Listener 4109 Not a Black and White Decision

[AndrewG-S]

Grid complete except for one cell and 18 clashes identified, but stuck at the moment as to what to do next. Enjoyable so far

[BlackHugh]

Well - after completing the grid (including 18 clashes) last Sunday and staring at for the next 5 days I am throwing in the towel. I can see a couple of possible thematic elements but not enough to make 28 letters. Bit of a shame as that is the first one this year not completed. (of course if the next one is easier I may have time to return to it).

Only 10 minutes to go until 4110 .....
Not that I am addicted or anything.

[Mysterons]

andrewwvc12 - the 's' in 'needs' (10d) is dealt with by 'without spades'

[JustinTime]

The penny finally dropped and I am totally underwhelmed. Good cluing, nice layout but oh the final result was definitely not worth the effort.
Have to consider this as one of the most uninteresting crosswords of the year.
Sorry and all that.
4110 was like an old friend returning.

[the_heisman]

well i have 18 clashes and various headless fragments of what appear to be required but it is hard going to get much further. Holiday paper copy is now pretty illegible so now perhaps the printer will help provide a breakthrough. Intrigued that all the action is around 3 rows but the highlighting indicates 4 rows - not that that information seems to be remotely helpful at this stage.

[Speravi]

I have 18 clashes in two ways. I see a link between a word in the first row and a word in the bottom row - and there's a more tenuous link between the other words in the first and last rows. I believe that the 'additional ambiguity' will be resolvable. However... 'coloured'! I've been looking for colours that are specific to one of the words in the bottom row - looking horizontally, vertically, diagonally... As I write, a thought occurs, I wonder...

[silversolver]

Just arrived back from holiday - I managed to complete the grid and found the 2 ways to generate 18 clashes without too much difficulty but then spent many hours staring at the result before the penny finally dropped. I am pleased to hear from the above comments that I was not alone...

[Philoctetes]

Yet another late start, and I really lost interest after a while. But what I (somewhat pathetically) struggled with was working on clashes in the grid as printed, because the boxes were too small. Yeh, I know, print the thing bigger or write smaller, but it really bugged me

[BlackHugh]

Thank goodness 4110 was relatively straightforward (and enjoyable). I've returned to this one hoping for a PDM

[BlackHugh]

Well - I did get the PDM (not sure now why I had so many hours without one before). But I have got to agree with those that thought this was a cleverly constructed puzzle but rather dull at the end.

[the_heisman]

for those irritated by the new site, try selecting landscape as opposed to portrait on the print option page - the grid comes out much bigger