Listener 4617 Selfie By Sabre

[s_pugh]

A magnificent challenge from Sabre, incredibly tough clues (some distinctly devious) and a great endgame. One of the best in a long time. Thank you Sabre.

[s_pugh]

P.S. Pretty grim viewing mind, not sure I'd care waking up to that one!

[Hagen]

I can't share your enthusiasm. Yes, the endgame was clever, but was it worth the tortuous journey to get there? With the entries clued normally (rather than wordplay giving the altered version) there is a lot of cold solving with minimal feedback from the grid. Clues as intractable as this may present an interesting challenge with a helpful grid, but in this case I found the solving process a joyless slog. Sorry!

[Cruncher]

There are some weeks when I hang on to the previous week's completed entry so that I can post two in the same envelope - assuming that I can finish the new one by Wednesday. Think 4616 will get an envelope all to itself this week. Somehow don't think this bad boy is going to be a quick solve...

[sunny-dave]

Coo - that was hard - about time after a run of 'gimmes', but this was Sabre at his cunning best.

What I've always liked is that his clues are often deeply devious - but you always know when you've cracked one - it all just clicks together - with the corollary that (as happened here a couple of times) "if it doesn't parse elegantly, you've almost certainly got it wrong".

I thought the endgame was good enough to justify the labours of filling the grid - but those labours were actually reward enough in themselves - for me, anyway.

Thanks Sabre - not just for this, but for all the other challenges over the years.

[Scorpius]

I completely agree with Hagen. A joyless slog. I don't even think the endgame was worth all the effort. There are far too many ambiguities in entering answers that can only be resolved once one has anough of the missing/extra letters to work out what the instruction must be (part of which still makes no sense to me). One answer has four possible entries. The odd one or two like that is expected. Much over that is bordering on unfair. A few dubious definitions, to boot.

I don't really agree that the clueing is all that good either. There are some that represent Sabre at his best, but in many cases the difficulty of solving is more to do with the clue and/or grid entry gimmicks than any inherent brilliance of the clue. The easiest clue gimmick to deliver a message is initial letters from extra words that have no thematic relevance or other constraints.

I've always enjoyed and admired Sabre's puzzles in the past, but not this time.

[perseverer]

Mixed feelings about this one. If I had finished within a few hours I would probably have said it was brilliant. As it is, it took to this morning, so a slog. Towards the end, it was figuring out what the instructions were going to be that let me identify several extra/missing letters and get my last few entries. Looking back over the clues, I think to myself why did that cause me so much bother. Perhaps that's what good difficult clues should do. The end game did raise a smile

[upsetter]

Having eventually filled the grid and finally got the message, we loved the denouement. Especially as it showed up two incorrect answers.

[ProfessorMaisie]

Thank you Scorpius - that's the puzzle I solved (of course there are different tastes to consider, but even then...).

[Lewap]

Hi.
I am also finding this a tough slog. Would anyone be willing to send me a hint to 1ac?
I will, of course, not be submitting should I complete it!
[email protected]
Thanks!

[perseverer]

Hint sent!

[Philoctetes]

A couple of weeks back, I described a puzzle with "momentum", you kept going at it for just one more clue. This was almost the opposite, with the toughness of the clues (some unfair?) meaning I could only take one or two at a time. I didn't feel there was as much coherence as required in a great crossword. The challenges were simply put there to be, well, challenging, and the end result was not really related. Great on construction, light on PDM and narrative

[PhilipW]

Judging by the comments, this seems to have been somewhat of a marmite puzzle, since I absolutely loved it. Candidate for POTY for me. Very difficult and with a lot of cold solving, which I like, then a great mental image when the finale was revealed. Despite being familiar with the theme, it took until this afternoon to finish and for all to be revealed...thanks to the lockdown or it would have been even later. Thanks Sabre

[Cruncher]

It's Thursday and still only 3/4 of the clues solved with rather far-fetched justification for some answers. Resisting the temptation to defect to the dark side but confess that trying to proceed with this has now become more a point of honour than unalloyed joy. At least the features are sorted and parts of the second message are emerging

[emcee]

Late start to this but it has still taken me ages to complete.

I wasn't happy with 27a as I had two valid alternatives, each time throwing me off course with 24d. As soon as the correct 27a was chosen I managed to complete the grid.

The separation between the two-part instruction was unclear too. Initially my first part had two extra words which meant I was trying to do something much more difficult than intended (not unknown with Sabre so I persisted with it for some time). Once I had realised the two words were part of the second-part of the instruction everything then fell into place.

Certainly a difficult puzzle but a source of irritation too.

Thank you, Sabre.