Listener Crossword No 4561 One Or The Other

[perseverer]

Well, it took a long time for the penny to drop, not helped by a wrong entry.
A neat treatment of the theme, with some tricky wordplay, including the one I got wrong and still haven't figured out properly.
Thanks to Hurón, and who knew the object was called that!

[perseverer]

.... and as usual, as soon as I had clicked ASK, that particular penny tumbled.

[Hagen]

This should satisfy those who found last week's clues too easy (I wasn't one of them). A clever construction and satisfying endgame with no ambiguity, though those who submit may find it difficult to fulfil all the instructions in a way that clearly shows all has been done correctly.

As a personal preference, I find obscure single letter abbreviations (as a general example, i' = in) annoying when clues have extra or missing letters, but of course it's perfectly fair and no doubt many will relish the challenge this extra layer of complexity provides.

Another debut I think, and an auspicious one.

(Transferred from my thread. Please Answerbank, can you do something about new threads taking so long to appear in search?)

[NickorWan]

Lovely that, really enjoyable to solve. Thank you, Hurón.

Good day to tackle the Listener here in Girona as it is too hot to venture out - it reached a record 43.9 yesterday.

[emcee]

Really good puzzle. Very tricky and nice to have the Listener back after a week "off".

Thanks, Huron, a fine construction.

[Scorpius]

An excellent puzzle in every respect. Good choice of theme, great clues and a very pleasing endgame.

[Scorpius]

What a pity that such a fine puzzle should get so few comments. Obviously the Listener forum on Answerbank is dying as it did elsewhere.

[Hagen]

Coudn't agree more, Scorpius. I can't help wondering if the unwritten "no spoilers" rule has something to do with it. I prefer it that way, but perhaps some contributors have decided that there is a limit to how many times you can write variants of "I did/didn't enjoy this puzzle." Or perhaps it has something to do with the shambolic search function. Who knows?

The bad news is that I'm not going anywhere while these threads (or I) still last!

[PhilipW]

Well I thought that was a super puzzle...always surprising to find out the actual name of something with which you are already familiar. It took me far too long to parse the first half of 8A after knowing the answer. I'm a great fan of the 'no spoilers' rule...they totally ruin a puzzle. I hope there is some latitude given in the instruction for 'specified colour' though! Thanks Hurón

[Philoctetes]

I will be keeping Hagen company. I'm not sure it is the "No Spoilers" convention - though that has produced some mighty flounces over the years. I would place the decline more squarely round a period when some contributors were severely reprimanded for criticising puzzles too harshly. IMHO, if one cannot say a puzzle is below par, and justify one's opinion, there is little point in a comment thread. One would not be told off for saying a puzzle was brilliant, and justifying one's opinion. Setters can learn from the comments, good or bad. And I can learn, if my opinion is challenged.
Let's all carry on, robustly, fairly, and politely

[Askival]

I confess I've been a bit of a long-time lurker on this thread, and have been too lazy/coy to comment. Every poster counts when it comes to keeping a good forum alive, so here I am (albeit a little late in the day), and would encourage others to do the same.

So much to love about this puzzle. I often don't bother to re-read clues for their surfaces - long-standing cryptic solvers always ignore the surface, and for good reason, but when so much effort has clearly gone into making them convincing then I think we almost owe it to the setter. 18 down (as it happens, my first solved) is a splendid example.

Also worthy of note - the immediately lovable 1 across, and the fact that everything was accomplished with sound unching.

I feel amply rewarded for getting through a tough solve. My only quibble is that the theme has been so thoroughly incorporated that it would be difficult to steal it for another puzzle!

Thank you, Hurón. See you next week everyone.

[IainGrace]

Post holiday brains resulted in our misconstruing the rubric as telling us that every clue gained or lost letters. Now on track.

[Cruncher]

I'm with Iain Grace on this one and didn't parse the instructions carefully enough and wasted a lot of time fretting about a number answers that seemed to be unscathed by amendments. I'm sure that wasn't intended to be ambiguous. Moving on, I enjoyed the end game although had to back solve some of the extra letter clues to generate the message that I knew I needed with some slightly questionable wordplay IMHO. Still - all done and thank you Hurón