Listener 4505: Wiggles By Sabre

[kdgs2]

This had all the elements to make it extremely daunting: Sabre - check; unconventional grid - check; long, complicated preamble - check! And it lived up to its billing. How does Sabre manage to make such short clues so very tricky?

I think I was lucky in that the part of the grid where I made progress first allowed me to guess the theme pretty early on, but there was still a lot of essentially cold solving to do. I also still have one octagon where I haven't quite parsed the entry - happy enough with a filled grid though. Thanks, Sabre!

[Encota]

Quite, quite brilliant!

[Hagen]

It’s a sign of trouble ahead when the first few clues of a Sabre puzzle are quite easy! I didn’t read the preamble properly and initially put the first letter of each answer in the central cells; when I realised that any letter could go there I gave up. Life’s too short.

It’s fairly predictable that it would be a Sabre puzzle that ends my fairly long unbroken run of finishing Listener crosswords successfully (ignoring the numericals). Good luck to those who persevere and congratulations to those who finish.

[Liathach]

Certainly very tough, even after you have the theme. I spent a lot time trying to fill the top part of the grid so as to satisfy all the relevant constraints. It was then more or less essential to find the twelve letter phrase in order to resolve the unclued octagons and squares. Now I must try not to make a mistake in the transposition before sending in. As always with Sabre, tough but essentially fair.

[Scorpius]

It's probably sacrilege to say this, but I didn't get much pleasure from the puzzle at all. I got the twelve-letter phrase and theme fairly early but even then it was just a very long and tedious slog trying to plot all the routes. I also worked out the basis of the matching pairs fairly early from just a few letters in the right places but that didn't speed things up all that much.
The appeal of Sabre for me is his fine cluemanship. There were some gems here, but the complexity of the grid entries meant he had to throw in a huge number of giveaways to enable solvers to get anywhere.

[icynorth]

I can’t parse 12, but I have a full grid I’m confident in.

I was lucky in that I’d been compiling a puzzle based on the 16-cell message and so just needed to look them up in my sheet. But now I guess I’ll never get mine published. This was a lot better anyway. Many thanks, Sabre!

[olichant]

icynorth, I wouldn’t lose heart - this wasn’t the first and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I’ve just limped over the line. I was very close to giving up, but I couldn’t quite put it down. Such a lot of cold-solving and a tricky grid to fill.

Most of the clues (after a relatively generous batch of easy ones) taught me something new. Impressive to set such tough clues so parsimoniously without gimmicks.

When it started to come together, it did make the struggle really worthwhile. I say “struggle” - an hour ago, I’d have said “slog”, or something less complimentary. In fact, filling the grid was fun in the end.

That was a proper work-out. Thanks, Sabre.

[starwalker]

That was a serious workout, completed in a series of fits and starts. Even guessing the theme quite early failed to provide any advantage. Thanks Sabre.

[JustinTime]

Finally finished it! Far too much cold solving required for this to be considered a good crossword. The final part not completely in line with what goes before, spoiling an otherwise integrated puzzle. Definitely not Sabre's best.

[Philoctetes]

A very good puzzle, though too much cold work. It was all constructed well until the last step, which seemed to have little relevance. I wonder if even Sabre reaches the stage of "Oh, blow it!"

[tnap]

Was busy over the weekend, so came at this one late. I'm afraid I'm with Scorpius on this one. I'm not a fan of having to cold solve pretty much everything before being able to put pen to grid. And even then I needed a lucky guess on the alias to really get going.

Also clue 12 just doesn't work in my part of the world. It took me about 2 hours from getting the answer to convincing myself that it could possibly be correct. I'm surprised it was allowed by the vetters, as there is no clear justification in the BRB.