Listener 4637 - Realisation

[sunny-dave]

Excellent puzzle - not the hardest, but some nice clues and (for once) a very fair endgame with no gridstaring.

Thanks KevGar - I look forward to your puzzles and this was a good one.

[Eagledave]

Agreed, particularly liked the clue for 30A

[Hagen]

Yes, great fun and not too hard, just the way I like them. The clues were neat and quite challenging without relying on obscurity, another plus for me. It took a while to resolve the replaced letters as I initially made a wrong choice for the 7-letter word. I wonder if anyone else did? Thanks KevGar.

[perseverer]

I initially hit upon a wrong 7 letter word as well, I wonder if it was the same one!
I am always amazed by the ability of setters to find examples of words which can undergo the thematic changes and produce real words. And in this case, I thought original and new titles very apt in what you needed to do to solve the puzzle.

[upsetter]

Back solving some of the altered entries revealed the clues to be perfectly fair but somehow the surface reading seemed to become obscured

All in all great fun, thanks KevGar.

[NickorWan]

I really enjoyed the grid fill. I like this type of puzzle where you work with the theme as opposed to filling a grid and then finding a theme. That’s provided it doesn’t collapse once you twig what is going on, as indeed it didn’t here.

I fear I may have erred on the final step though. I seem to have a choice of 7-letter thematic words, where a shorter one would have finished things neatly.

Thanks, KevGar.

[Eagledave]

NickorWan - not sure what your choice is but the shorter one you mention plus the two letters removed from the
title gave me only one option.

[NickorWan]

Silly me, thank you, Eagledave.

[pushmi-pullyu]

I was held up for ages on the last thematic item - I had the entry but just couldn't parse it. Finally got there - that was good fun.

[contendo]

Pure pleasure. I hope KevGar got as much enjoyment out of setting it as I got out of solving it.

[Scorpius]

I'm not as enthusiastic as most about this puzzle. I did enjoy solving it because it offered more of a challenge than some recent Listeners. However, many of the clues seem to have been slung together without a thought for the surface. In fact, reviewing them again I'm struggling to find more than a few with a natural surface.
I wasn't keen on the obscure Collins thematic item since it meant that I couldn't discount a similar obscurity in the trio of words to write below the grid. We're told one entry is an abbreviation, but we are not told that one thematic item is also an abbreviation.

I pity anyone who misparses one of the thematic clues, as a wrong letter or pair of letters makes the second part of the endgame impossible to complete correctly.