Listener No 4467 Theme Of The Day By Kea

[Contrarian]

Thanks Kea for a rather beautiful construction.

At first glance, I thought it was going to be much tougher (particularly as, for about the first 10 minutes, I managed to overlook the fact that the clues were sorted into Clockwise and Anticlockwise).

[olichant]

Yes, Contrarian - I did exactly the same.

[Ruthrobin]

I thought this was lovely.

[jim360]

Rather hard work trying to enter letters into such an irregular grid on Paint -- nothing to do with the puzzle of course, which is up to Kea's usual standard -- but I think I'm done for my first completed Word Listener of 2017.

[Encota]

Very nice puzzle - thanks Kea :-)

[Hagen]

Indeed lovely, and nice that the editors have been merciful this week after a couple of brain crushers. I started this without much hope - it looked very frightening - after getting back late from a concert, and was surprised how approachable this turned out to me. Music is obviously good for the mind! Thanks Kea.

[Alekhine]

Poor.

A mere 24 clues, most of which were easy.

A pretty grid doth not a Listener make.

[olichant]

And I have now understood the significance of the title. Beautiful.

Yes, it's a relatively easy puzzle, but its elegance more than makes up for that (for me). And we were due a break after some tough ones.

I hope that some solvers who haven't tried the Listener before will see the weird grid in the Saturday supplement, and be encouraged to get involved.

[upsetter]

Got lucky with the theme, so didn't have to go through the asterisks.

Wonderful composition.

[upsetter]

Welcome back to jim360.

[midgler]

Clever, but too easy. Would have been a bit more challenging without the division into clockwise and anticlockwise - but only a bit: like others, I was a good way in before I even noticed this. And the random starring of letters added nothing beyond the ability to confirm what one already knew.

[Scorpius]

I also overlooked the directional headings for ten minutes, making me think the puzzle was going to be tougher than it turned out to be.

Obviously some solvers aren't happy unless there is the equivalent of a Sabre each week. As others have noted, this was a pleasant bit of relaxation after a string of fairly tough puzzles. The imaginative grid is a delight, and the clues are elegantly concise, fulfilling the principal requirements of a Listener puzzle, as specified in Notes for Setters ("The essence of a Listener crossword is elegance and subtlety of theme and clueing, not difficulty per se").

My advice to the moaners is to subscribe to Magpie and just do the D and E puzzles.

[Alekhine]

Hmm ... in defence of the 'moaners', please recognise that we do not live in a binary world. A spectrum of difficulty exists (not just 'easy' and 'impossible') and, just because we may label one crossword as 'easy', doesn't mean that we crave only the other extreme.

My moan is a simple one. I expect certain characteristics from a Listener. Otherwise, it is not a Listener.

The elegant grid of 4467 was nice, but I found the paucity and difficulty of clues disappointing. I also feel there is something wrong when 20% of the entries are unclued.

[jim360]

At a guess, this was meant to be on the easy end of "easy". Certainly being essentially out of practice for the better part of two years but being able to complete within three hours when one of the limiting factors was how fiddly it was to draw letters freehand in Paint suggests that. On the other hand, ruthrobin was kind enough to send last week's Listener as another one to sink my returning teeth into, and I took one look at it and thought: "Nah. Too much like hard work."

So perfect to bring new solvers, or absent ones, back to the fold. Perhaps if I had encountered this in the heady days of 2014/15 when I was attempting maybe 150 such puzzles a year, it would have been less special and I might privately be repeating Alekhine's moan, the only real gimmick being the grid layout, but from where I'm sitting it's a perfect puzzle to get started again.

So there's that to consider as well.

[upsetter]

This was a relatively quick solve, but it was not dumbed down.
There was no mechanistic donkey-work (the worst we can remember was a message made up of the Nth letter of each clue).
There are a few well-signalled anagrams, but in our opinion many of the clues were challenging in themselves.
Sure, it completed quickly given the letters towards and perhaps there should have been a proportion of clues whose direction of entry had to be deduced.
Compare and contrast the Bayeux Tapestry - there, most of the clues would have disgraced the Daily Mail, let alone the Torygraph, spoiling the enjoyment of a beautiful construction.
This was great fun.

[Scorpius]

One of the reasons for the small number of clues is the average word length, which is close to 8, no mean feat in itself. Had the average word length been nearer the norm of around 5.8 the number of clues would have been 40 odd, a more typical figure. Longer answers are often easier to crack from a selection of letters in the grid.

[12barblues]

FTravelling about so not as much time as normal for crosswords. Saw Kea's name and expected a difficult multi-day challenge, like last week. However, as others describe, that was not the case! I'm happy to get an easy one this week. Wonderful grid too.

[Hagen]

I have to ask, Jim, why go to the trouble of filling this in using Paint when you can print it off and use a pencil?

[icynorth]

Not a lot to add. Yes, it's a fairly simple solve. Yes, it's very elegant and impressively constructed. I can think of a couple more applications for similar grids, so maybe we'll see its like again in the future. Thanks, Kea!

[jim360]

Printer at home doesn't work.

[Scree]

Predictable that this site features someone moaning about a puzzle being too easy, so 'not a Listener' - but also complains that 20% of the answers were unclued!

Maybe the relative ease of many clues was meant to balance the number of cells only found in unclued answers.

Yes, it was quite an easy puzzle, but I loved the unusual grid and enjoyed solving it. The phrase'not a Listener' suggests a touch of intellectual snobbery.