Listener Crosswordno 4391: 22Ses Square By Tibea

[midazolam]

Lovely puzzle by the Listener editors (Tiburon and Kea). Impressive to think these excerpts were published in the paper. I was thinking as I was solving it that I am still in need of a cryptic clue, but I see April's Magpie has come early...

[Hagen]

Seconded Ruth Robin - great news that the IQ puzzle is to be continued. Today's Nimrod is a real stinker but, to put it as politely as I can, it should be more than adequate compensation for those who were disappointed not to find a cryptic Listener crossword.

[petefoxes]

I liked it.

[lyrabelacqua]

Sorry, not enjoyed. To quote Niles Crane, this was boring, yet difficult. If there are going to be more of these, can we create a category of "non-cryptic" crosswords, like "numericals"? There wasn't even a satisfying PDM. I'm not sure this should have been passed by the editors. Ah, I see the problem.

[aldanna]

Not for me. Yes, it's clever, but I'm in the "word search" camp so I rapidly decided to opt out. More fun things in my life this weekend.

[tristram37]

I am generally reluctant to criticise puzzles but I thought this rather thin gruel. I would have expected something more elaborate from these two distinguished setters, perhaps finishing with the theme as the denouement rather than giving it away at the outset leaving nothing but a tedious chore.

[voulezvous]

I'm firmly in the "did not like" camp, sadly.
Disappointing puzzle weekend for me, with the Inquisitor being somewhat impenetrable, as far as I was concerned.

[AngryUncle]

It's a while since I've felt the need to post here in crosspatch mode. No-one has said it quite so baldly, so let me be the first to say - unhesitatingly, but with the ruefulness expressed by others at the sheer waste of an absolutely brilliant concept - 'Z-cup'.

I got as far as half-filling the grid before it dawned on me: do I really want to finish this? So at least I got a PDM out of it.

[NickorWan]

I think the last time Uncle showed his angry side was for one of my puzzles and I can assure you it does hurt. I find it quite sad really. Setters try to provide entertainment but are human and might miss the mark on occasion. Certainly if they are bold enough to try something completely different, as here, they run that risk. I am all for solvers pointing out what they didn’t like in a puzzle, and do so myself on another site, but getting angry doesn’t seem to be in the right spirit to me, after all we are a small group with a shared interest.

[Oyler]

A real blast from the past and reminded me of In Out In Out by Foxglove L3195 which had over 1000 entries. I managed to do that one and I think I've done this one too so thank you to Tibea. To those complaining about the puzzle - if you could do better then I'd love to see your efforts!

[logophile]

Never really understood that Marmite reference; as with this puzzle I'm totally indifferent about it, it's OK, nothing wrong with it but there are plenty of better spreads available. One thing I certainly didn't like about this particular commemoration however - it reminded me how old I must be getting !

[British_Olympics]

Well I thought that it was an impressive feat to populate a grid in the style of the early American crosswords entirely with words hidden in so little text taken from a particular single edition of the paper, whilst incorporating a hidden message. Sure most of the missing words were fairly obvious (though I was held up for a while by having SORROW at 8) and the subsequent wordsearch rather tedious, but that was eased considerably by the early discovery of the hidden sum. Overall, a 'thumbs up' from me, thanks chaps !

[borealis]

Goody. I thought this one might raise a few contentious points! Entertainment for me.

Now I could be wrong, but wasn’t it Tibea who wanted “more like this”, a while back? And here is a puzzle that could well encourage more than usual entries, can almost be done without the BRB - except for checking - and has an easy start despite a fearsome look, with a nice logical progression to the harder final entries? Oh, and much as I hate to contradict, jumbles may well be wordplay, but wordsearch they ain’t. And the jumbles, as I’ve said, were nicely graduated, so unless you didn’t spot the logical order, there really wasn’t much text-looking. This was one of the easier Listeners this year, but it was also original and enjoyable.

Difficulty, originality, enjoyability - a different mixture of these three each week, please, editors. That’s what will keep me solving.

So guess what - I liked it!

[tbayliss]

Finished after a few days of other things and fun as always to then look in here for other comments. My thanks to the ingenious setters and don't worry about the moaners. To those in the "too easy" camp, I salute your superior intelligence but surely having finished this in 10 minutes you can find something else to do. Easy to start of course but I found it hard to finish. Took quite a few wrong turns and some tough words: 16NW I had to Google - not in my Chambers. Tibea, you can't please all the people...

[sunny-dave]

Almost certainly the first Listener where I have been 100% sure I could finish it and then thought "I really can't be bothered".

The absence of both any cryptic element and any meaningful PDM is just not right.

[MartianAlien]

I have delayed a week before posting and I still think that this was a waste of a Listener.
Completely pointless and utterly self-indulgent on behalf of the editors.
How can they defend it? Surely there is no shortage of puzzles with cryptic clues.

Please, may it be the first and last of its genre; there is no place for it in The Listener, unless word searches are to become a new type.

Does anyone know what the editors themselves think of its almost universal dislike in this column?

[tbayliss]

MartianAlien, by all means have a moan that you didn't like it, but be fair. Barely a majority of views expressed here are dislikes, certainly not "almost universal":
16 dislikes (you, EVSolver, Upsetter, Fyellin, SPugh, Perseverer, DoctorMatt, Contrarian, PushmiPullyu, Hagen, Lyrabelacqua, Aldanna, Tristram37, Voulezvous, AngryUncle, SunnyDave);
9 likes (me, Ruthrobin, Borealis, BritishOlympics, Oyler, Midazolam, Olichant, Starwalker, and PeteFoxes);
6 inbetween (Jim360, Icynorth, IainGrace, Logophile, Nickorwan and AHearer).