Listener Crossword No 4570 Bright Spark By Shark

[Askival]

An absolute monster of a puzzle, in the best way. It was challenging at every stage, but there were generous touches (getting some impression of where clashes were and figuring out the thematic name were especially helpful).

I think there were about 8 PDMs or so, none of which were givens.

I've no idea whether my attempt at a depiction of the theme is going to be accepted, but I'm not really bothered. The best this year, I'd say. Thanks, Shark.

[Hagen]

I found this extremely difficult. The clues were tougher (in my view) than we've had for a long time, not helped by the obstacles of clashes and well-disguised extra letters. Despite getting the theme quite quickly I ground to a halt in the NE corner, which took longer than the rest of the grid to complete.

Then there was the grid staring. I had a good idea of the sort of thing I was looking for, but it took me as long to find all the components as it did to fill the grid. That's a lot of time spent.

A brilliantly executed puzzle, but I found it so frustrating that for me this was one to admire rather than genuinely enjoy. Perhaps it wasn't as hard as it seemed and I'm just not a bright spark.

[Cloverjo]

Oh, no hope for me then. I’ll look at last week’s again instead.

[s_pugh]

A real toughy, but no ambiguity in the concluding word search for a change. I must have got lucky as I had a shrewd idea what components I was looking for and they were laid out in a logical arrangement. Bravo Shark, that was a belter.

[NickorWan]

An absolute cracker - an interesting theme, masses of thematic material, and changes resulting in real words. Really tough clues as others have said, but I relish the occasional challenge like this. Certainly a POTY contender for me. (That I would have been disappointed had it not been says a lot about the setter.)

[PhilipW]

Agreed - that was an absolutely cracking puzzle. I love it when there is that amount of thematic material combined with tough clues so that it doesn't all just fall out too quickly. The BRB was needed on several occasions! 8D has to be one of the strangest words to exist and contributed to the tough NE corner. Plenty of scope now for some thematic artistic contrivance

[olichant]

A really superb puzzle and what amazing clues.

Thank you Shark.

[fyellin]

Can I ask a question about the instructions for what needs to be submitted? This is one of those cases where I'm scared there might be a subtle difference between US and UK English.

The instructions indicate three elements in the final grid. One of them "must be traced (...) and highlighted". One of them "can be traced twice". The third one "solvers must sketch". Three different verbs, two different auxiliary verbs, both active and passive.

I'm assuming the submitter is supposed to (1) both highlight and include some sort of trace for the first element, (2) note the second element, but not indicate it in any special way in the submission, (3) draw a pretty picture of the third element in the appropriate location, using whatever artistic skills they have.

Is this a reasonable interpretation?

[emcee]

Well that's kept me busy on and off for several days.

Very tough clues, NE corner for me, too, took the longest to complete.

The endgame was fair enough; one component was more difficult to spot than the others and I'm unsure whether my orientation of it will be deemed correct.

Anyway, hard work, but thanks to Shark for a real challenge.

[PhilipW]

Yes Fyellin your US English understanding seems to be aligned with mine of UK English...I hope some latitude will be given on the quality of artistic work required!