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.

[BobHWW]

Ahh just seen the final bit. Nice one.

[trux]

Very gentle as you say, but quite a witty and well-disguised endgame. By no means a classic but certainly a pleasant romp, leaving the whole weekend to start attacking the Magpie (this would have been an "A" grade there, I reckon). My thanks go to eXternal.

[lyrabelacqua]

Yes, very enjoyable, and leaves the rest of the weekend deliciously free.

[Ruthrobin]

Oh my! - the solve took about an hour and the grid staring to resolve the endgame, the remaining four. Very amusing, thanks.

[fortyseven]

Thanks to eXternal for a gentle workout. The penny dropping moment with the extra letters is worth waiting for. But as for grid searches for cryptic representations...!!! Got there in the end. Now for the Magpie.

[starwalker]

After years of Listener solving, I will never learn that it is so much easier to solve if one (me) puts in the correct answers. And now for something completely different - a magpie. Thanks eXternal.

[doctormatt]

Yes, just searching for the final block, otherwise all done. Very amusing!

[emcee]

Dead easy gridfill but am obviously being very dense with the rest. I have an idea what the set will represent unless there's a blatant red herring affecting the three missing definitions which I've guessed. As to the string of removed characters ... not a clue at the moment! Time to sleep on it.

[djawhufc]

If I'm in the Friday club it must be at the more reasonable end. I actually found the cryptic representation surprisingly quickly so I must be getting the hang of this Listener lark!

Good fun though and a theme I vaguely remember.

[grace_slick]

Gentle 60 minute workout. Makes a nice change after some recent testers. Shame it's a wet weekend with all this time to spare.

[AHearer]

Very enjoyable, and a nice overall consistency which meant that once the scheme for the missing letters was found the grid-staring became quite easy. In contrast to some of you, I got held up for a while in the lower left-hand corner of the grid. The first version of the song that I turned up had yet another member in the thematic set: I suppose one can in principle extend it almost indefinitely, but I'd be interested to know what is the largest set that anyone can find on line.

[grace_slick]

I seem to recall that we played one with 257 live at the Fillmore West back in '67 ... or was I on something at the time?

[Scorpius]

I can see that this is going to be one of those puzzles where the grid can be filled in little more than an hour, followed by hours of staring. The trouble is that there are so many different ways of cryptically representing the main protagonist and the last member of the set that I don't know precisely what I'm looking for.
I'm pretty sure that the theme has been done before, though that doesn't matter, particularly if the treatment's different.

[flocker]

Good to have a simpler one for a change. Finally saw what was going on with the seemingly meaningless extra letters and found the final block of letters quite quickly after a break - which always heps when you're stuck.
Nice to see Grace Slick here. My favourite band of all time. Saturday aftenoon!
Only I fear you are an alias. If not, do get in touch! I was at the Roundhouse when (you/) they played there with the Doors in 68. Pure nostalgia.

[upsetter]

Initially grumpy about some easy clues. But this got better and better. Lots of suggestions of a completely different theme.
Back to 4275, we found REE and missed OWL. Were we definitely wrong?

[contendo]

Grid fillled apart from three in the SW quadrant. Is a knowledge of pop music a prerequisite for decoding the extra letter sequence? If so I'm sunk.

[emcee]

I'm with you, contendo. From the above, it seems I wasn't even born when this song was 'famous'. A puzzle for the oldies?

[jim360]

I don't think it's a pop song or anything like that.

Grid fill complete, grid staring not really.

[perseverer]

The SW corner held me up as well, but for once, it took only a few seconds of grid-staring to locate the nine letter block.
Emcee - can't comment fully without knowing how young you are (is Victor Meldrew a clue?) but you are certainly half wrong.

[s_pugh]

Grid fill a breeze compare to recent offerings, then sat staring at the extra letters for almost as long again until the penny dropped. Now my least favourite part (and the one that usually means it ends up in the bin!), the dreaded word search .... Contendo and emcee - don't worry about any lack of musical knowledge, irrelevant here I suspect