Listener 4696 Mint Sauce By Stick Insect

[upsetter]

Very clever but there was insufficient connection between the thematic clues and their entries.
All the same were introduced to a few interesting words.
Thanks, Stick Insect.

[Hagen]

Yes, I reverse engineered most of the thematic entries from the crossing letters and I'd be surprised if (m)any people actually found the thematic clues helpful. The jumbled words + extra letter as a way of generating a message is (I think) a new one on me - makes a novel change from misprints and extra letters in wordplay. I'm a great fan of creepy-crawly one and although I don't think this was one of his best, I still enjoyed it - despite having a cricked neck which made staring at the page rather painful!

[sunny-dave]

Agree with all of the points made in the two previous comments.

I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of the 'jumble + extra letter' messaging - a new one for me too.

Thanks Stick Insect for a fun puzzle - a week with no grid-stare is always welcome here.

[HawkCrossword]

A novel challenge, and one I found really absorbing. It took a while to get my momentum going, but when the fog started to clear, it was a happy dash home.

I did spot a couple of thematics from words I might expect to find in the grid, which was particularly gratifying (and helpful to the overall solve), and I think that was the setter's intention with this one.

Many thanks, Stick Insect - I really enjoyed it!

[NickorWan]

I too thoroughly enjoyed this. I thought the clue gimmick was handled superbly making for a really fun grid fill. I didn't really have an inkling what was going on until I got enough of the extra letters to figure out the message. Lovely way to pass Friday evening, thanks very much, Stick Insect.

[Cruncher]

I enjoyed this. I spotted one of the thematic entries and reverse-engineered from that. Still feeling unenlightened about the title

[Scorpius]

An absolutely delightful puzzle, with a lovely PDM when it was revealed how the thematic clues worked. It didn't matter to me that they were unsolveable until the message emerged.

And no lengthy hunting on the Internet. Chambers is all one needs.

[Dim16]

Very much enjoyed unravelling the non-thematic clues.

Thanks for this, Stick Insect

[Philoctetes]

Not trying to be smug in an way, but I spotted a thematic answer about a quarter in, and almost instantly saw the reasoning. I then devoted my efforts to finding the rest. Then finished. Great fun. Thanks Sticky (my stick insects are all called that)

[olichant]

I may be a bit late to the party - but what a lovely idea, and how well executed. Really liked that.

[freiheid]

The gimmick has been seen before on rare occasions, or at least once - it was used in a Kea puzzle concerning a biblical quote on the value of rubies if I recall correctly (haven't looked up the number). I really enjoyed this one, and I don't think it was necessary to draw any connection in the thematic clues. They read almost plausibly as normal but intriguingly difficult clues, so unravelling them was great fun.