Listener Crossword 4544 The Session By Gila

[perseverer]

Finished this eventually last night, complete with Maxim and Item, but i have had to sleep on it to convince myself that what I have satisfies the preamble. Perhaps I should have had a drink before I started the puzzle. It might have helped get my head around the DRUNK STAGE clues.
Thanks to Gila - another new setter?

[Hagen]

Quite fiddly but very enjoyable. I wasn't entirely convinced that "hangover" really describes the relevant entries, though it was easy enough to work out what was needed. Perhaps that is just me being crotchety as I was suffering from an excess of Pilsners this morning when I completed the bulk of the puzzle! A promising debut.

I don't recall having seen another puzzle where the definition, rather than the wordplay, dictates the treated entries. I am sure someone can prove me wrong on that one.

[Scorpius]

Not as fearsome as it looked from the preamble. Once I got the hang of things I made fairly steady progress, though i needed to check the clues again at the end to get the three sets of seven. I found the ambiguities caused by the presence of hangover clues in the across set somewhat irksome. For a long time I was convinced the maxim involved a five-letter word provided by missing letters, but in the end one of those letters turned out to be from a hangover clue.

[sunny-dave]

Nice puzzle - not as complicated as the pre-ramble made it sound.

The fact that the grid entries were all (quite obvious) definitions made the process of filling the grid relatively simple - it was then a case of checking all the parsing of the clues to find a couple of my errors and then the maxim and item dropped out very nicely.

Thanks Gila - a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning.

[emcee]

Quite a nice puzzle. I too had to backtrack to discover a couple of ambiguities between "other across" and hangover types. I thought the rationale of those entries suffering a 'hangover' was a little stretched.

Thanks, Gila; I enjoyed the solve.

[Cruncher]

Stumbled through this rather like a drunk man, not always successfully clinging on to the reverse logic of the wordplay and definition. Rather reminiscent of that wretched numerical a few weeks ago

[12barblues]

Despite a first pass where nothing went in, the gridfill proved not to be too onerous, especially as what needed to be done for stages i and ii was fairly obvious. Others have commented on iii. The imposters held up the maxim for a long time though. I enjoyed how 34d worked. Thanks Gila.