Listener No 4382 Migration By Malva

[Ruthrobin]

How good to see what I believe is a new name and a relatively rare device (those migrating letters). We have enjoyed this. Many thanks to Malva.

[upsetter]

Rapid gridfill hopefully to be followed by a not too lengthy grid stare.

[Pasquin]

Tougher than it looked at first, with some words less familiar to me. Filled in the grid strictly from east to west, and spotting the stopover place took longer than it should have. Thanks, Malva.

[sunny-dave]

New (to me) device of the migrating letters - trickier than it first seemed and easy to make erroneous assumptions. Good hard clues at times too.

A very decent challenge I thought - interesting enough to keep me tagging along way past my bedtime, once the finishing line was in sight.

Thanks Malva.

[starwalker]

I have not seen this device used either, and as Dave says, it proves plenty of scope for wrong assumptions. I found the grid fill harder than perhaps I should, but I put that down to my current state of health. Which makes me realise that if the editors introduce random drug sampling, I'm going to be positive for paracetomol which is definitely not a performance enhancer ! Thanks Malva.

[perseverer]

Quite tricky, with plenty of obscure words, and a good few of the migrations were well concealed in the clues.

[Scorpius]

Agreed, a very nice puzzle with some excellent clues and some well-hidden migrations. Scanning the grid in all directions revealed nothing at first, but then I spotted a few likely letters which led me to the spot, which needed Google to confirm.

[sunny-dave]

Lovely place for an outing, Scorpius - been there a few times with the twitchers :)

[jim360]

I found the final highlighting long before the rest of the grid had been filled, and plugging the various gaps was more than a little tricky. Still, a nice idea and well-executed, with those migrations in across clues often well-disguised. Thanks, Malva.

[AHearer]

It sounds as if I might be in the same boat as starwalker -- I had to fight my way through this in 20-minute bursts followed by returns to bed to let 'flu have its turn at torturing me. I thought it was a very nice puzzle, and I hadn't seen the migration device before either. I certainly slowed myself down even further with a few rash guesses at migrations in the downs.

[Ruthrobin]

Oh dear, AHearer. I wondered where you were as you are usually twice as fast as us. All the best for a speedy recovery.

[AHearer]

Thanks, Ruthrobin, that's very kind. I think I'm over the worst now, so if you haven't already bought shares in LemSip it's probably too late.

[s_pugh]

Managed to cold solve almost all the down answers and a mere handful of the across ones, but lucky enough (despite zero interest in twitching) to spot the highlighted word which enabled further back solving. A bit different from the norm and quite tricky in places, fun but fair. Thanks Malva.

[aldanna]

I really enjoyed this one; thank you Malva. For me, some of the clues were quite hard, and I managed to confuse myself from time to time with the migrating letters but I now have a full grid. For once, the grid-staring at the end took me about two seconds, and it wasn't a place I had heard of.

[fyellin]

Thank you Wikipedia and the web. As a non-UKer, I've never heard of a Bewick swan, nor would I know the names of places where they might be found.

A fun puzzle, with some really nice clues.

[upsetter]

This week's Z-cup entry...
Agree with everyone that the puzzle was fine up to the point of complying the final instruction, which was really a bit limp.
Unlike others we had to resort to the internet to find out about the stopover but the Bewick's are certainly graceful.
But the theme was a bit strained, with minimal nexus between the grid-fill and the grid-stare.
There was nothing about the letter-shifts that made them 'migrations' rather than simply 'moves'; nor do we imagine that finding the stopover early would have assisted much in solving or entering the fiddly down clues.

[icynorth]

Most enjoyable. Like Sunny Dave, I too have visited, and when I spotted its final 3 letters I snapped it up - most helpful. Thanks, Malva!

[parabolic]

dawdle

[Crates]

A relatively gentle fill although learned a few new words and some of the migrations were clever. I think 'migration' was adequate in the context of this puzzle ie to pass from one place to another. Was it only me that struggled to find the migration in 1A - 'tread' being another synonym for what was required?

[Cruncher]

Crates - check some anagrams. Found this tough but a nasty bug didn't help plus, for no good reason, I decided that migrations in across clues must involve letters moving to different words.

[olichant]

Wow - I think I made heavy weather of that given the comments here. I found it pretty tricky in places, and there are one or two potential traps. But I enjoyed it, particularly the new (to me) cluing device. Thanks, Malva!