Listener 4389: Teeing Off By Nutmeg

[kdgs2]

A very satisfying puzzle this one, and thankfully easier to make inroads into than last week's. Everything fell into place quite quickly once I had enough answers to have a go at grid entry. I like the method of entry for the 12 answers. Thank you Nutmeg.

[jim360]

I was puzzled about that item, since on the Listener crossword site the reason no-one solved it is probably because it was a spoof puzzle from a spoof magazine... fairly sure there have been listeners that went unsolved though.

[tristram37]

Surely the difficulty (or otherwise) of a puzzle arises from the nature of the things one has to do - in this case finding out how to enter the 12 thematic answers. To put the clues in random order would be adding difficulty for difficulty's sake, a procedure which to my mind has no merit. I thought the presentation of this puzzle and the way the clues were shown were a model of their kind.

[Scorpius]

Re the Listener nobody solved, as Jim points out it was a spoof puzzle. The list of Listener puzzles in 1980 does not include one by Atahualpa. According to the Listener website there were two winners - Mr and Mrs Atahualpa. Since JH's note after this week's IQ expresses confidence that solvers could meet them at the annual Listener dinner I wonder if Mr and Mrs Atahualpa are in fact Mr and Mrs Henderson.

[starwalker]

Oh the joy of being back home again, and having a printed copy to work from. I really enjoyed this. A nice balance of clues and a fairly straightforward way to find the method of entry. Many thanks Nutmeg.

[sunny-dave]

Lovely - a gentle romp (with a nice PDM) after last week's hard yakka.

Thanks Nutmeg - I enjoyed that a lot.

[Whenland]

Having polished off 4390 quite rapidly we had another look at this one and managed to crack it quite quickly. Mind you, we had cold-solved 90% of the clues last weekend. Anyway, this was a lot of fun, so many thanks to Nutmeg.