Listener Crossword No 4301 It's Over Here! By Jago

[trux]

Have just taken up my £1 special offer for first month of my Times subscription, and do hope I shall get better value for money in the coming weeks. I regret to say that this is just not up to Listener standard. Apologies to Jago for being so blunt, but seriously ...

[Oyler]

Just imagine if when you open your copy of The Times on Saturday or your electronic document on Friday and find the space for the Listener Crossword blank save for " Listener Crossword 4302. Solvers must set their own puzzle. Closing date 24th July ". I wonder what the discussion would be like? [ The idea has already been used in The Magpie - twice ]

[olichant]

All interesting. My opinion (for what it's worth) is that this was too easy for the Listener - but then again, it can scarcely have been by accident, either on the part of Jago or the editors.

It did give me the opportunity to share it with a friend who had always wanted to try a Listener, and he got a real sense of delight once the penny dropped. So it has garnered at least one new recruit (although I've warned him that next week's will probably be set by Schadenfreude and Kea jointly, and will require the grid to be filled in Amharic encoded by reference to a proto-semitic key and dissected to represent some previously undiscovered elliptic function).

And, easy though this was to solve, it is perhaps a mistake to underestimate how long it must take to put together any half decent puzzle - I strongly suspect that Tetris (just to take one example) took rather longer than a few days.

Right, I'm going back to compose that Amharic puzzle (if Schadenkea hasn't beaten me to it).

[EAChaplin]

It's a well established scientific principal that the length of a thread is directly proportional to the amount 'given away'. As philoctetes has pointed out this rather longer than usual thread has divulged quite a lot. In the days of more than a hundred posts being commonplace, there were more hints to be garnered. The bland 'this was easy' (or tough) and not a lot more, won't generate much interest.

[Cagey]

I enjoyed doing this puzzle. I enjoy doing every puzzle I tackle, which is why I tackle them. However I get more satisfaction from a puzzle I have to struggle over, feel like giving up over, over come that, feel it again, throw it at the wall, contemplate it in the bathroom (on the loo), in the bed, at work when I should really be looking at cervix, have to write to myself asking for a hint (since we all know inspiration comes immediately after sending said request), throw it at wall again (surprised that it sticks like spaghetti, inquire of children why wall is sticky), surmount the impassable obstacle of not being smart enough, send it in having mis-transcribed a c as an l or similar. So whilst I enjoyed this puzzle as much as any other I got less satisfaction from it, other than managing my first letter listener without a dictionary. Equally I enjoyed the maths one coded by the np and s, found it elegant (and probably easier than this one!), but did not get much satisfaction from it. I enjoyed the pi one recently, but recognised the digit sequence early on and so found it straightforward and not that satisfying.
Basically I see nothing wrong with this current puzzle. It was perfectly enjoyable, maybe not too difficult, but so what? I am sure I am not the only person to venture the opinion that it is nice to come across something that is easy once in a while!

[Quizmonkey]

There is nothing wrong with easy crosswords per se. But the Listener is not an easy crossword. That's its point. That's why we do it. If we want something like 4301 we can buy one of those monthly puzzle magazines and 'enjoy' as many childish clues about bananas as we like. The editor(s) were wrong in accepting this as a Listener crossword IMHO - there's certainly been nothing like this in all my Listener-solving years (since the mid-80s). What can we expect in future - a wordsearch?

[Oyler]

How about L3195 - In Out In Out by Foxglove in 1993? That must have been easy as even I solved it! The current puzzle could have been done like that with some entries modified in some way to indicate the addition or removal of some drug of choice, but that would be subject to legal action of course.