Saturday Times The Listener 4195 Sum by Hotspur Saturday June 23rd 2012

[contendo]

Well that wasn't too bad. Now for the bottom half.

[tilbee]

Eureka ! Would encourage those still struggling to continue, since this is certainly solvable with no knowledge of the theme. Only hint I can really give is to consider letters as normally appropriate to these sorts of puzzles, and to keep staring at the grid.

[tilbee]

Texasetes, even if possibly an alternate it would have been just as easy to provide the more normal form, so not sure that this is truly intentional ?

I note that my on-line research tool of choice is also in appropiate celebratory mode.

[Charpy]

TheBear69 - now you know why I had misgivings about the final step. Has to be right though, doesn't it?

[tilbee]

Charpy - if I was a gambling man I would put my money on a correction published (again) in next week's Times. For those that do the on-line version likely sooner. However, there may be some subtlety that I am missing.

[AndrewG-S]

Happy to be in the Saturday club (just) on this one. The final step is sort of obvious when you see it but I had some real head scratching on the way. Enjoyed the theme and fine and different construction. I did guess the word before I worked it out but that does not help anyway as you still need the logic. Thanks hotspur.

[TheBear69]

I wonder if the alternate (which I do not believe is valid) was intentionally chosen to indicate a negative response to the quote! Certainly if they do not issue a correction there is no doubt as to what to enter.

[AndrewG-S]

There does seem to be some support for the alternative (which I have too). But going to turn in and consider this a bit more tomorrow.

[Texasetes]

It may be an attempt to weed out the less meticulous entrants. I for one am going with it, and I fully expect no amendment to be published.

[Charpy]

tilbee: You've been proved right and I bow to your superior clairvoyance. The Times Crossword Club has already amended the grid. I wonder what they'll do about entries already submitted. Thankfully not in that category myself.

I do think that inter alia it's publishing mistakes like this which fully justify these threads.

[contendo]

Got off to a good start on this one and found the quote thanks to Amazon's "Look inside" facility, which saved me an 80-mile round trip to the nearest library which stocks the ODSQ. (Thanks Amazon). But trying to integrate across and down answers which may or may not be jumbled in the bottom half is proving beyond my declining intellectual capabilities. And then there's the difficult bit after that...

[IainGrace]

That is devious, Contendo........
Theme appeared, not surprisingly, in a crossword in another newspaper on Saturday.

[Ruthrobin]

Sunday lunchtime club for me - after hours of grid staring. I think the endgame was twice as difficult as the grid fill and that was tough but many thanks Hotspur - what a compilation. Indeed, this thread is so useful if ever there is an error (pretty rare with the team of editors we have!)

[doorbell]

Stop Press on the Listenercrossword.com site confirms that there is a misprint in the Times printed edition. The bottom line should appear as XAXBGN

[Mesnilpat]

Encouraged by previous posts, I am finally making progress. My suspicions about the theme were correct but the final part should be easier now the misprint has been pointed out. My thanks to those who spotted it

[aldanna]

If drB may admit defeat, there seems little hope for the likes of me. I think I am in the "life's too short" camp with this one.

[word_cross]

I have an almost-full grid (still have the process to work out...). My main trouble is that I'm finding 1dn impossible to understand the definition for - can someone give me a gentle nudge?

[tenflags]

word-cross.. as you have the quote and therefore misprint.. look up the definition of the corrected word in the clue and all should be clear

[trux]

High class construction, with perhaps a little too much looseness in some of the clues rendering a few borderline imho - all no doubt caused by the constraints of matching the necessary letters to the misprints - admittedly no easy feat. Hadn't been able to give it my full attention as travelling back from London and then had house-guests so did it in spurts - the longest of which was to find the iteration process for the endgame, which tied all up very neatly. Many thanks, Hotspur.

[teuchter2]

Tuned in to see if I could get any inspiration, but not much encouragement to persevere with this one. I've got the grid done, apart from 4 in SW area, which I suspect are mostly jumbled. I don't know much about the theme, but will keep looking.

[word_cross]

thanks tenflags!