Listener 4342 Triskaidekaphilia By Bero

[Monkmonk]

What a brilliant swansong. Interesting and fun.

[UglyUncle]

Picking up from seven posts ago... This was a brilliant puzzle indeed. On the face of it, the main PDM had been subverted by the title and the penultimate sentence of the preamble, yet there was still plenty to enjoy along the way, especially the various sly hints provided.

I wonder, however, why we are asked to 'enter the pertinent part [...] of a question', when what is 'spelt out' - and the product thereof - isn't a question at all in the source referred to. It's the sort of drafting error that the editors are supposed to help resolve, isn't it?

And try as I may, I can't think of any thematic justification for the recurrent feature that appears in a dozen of the clues. Is it just a red herring?

[Pasquin]

UglyUncle, they were the originals, thematically. Sometimes encountered now as mostly red, though not herrings.

[UglyUncle]

I should have known I would kick myself! Thanks for the hint (but at present only three are red).

[Pasquin]

Represented in all their glory, just over half are red.

[UglyUncle]

Oh dearie me. I'm afraid my knowledge of political history after 1485 is a bit hazy.

[Philoctetes]

Thanks to all who offered advice on CD problem. It decided to start working again this morning (after another welter of overnight "updates")

[icynorth]

Another clever grid. "Comprising eight of one shape" isn't strictly accurate, but that's probably being picky. I enjoyed it.

[aldanna]

Very much a joint effort here at Aldanna Towers, with successive pennies falling in not too rapid succession. Clues reasonably easy on the whole, but an amazing structure. We really liked this one!

[crosswhit99]

A very nice puzzle, but the first and penultimate sentences of the preamble do not seem to be compatible. If the first is true, then the puzzle number is surely prime, so its only factor in common with the year is 1 ?

[British_Olympics]

Well spotted crosswhit - in fact, strictly speaking, even in base 10 the two numbers share two factors.

[Whenland]

Finally done. We only got 14ac at the very end, by back-solving after deducing the relevant shape and its position in the thematic sequence. Great fun and just the sort of Listener we like.

[the_heisman]

i did a computer upgrade and handed in my laptop with the chambers cd-rom in the disk drive. Several panic calls later it was clear that I had lost it for good. Do they not sell them anymore? I do miss it

[upsetter]

To The_Heisman
You can get the CD ROM from Amazon, but it is no longer available from Chambers.
Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

Alternatively you can get the dictionary on an apple or Android app form the usual sources.

[perseverer]

I can thoroughly recommend the iPad/iPhone version. It's not perfect, for example it does not give the required meaning for 16down in this week's puzzle, and does not allow the full text search which users of the cdrom are used to, but once downloaded, you do not need internet access and it only costs £4.99.
Can't comment on the android version, but it is the same price.

[petefoxes]

I have the Android app and find it mostly very reliable. The only other quibble apart from the occasional missing definition or spelling (rare) is that if you are searching for a word with a particular pattern of letters it won't work on accented characters. But not requiring internet access after download is a big plus for me.

[petefoxes]

I hadn't spotted the recurrent thematic 'red herring' - lovely! Makes me wonder if the clues contain other similar thematic sets. This was a great puzzle - thank you and farewell to BeRo.

[sunny-dave]

Phew - what a scorcher.

Really loved that - it had everything - hidden messages, weird numbering, nice clues ... and ... I even got to do some colouring in at the end :)

Thanks BeRo - wherever you are, be happy

[olichant]

Wow, that took me a while. But not nearly as long (I'm guessing) as it must have taken BeRo to compile. Brilliant, just brilliant.

Loved it.

[Scorpius]

I finished earlier in the week but have only just found time to visit this site. What a brilliant grid. It must have taken ages to construct. A gem of a puzzle that’s one of the best this year.
I don’t see any incompatibility between the first and penultimate preamble sentences. There ‘s only a problem if the tenth word of the first sentenced is given a cryptic interpretation, but if you do that the sentence becomes false because of the calculations to do with grid letters.

[twoshortplan]

Am I being pedantic? I can see that the shape in top left corner is the same as the shape in the bottom right corner, merely rotated. But it's not the same shape as the one in the top right corner which is a mirror image.