Listener 4340 Red Shift By Nudd

[midazolam]

With Shackleton last week and now this puzzle, the Listener is finally picking up pace after a rather slow start to the year.

This puzzle is fun. Straightforward fill and a pleasing endgame. Puzzles do not have to be hard to be enjoyable. However, easier grid-fills must have a worthy theme, as in this one.

Thanks Nudd

[AHearer]

Agreed: a pleasing construction with no major problems but lots of fun. I had quite forgotten about the use of the technique in the next key title.

[jim360]

None of the source material is familiar to me; but, thankfully, the grid fill was not too bad, so I could then sort out all of those tricksy word shifts. All very clever and fitting together wonderfully.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes indeed - it doesn't have to be difficult to be a real pleasure with a most satisfactory endgame does it!

[olichant]

Really enjoyed this. The source material is new to me, too - although I am very familiar with the source material on which the source material is apparently based (I think that makes sense...). Thanks, Nudd - a nice start to the long weekend. Happy Easter to all.

[tilbee]

Agreed a very pleasing solve. Straightforward grid-fill, but somewhat held up since I had carelessly wrongly transcribed one of the extra letters, making the final instruction somewhat tricky to interpret.

[lyrabelacqua]

Loved it. Relatively straightforward though the grid fill may be, the elegance of the clueing and setting left me in awe. Many thanks to Nudd and more please.

[Cruncher]

Very well-constructed and enjoyable puzzle

[doctormatt]

Done! Nice and gentle after last week.

[upsetter]

Excellent and, for us as difficult as last week.
Perhaps our bleats have not fallen on deaf ears.

[starwalker]

Simple and straightforward. Not familiar with the source material, but no matter. Thanks Nudd.

[roslyn251254]

Got there in the end - should have finished it last night but messed up a couple of down letters and was trying to make more of it than necessary, thinking the whole grid might have to be coded!

[icynorth]

Another clever grid and enjoyable puzzle, but I managed to bypass the endgame somewhat by spotting key information in the grid. It saved a lot of time, I imagine.

[petefoxes]

Lovely. Not too difficult. I devoured the source material in my youth so was delighted to be reminded of it. Some celebratory highlighting of the two grid entries and 13-letter title might've been a nice extra finish but I enjoyed this a lot anyway. Thanks, Nudd.

[UglyUncle]

This was indeed an absolute delight. I really must make time for the key material, which I know is highly regarded. (The pre-emptive Avuncular intuition had no chance this week.)

I do like it when a retrospective analysis of certain clues makes one realise that key information was visible all along, but I think that highlighting is superfluous when the setter has made it impossible for the puzzle to be completed without a full understanding of the steps required.

I only finished the Shackleton yesterday. Still don't see the point of the symbols, unless they were only meant to help identify a thematic word.

[bobbycollins]

Actually Nudd, I found that quite a challenge. Thankfully I don't possess a brain the size of a small planet, so can really enjoy pitting my wits against you.

[sunny-dave]

Finally got my iMac and printer set up again, after another lot of builders' dust had subsided - so I had a choice of 4339 or 4340 ... a quick peruse of the relevant threads said "let's do 4340 first".

Loved it - fair (but tricksy) clues, good way of hiding messages and some new (to me) source material to have a gander at.

All done and happy - now for that bottle of Chilean White.

Cheers

SD xx

[Cagey]

Took a while to get through this. Think I found it harder than others. Familiar with some of the source material, but never a fan as falls into the category of being forced on me in school. Very little in that category has ever been liked. But a crossword can be good despite this, and this was good fun. Thank you.

[EAChaplin]

Thanks Nudd for a puzzle which has everything I have come to expect from a quality Listener. Thanks also for remembering me in 1 across. Nudd of course is once of this Parish, and treasurer of the Grid Starers Association which reminds me I haven't sent my subs.

[Scorpius]

An easy puzzle which I enjoyed solving, but I'm not as ecstatic about it as many here. The grid can hardly be described as Ximenean, with four examples of over-unched entries and sixteen entries with no unches at all. No wonder the puzzle was easy. I know from experience that getting a final grid with new words arising from changes is not easy, but I'm afraid I would not have been happy submitting this grid. Sorry, Nudd, if I've offended.
Although not a criticism, I found the instruction from the downs wasn't necessary at all to complete the puzzle; as I had an incomplete instruction, the end of which didn't seem to make sense, I just looked for somewhere to locate the only 13-letter title I knew and found it within a minute of scanning the grid.

[upsetter]

UglyUncle - concerning the symbols from last week, if you have got everything correct they make perfect sense and are essential to understanding the final coup-de-grace of this fantastic puzzle.