Listener No. 4375: Five One-Time Pads By Poat

[AHearer]

A pleasant unity to the whole puzzle. Clues were not too challenging, but there was plenty in the end-game to keep the interest up. Many thanks, Poat.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, indeed, nice easy clues then a challenging endgame and I grid stared for a while, even knowing what I was looking for in the final move. Many thanks, Poat.

[Pasquin]

Very tantalising puzzle. I knew where it must be going, but it only began to slowly reveal itself very late on. I only got 1ac by working backwards. Thanks, Poat.

[starwalker]

A lovely puzzle that kept me going for a few hours. I found that some of the clues had me exploring various garden paths, but I got there in the end. Lovely serendipity for 1ac which brought a smile. Thanks Poat.

[s_pugh]

Not a big fan of grid stares but this one came pretty quickly though I needed Wikipedia for the related name – never heard of that one. Good fun, thanks Poat.

[Scorpius]

I thought this was distinguished by an excellent set of clues, inventive and witty. I wish more setters were as attentive to the clueing as Poat. Plenty are, but not enough in my view. Whatever the theme, the clues constitute half the pleasure of a crossword. My only query is 29a, where the wordplay seems inappropriate for an across clue. Unless the latest Chambers is different from the 2011 edition, I cannot see any meaning to support it.

A possible final word in row 1, coupled with a plausible Welsh place name from two of the encoded words, sent me on a wild goose chase. Finding what to highlight took a while as well as I made a wrong assumption.

I agree that there was lots of varied stuff to keep the interest going, but that is always the case with Poat.

[sunny-dave]

All done - nice clues and clever encoding - good fun.

The grid stare defeated me for an hour at 1am and took about 10 seconds at 3pm - there's a moral there somewhere.

Thanks Poat

[upsetter]

We are using as an excuse for having peeked at the other site, the fact that this excellent and enjoyable puzzle had a less-than perfect preamble.
1ac is a phrase in a technical sense only.
So "The three-word phrase to be completed at 1ac" was not ideal.
We also felt "its grid entry" was arguably ambiguous.

[icynorth]

Finished apart from the highlighting, which I hope will become apparent without too much more grid staring.

I found this a top quality puzzle, with some great clues - thanks Poat!

[perseverer]

Another one who went off on a wild goose chase, based on one clue answer, and an anniversary this weekend.

[olichant]

I have to say, I found this pretty tricky - and I enjoyed it very much. I absolutely agree with Scorpius - there were some terrific clues here.

[IainGrace]

Good fun and some excellent clues. By chance, been reading a lot on this subject recently.

[olichant]

If anyone's still reading this, the GCHQ Christmas puzzle (!) - easily googlable - is actually great fun, though at least part of it may annoy the Ximineans here. Without wanting to give anything away, the initial part of the puzzle belies some good old-fashioned wordy/numbery fun later on. (And no, I haven't come close to finishing it yet...)