Listener 4165, Variation on a Theme by Nibor

[dr b]

Not much here to cause any grief this week, I think. Not too high on the difficulty scale, but enjoyable anyway.

Now I have no excuses for the afternoon and will be forced to finally clean out my gutters. 65 degrees today - 40 on Sunday. I guess I'll get busy.

[starwalker]

Yes dr b, quite fun. Always helps to choose the correct extra word, or you end up with gibberish. I must remember that (again).

[Zabadak]

Impressive time, Doctor! I think I spent rather too long trying to resolve the highlighting conundrum: I have done so in a manner which satisfies both me and a possible reading of the instruction and would cheerfully claim it's right. Otherwise, I've got some more (apparently fruitless) wordsearching to do. I wonder what variations on a theme will be deemed acceptable in the central illustration. Best wishes to all.

[Ruthrobin]

A lovely theme - one of my favourites and an endless source of amusement. I think a variety of sporty pictorial representations will be fine as long as Chambers justifies them - clearly have to be of the sporty kind though!

[trux]

Pretty much twigged it all now - theme, last line, drawing, etc .... sweet! Some nice clues (11D, for example) ad plenty of thematic material ... a few gaps left but the game is up ... dindins calls!

[contendo]

As I was evidently the only person in the world to struggle over last week's (finally resolved it 5 minutes before this one came out) I was pleased to finish this one early, though I have slight doubts about the highlighting and I find 2D a little obscure and can't claim to understand the wordplay in 5A. Some lovely clues.

[AndrewG-S]

Thought this was great. Fine theme and the highlighting took a little while for the PDM. Many thanks Nibor, one of my favourites for a while.

[Mysterons]

The 'hovering clipper' is a proprietary name contendo

[contendo]

Yes Mysterons, very neat.

[trux]

Thanks Mysterons - I didn't bovver to work that one out

[silversolver]

I actually found this one quite tricky - got the theme early-ish but some of the wordplay was far from easy. Very enjoyable, thanks Nibor.

[jockie]

The highlighting is holding me up. I can (with a bit of imagination stretching) find different ways of doing this. Should I be following line 3 or line 4 of the original?

[Rogue-Elfe]

I have found the theme and clashes, and am also delighted by the theme's variation. I have two problems - I can't complete the top left corner, and can't (therefore?) find the first word - although I can see no way for it to be contiguous anyway. The second word is there just fine. Are we highlighting the right number of letters, or do some of them appear in both words?

[Rogue-Elfe]

ok - grid complete, and definately no first word. Time to think laterally. See you all later.

[Alekhine]

I found this relatively straightforward, and might have joined the Friday Club had it not been for a few hours at the local am-dram ("Rumours" by Neil Simon incidentally...truly hilarious).

I did enjoy the highlighting method.

[aldanna]

Completed grid, all the rest sorted, apart from the small matter of the highlighting - have handed that over to Himself to consider. A fun crossword; I know it wasn't that hard but there were some quite difficult clues in it.

[tilbee]

A few tricky clues, but generally straightforward. Just spent far too long finally justifying wordplay to 25a !

[tenflags]

Made for a pleasant arvo.. I agree fairly straight forward and like some I have a word play or two to nail and just the highlighting to consider... had a tiny doh! moment with the aka name bit along the way.

[midazolam]

Is anyone surprised by the amount of proper nouns? I count 12, and if one includes the two non-Chambers words, this equals nearly one third of the total number of entries.

It was a straightforward puzzle except for the lateral thinking required to get the highlighting. I was contemplating all sorts of possibilities, but failed to think of the correct method until now.

[Walterloo]

A fun puzzle but I too struggled over some wordplay. I have a full grid now but I haven't cracked the highlighting part. Lateral thinking is not my strongest attribute but I will carry on!

[upsetter]

are the following unique and convincing
1. The picture in the middle
2. The shading