What a nicely clued and thematically amusing start to the year. We laughed at the phrase. Many thanks to Kruger. A Happy New Year to all our fellow AB threaders.
I'm surprised that there isn't a thread up for this yet. (Apologies if there is one) I started on it this afternoon, having only returned to the UK this morning. Just a couple of loose ends to tie up,...
I did enjoy the way the thematic material all slotted together, however I think the obscurity of some of the geographical references was pushing the boundaries of fair play rather. Thanks Salamanca....
Anything I say will set off yet another argument about easy and hard Listeners, so I'll leave it at thanking Piccadilly for a brief spell of entertainment....
The grid fill was not as hard as I had expected, as spotting the treatment of the holes was a great help. I'm sure I'll have mucked up the last step, however, as i'm in the "good walk ruined" camp....
An excellent challenge from Sabre, and certainly had to use all the available information to make headway on this. Full quotation and author only revealing itself right at the end.
What a neat grid construction. I found finding the quotation a bit tedious, but the rest of the puzzle was a total delight, with some cleverly concealed misprints. Many thanks, Calmac....
That was fun and, for me, educational. I was stuck for a while on both 30 across and down, but it all finally came together. Some nicely convoluted clues, but all very fair, and no ambiguity in the...
As ever with Schadenfreude, a great pleasure to solve. I had to backtrack to find a few missing missing letters, though. I wonder whether this was one that was rejected by CAM as too easy (or perhaps...
I'm still a bit uncertain of the misprint for the fifth letter of the name, but have no qualms about the rest. Some nice clues, and a satisfactory endgame. Many thanks, Colleague. Now back to tracing...
Pretty easy grid fill, and an interesting second puzzle. I do quite enjoy puzzles of this second type, but the ones I have seen before tend to be very trivial. This one was a little more challenging....
Some fairly straightforward clues, with a lucky guess at 1d and 27d leading inevitably to 17, made this a quick solve. I was held up for a while by 14d and 24d, but I'm looking forward to a bit of...
Some excellent clueing, especially where extra letters were unambiguously indicated. The end result may never win a prize for elegance, even with the speakers revealed, but the gridfill speeds up very...
A lovely construction, with fairly straightforward clues. I hadn't come across the verse, and have only been able to locate the vital couplet -- if the rest of it is available I hope somebody will...
All over rather too quickly for my liking, but I enjoyed the join-up-the-dots picture-forming. Clues perhaps a bit easy for this outlet. Anyhow, now plenty of time for tennis and/or sweltering in the...
One of the quickest solves of the year -- the definitions-only clues fell rapidly once the first was solved, and the final sentence was fairly easy to spot. Sorry, Wiglaf, but I'm left wanting a bit...
Wow! After staring at the full grid for hours off and on, I finally saw one of the words...then another..and then I was done. Thanks, Elfman, for a first-rate Listener!
Not nearly as scary as the preamble suggested, and a really nice sequence of PDMs leading to a satisfying final grid. Thanks Ifor, and I hope everyone here (in the UK, at least) has a nice long...