Listener No. 4376: Trapped By 'eck

[AHearer]

Many thanks to 'Eck for a fair and pleasing puzzle with a very tidy end-game.

[icynorth]

I suppose the question has to be why pluralise the word instance with "s" when where we don't with the word itself. Maybe there needs to be a chambers suffix entry for "-s" defining this.

[PapaBear]

Chambers has rules for pluralization on p.xvii. Words that do not follow these rules, like sheep, say so in the entry. At least that is how it is supposed to work, I think, but there will certainly be exceptions.

[IainGrace]

Very enjoyable. Solved the clues, got all the extra/missing letters, and spotted what was required very quickly. Must have been the accompanying red wine.

[Scree]

I enjoyed this. Some quite tricky clues, many of which turned out to be not that hard when you deconstructed them correctly.

Liked the wordplay in 1D, even if the definition turns out to be a stretch too far.

My one gripe would be that the preamble suggests the subject should end up trapped in the final grid. I would expect the subject to appear in a legible form (like the trap)unless either the preamble or the source material shows them minced up/confused/befuddled, etc.

There does seem to be only one way to show them which makes all final grid entries real words, so that's fine, but still...

[Scree]

OK, so that was late night thinking...not sure how I convinced myself the subject had to be entered in a jumbled fashion, but when I came to ink in the final grid I realised they were perfectly legible!