Times Listener

[Verbix]

Don't usually even try this crossword but found we could solve one clue! (4D organgrinder). Then found it would not fit in - only space for 8 letters. Other clues also had word counts with no relation to space available. Am I being more than usually dim? Thanks.

[olichant]

You're not being dim! The Listener crossword usually has some sort of sneaky trick, and reading the preamble carefully is the key (the reference to "treatments affecting most answers"). Once you've got a few more clues, you might get an idea of what those treatments are - but you'll probably have to solve a good handful of clues before you spot a pattern emerging. Good luck - it's worth the effort!

[jim360]

No, I wouldn't say that. In this particular puzzle the solutions to the clues have to be changed to give what you put in the grid (by removing certain letters or, possibly, hidden words). Have faith in your clue-solving, and then see what changes need to be made to allow answers to fit in to the space available. There are no "clashes" -- that is, once you have made the correct changes then across and down entries will agree with each other where they cross.

[Verbix]

Thanks to both. So the "treatments" could be "remove all the vowels when entering the answers" or similar. Yes? We might battle on a bit further.

[jim360]

Yes, indeed it could be (although I'll save you a bit of head-scratching and tell you that here, it isn't). A couple of clues that are particularly important to help suggest the modification needed would be 18ac and 26dn. (Also, there are two different types of removal at play here).

[olichant]

Exactly - it could be something along those lines, or similar. Good luck! Incidentally, the clue that you've got probably isn't the most representative - you'll find that a lot of the other answers where the entry length isn't the same as the answer length have something a bit more obvious in common. Hope that makes sense...

[olichant]

Ignore my post - Jim explained it better than me!

[Verbix]

Gosh, what a tutorial! You've both been very generous with time and guidance. Thanks again.