was the obvious choice, the correct one much harder to see (and not supported in an older version of Chambers that I was using). I know that such ambiguities are sometimes unforeseen, but the clues are still bad clues, nevertheless. Because of this the central word eluded me for ages.

Those clues that didn't appear to suffer from ambiguities were very good.

I haven't yet applied the instruction. I'm just relieved after some time to have a full and clear instruction and an ambiguous entry resolved.

[HappyUncle]

Oh what a lovely and visually pleasing final PDM! Quite a challenge in places, but the generosity of most of the clues helped to determine what the instruction was likely to be at about the halfway point. The strategy for obtaining its letters made for a pleasant change from some of the more familiar methods.

[Philoctetes]

I would disagree with Scorpius. While an instruction leading to an ambiguous endgame is bad, a clue that leads to an ambiguous solution that can only be resolved with reference to the rest of the puzzle is good, adding an extra layer to the challenge

[Hagen]

I suspect Scorpius's case of the wrong "wrong" letter being the obvious choice was the same as the one I found. I think it's an inherent problem with this method of generating the letters in a message; unforeseen multiple possibilities are far more likely to occur than with extra letters not entered in the grid, for example. I therefore wouldn't lay the blame on Atlas's shoulders (having the world on them must be burden enough), but I wouldn't want to see this type of message generation too often.

[Scorpius]

Philoctetes, we'll have to agree to differ on this issue. If a clue generates more than one letter for a message, I regard that as frustrating for the solver if he/she has the wrong one, not an extra challenge; especially if there are other ambiguities or difficulties in detecting the letters. If I get a wrong letter through careless parsing of the clue, that is my fault; if I get a wrong letter because the setter has overlooked or ignored other possibilities, that is the setter's fault. As a setter I strive to avoid such ambiguities, and if a test solver points any out I will change the clue. I won't claim to always succeed, but I'm happy to take on board criticisms of my clues where there has been ambiguity.

In this puzzle there is also an ambiguous entry (and therefore an ambiguity in the 'wrong' letter). At the time I thought it was there for thematic reasons, but now I've applied the instruction I don't see that it is, in which case it doesn't appear to have any point apart from making a central part of the instruction harder to see.

However, I'm not trying to make a big issue out of a few clues that I think could have been better. In other respects the puzzle is an excellent one. The clues are varied and have excellent surfaces, and a generous sprinkling of anagrams helps the solver to get off to a good start. The endgame is also very good, requiring of the solver some observation and perhaps a bit of lateral thinking. What I eventually found was not what I was initially looking for, and it was lovely PDM.

[starwalker]

New year, new setter, but for me a familiar old problem of not being able to find all the missing letters to make a meaningful instruction. Eventually got there, but I took far too long. And then there was the grid stare. Harder than I was initially expecting, but very neat and enjoyable in the end. Thanks Atlas.

[borealis]

Lovely puzzle. Tough but accessible. Long time grid-staring, but when I found that there was an obvious pointer that I'd missed it gave the usual "doh" moment. So thank you, Atlas.
Now I agree with both Philoctetes and Scorpius. I found about three alternative wrong letters, and at least one normal clue that had a good valid alternative letter solution. It would have been a little better if this had not been so. But, with all the other letters, I was able to work backwards to determine which in each case led to the message. So, not perfect, but fair. A bit like assymetric grids, or non-pangram?

[upsetter]

We too had our Scorpius moments in more than one clue, but conclude that the cluing was all scrupulously fair.
Excellent and enjoyable puzzle - not at all easy.

[Cruncher]

Sweet PDM. Found a lot of the clues quite tough but definitely worth the effort. Nice one

[icynorth]

Whenever I see an asymmetric grid I always think “grid stare” and check I have a spare bottle of Optrex in the cabinet. It did take a while, even though I had long harboured suspicions about the area involved.

As pushmi-pullyu said, it’s always a delight to see unusual words. Many thanks, Atlas!

[olichant]

...and the penny has finally dropped for me. Phew - that was a bit of a grid-stare, but absolutely worth it in the end. Very enjoyable solve, some very good clues, and an endgame that raised a smile. Thanks, Atlas.

[olichant]

Oh, and I forgot to add - nice to have an interesting way of conveying the message in the clues.

[cluelessJoe]

I very much concur with Scorpius on this one. Even having carried out the final instruction I had to keep revisiting the clues to decide exactly what all of the letters in the instruction were meant to be. A bit frustrating and time wasting but necessary as one of the entries certainly needed that back-solving to resolve its ambiguity.
I could have left it be as I no longer submit an entry but I did want the satisfaction of a complete and clean solve as (despite those minor quibbles) this was indeed a fine Listener debut with some tricky but fair clues and a neat finish.
Thanks to Atlas for at least attempting to provide us with some refreshingly different devices in a very good puzzle.

[sunny-dave]

I liked this - I understand the slight quibbles some people have about the possible alternative 'wrong letters' - but completing the instruction settles any ambiguities.

The grid stare wasn't too protracted - and the PDM was appropriately celebrated here.

Cheers Atlas

[icynorth]

I'm intrigued by your 'appropriate' celebration, and how accurately you did so :-)

[sunny-dave]

Appropriate in content (albeit a cheaper version), but not in quantity :+)