Listener 4139: An Unsettled Spell by Nutmeg

[AHearer]

I spent a long time staring at a grid with the source filled in and a knowledge of the letters that had slipped before I started cracking the clues. Having basically solved it in the reverse order I feel slightly dissatisfied, but that's my fault rather than Nutmeg's.

[midazolam]

sorry cluelessjoe - you beat me to it!

By the way, if anyone wants a real challenge then this month's Magpie has an E grade (the hardest grade in the magazine) by Pieman - they don't come along that often. There are also difficult puzzles (D grade) by Ifor and Pointer and a couple of easier ones by Samuel and Qaos together with a numerical by Arden.

[Alekhine]

I was fortunate to stumble across the source quite quickly ... and then the quotation and author were easily established.

Still a bit of a slog thereafter, but a nice idea. And very easy to get confused between adding or subtracting a letter.

Wasn't the cricket dull today though?

[contendo]

Slowly plodding through this one, having got the quotation fairly early on with some helpful nudges here.
Isn't there some other thread where football fans can slog it out?

[IainGrace]

Bobbycollins, I recall a few years ago a non -cryptic non-Listener crossword for Bobcats entitled "Rainy Day Women No.12 and 35 Across".

[Coalminers]

Well, how anyone can do that in 90 minutes beats me. I'm there at last - but on going through it all, the BRB doesn't really help with the definition of 1D, and where on earth is that abbreviation?

[Clamzy]

Amen. Hopefully:-)

[midazolam]

I was coming on hear to write about the missing abbreviation but I see Coalminers has already mentioned it. 8D might be thought of as a double definition but the answer is clearly a normal word and 9D is definitely not an abbreviation in Chambers, so that leaves me thinking there isn't one.

[cluelessJoe]

midazolam - I think you meant 'here' here
;-)

.... and now, I'm out of here

[pushmi-pullyu]

"I hear what you're saying" isn't meant literally, but means "I am giving due weight to what you are saying". Isn't "Hear hear" the same?

[the_heisman]

can i lift the pedant's trophy by pointing out that German nouns are capitalised?

[the_heisman]

oh dear - a quick visit to the BRB has exposed me to the greatest humiliation of all - a pedantic comment that is wrong!

[trux]

Being golfing in Valencia all weekend, so only got to this today - like many others, got quote and source fairly quickly and then moved on to the long gridfill, quite arduous but brightened by the thematic stuff therein. I found you needed a clear head to work out which way the slippage was going, and unfortunately I didn't have a clear head this morning .... so it's taken me a goodly while. Some very fine clueing - many thanks, Nutmeg.

[tristram37]

Hear hear is correct and here here is incorrect according to Wikipedia. It is short for hear him hear him.
I found this puzzle a long hard slog, even having stumbled on the source and so to the quote quite early on. It was not always easy to determine which way the slippages went, and some of them were very artfully concealed. I am still puzzling over some of the wordplays.

[bobbycollins]

Finally got there. Gave up on the bottom left last night, and just picked it off in twenty minutes in my lunch break. I was making way too much of some of the clues, which a fresh mind polished off nicely.

Very tough by my standards. I think that 9 down can be construed as a partial abbreviation given the etymology in the BRB.

Disappointed by the groundless swipe at CJ by the way.

[Clamzy]

This is getting tiresome.
Let me clarify that I agree with everything you wrote cJ.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, Bobby Collins, I think we all agree about that unfair back-hander. You couldn't have a more open-minded, tolerant and generous member of the AB community than CJ. S-matrix must have been having a bad day.

[contendo]

The SW corner is my problem, with a few gaps in the SE as well. Am I right in thinking that my favourite character is missing from the dramatis personae?