Listener 4279 Hellside By External

[BobHWW]

Nice gentle cluing from eXternal - first Listener I think. This will be a good starter for new or newish solvers but shouldn't detain the regulars for too long. All definitions sorted, just a bit of grid staring needed to find the nine cells.
Thanks eXternal.

[olichant]

I echo the above. Largely straightforward gridfill, but it took me ages - AGES - to find the block of nine cells. It all came together very nicely, though. I still don't understand the title, but I'm sure it will come to me, eventually. Thanks, eXternal.

[Cagey]

Usually have bits of this left to do on a Monday. So have been tackling the Magpie. For the want of (- and lack of knowledge where there is -) somewhere else to comment just wanted to say Latticework by Pointer is fabulous.

[Scorpius]

I saw the significance of the title last night. I was half-expecting another version of the protagonist and final member, but it is something else.

Olichant, I learned years ago that analysing baffling Listener titles in a particular way sometimes bore fruit, and it did here. Such vagueness probably won't help you, but it might.

[Cagey]

Title sussed at last. Very clever!

[Speravi]

Thanks for the namecheck and greetings to EAChaplin (and everyone) – I’m still around. Completing Samuel’s tour de force took so long that I’ve only just achieved a filled grid for this week’s entertainment, and I’m not looking forward to staring at the grid – if I wanted to do that I’d buy a copy of The Puzzler. The (to my mind increased) tendency for the endgame to require lateral thinking or grid staring (or both) and for cartes blanches is one reason why I’ve been quiet – following my mother’s dictum that ‘If you can’t say anything nice…’ The other reason is the criticism I endured when I published what was intended to be a light-hearted reference to a ‘rule’ that few could have been unaware of. Very hurtful.
I add my endorsement of The Magpie which very rarely disappoints.

[Josephine22]

Finally got there! Once I realised what the song was, everyhting fell into,place within minutes. Good crossword.

[Staurologist]

eXcellent! It's a rare event, but I actually laughed aloud when I saw how the extra letters from the across clues had arisen, I was so tickled inside. I knew this nursery song as a child in the 1950s version by a well-known folk singer, although I think that it dates from before that. It seems that even the youngsters, like emcee, know it too, so hardly one for the oldies, like Shakespeare and the Bible would be, for instance :>) . The theme has been used twice before in the Inquisitor series in the Independent.

[Alan7777]

It took me a while to interpret the extra letters but for once the grid staring didn't last long although I was held up for a short time by a different and better cryptic representation of the main protagonist.

[PureListener]

Unlike a lot of solvers I thought the gridfill was difficult and the grid searching quite straightforward. I still have no idea about some of the clue answers but everything is sorted now. The song does seem to have a lot of variations though.

maurice, the Coppola film reference was on a Crossword Solver thread, not an answerbank thread.

[borealis]

Late finisher thanks to there being not two extra members in many versions, both findable in the grid..... Big grin with the main pdm; thanks eXternal. I seem to recall it was the Speravi Principle, rather than rule. Perhaps the title will make it easier in this case?

[olichant]

Dare I ask what the Speravi principle is? Still haven't the foggiest understanding of the title - I hoped a couple of Magpies would help focus my mind, but no such luck.

[borealis]

Perhaps you should listen to repititions in the song, olichant.
Speravi Principle is something like this: "try using the title cryptically, especially as an anagram".
I don't think an explanation of this will provoke anger this week, since I can see no way that using the title will help unless you have already experienced a pdm from elsewhere! Anyone get the title before the song?
..... and anyone made a link with the setter's name - though you'd need three additions to the set?

[olichant]

Thanks, borealis. Am now kicking myself!

[trux]

Following on from Cagey's plug for Pointer's "Latticework" in this month's Magpie (which is indeed an exceeding clever construction, if not perhaps quite as hard as it initially looks), I would also thoroughly recommend Mr. Magoo's "Amazing performance" (it truly is) in last week's Spectator (#2147).

[bambi123]

Very enjoyable - keeping a steady pace throughout. Needed the song to get the titles significance. Still trying to understand the wordplay in 14a
Will look out for future eXternal puzzles.

[Scree]

Like bambi123, I can't unravel all the wordplay for 14A.

Didn't start this till Saturday, found most clues easy enough, but handicapped myself by including a down clue with a definition in the set (!) and not identifying the extra letter in 32A, leaving me a bit stuck in the bottom right-hand corner.

Finally saw my error and finished the grid this morning, saw a chink of light amongst the apparent gibberish of the extra letters, and everything soon fell into place. (Might have helped if the first sentence of the preamble hadn't mysteriously vanished from my brain!)

Some grid-staring was involved, even after I spotted five cells that had to be part of the nine, but once I stopped assuming a 3x3 block I was fine - and soon worked out the title to boot! Very entertaining.