Listener 4487 By Elgin

[Hagen]

After several days in bed with very nasty flu I wasn't on best form to tackle one of the most challenging setters in the business, but lucky guesses and a series of PDMs made this an enjoyable journey of discovery rather than a slog. Very impressive that there is such a tidy resolution to what initially appeared to be ambiguities in some of the down entries.

A brilliant puzzle which has persuaded me to get hold of the source material forthwith.

[pushmi-pullyu]

Respect, Hagen! I am definitely struggling, and without the excuse of flu. But your post has encouraged me to battle on.

[Liathach]

Absolutely wonderful, revealing more nuggets at every stage, and so true to the theme. Puzzle of the year maybe!

[djawhufc]

Truly brilliant construction. So many clever aspects in one puzzle.

[lyrabelacqua]

That is, quite simply, beautiful. My favourite PDM of all time. Thank you.

[Scorpius]

That was tough. I think sorting out all the threads and resolving the endgame took longer than solving the clues. My initial hunch was to plump for another example of the genre, which led me astray for a while.
It reminds me of an equally brilliant puzzle by Elgin many years ago.

[icynorth]

I eventually got there without solving the asterisked sort - too many previous ‘guess what I’m thinking’ puzzles, maybe? :-)

What an achievement! It’s up there with the best of the Shackletons. Many thanks, Elgin!

[Osirun]

After a day or so of protracted agony and hair-tearing, the pennies started to drop one by one, and I would agree that it is not ridiculous to mention this puzzle in the same breath as the sainted name of Shackleton. Really really brilliant and if you happen to know me personally you will understand why I got an extra kick out of the final denouement!

[Alekhine]

This was top class ... so much better than all those 30-60 minute efforts which are lauded excessively, in my opinion.

The Alekhine-o-meter hovers between 8 and 9, but the quality of some of the clues bends the needle upwards.

Yes, yes. I know. I am the Craig Revel-Horwood of The Answer Bank.

[Flocker14]

Took a bit of getting there... I can only echo the above: this seemed to extend the boundaries of what might reasonably be expected to happen within the small confines of a crossword grid. Splendid entertainment!

[olichant]

Took me ages, but things sped up once the theme finally clicked. Brilliant, and incredibly neat. What a grid.

[olichant]

Such a lot of material, communicated so parsimoniously. And all with normal (albeit hard) clues throughout. Really nice.

[starwalker]

It doesn't get much better than this. Easy to see why Elgin puzzles are few and far between, sadly. Thanks Elgin for some wonderful entertainment.

[emcee]

The construction of this puzzle was quite amazing. The endgame reminded me of a Kea puzzle of old. I wonder if anyone else was reminded of the same?

Many thanks to Elgin. A gem of a puzzle.

[sunny-dave]

Blimey - that took a while - and boy was it worth it - even the serious blind alley into some abstruse bits of physics that I managed to convince myself were relevant (don't ask).

Lovely how it didn't all quite come together until the very end - when, of course, it all looked blindingly obvious.

Thanks Elgin - a cracker.

[Scree]

Also struggling with nasty flu, but that's no excuse - this was a bit beyond me. Have to say I hate crosswords where anagramming all down answers means you end up with (inevitably!) more down than across clues solved and strings of possible letters making your search for across answers no easier!

In the end I've done pretty much all of it and checked another place to see if a nudge would help. It reassured me that I'd got all the starred letters right, but that doesn't help. Worked out the message from the crossed letters and eventually got a 2 word phrase but that's it.

Having given up, I read further on that site and found an explanation of 46a. Having stared at this for ages and settled on the only possible answer, I don't see a proper definition - however clever the wordplay.

Many other clues turned out to be a lot easier than they appeared, so my memory of this puzzle is mainly annoyance. It doesn't help to see comments about how brilliant it was! I'll wait for the solution and probably concur...

[Scree]

OK, I now see the definition for 46a! I'll blame the flu...