Listener No. 4446: Edwardian Pioneers By Dysart

[AHearer]

Thanks, Dysart, for a delightful treatment of a work of which I am very fond. The hidden letter device was tricky this time, and some of the clues were hard -- in fact, I need to go back to one or two in the lower half of the grid to convince myself that I've not been misled. A very clever use of the title of the work -- many thanks.

[trux]

Echo AHearer's praise: this kept me smiling right up to the very end, as slowly each element revealed itself. Some mighty fine clue manipulations, too and my vocabularly has now definitely increased. Many thanks to Dysart for all the enjoyment.

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, indeed. By far the trickiest for us this year but most entertaining.
Thank you, Dysart.

[Hagen]

What an ingenious treatment of the theme! A lucky guess early on led me to the method of entry for the thematic across answers, and from there it was a slow but steady solve. Despite spending some time looking into the source material I'm unable to find the thematic reason for the nature of the highlighting; there must be one, otherwise this is an unnecessary obstacle.

I'm probably in a minority of one here, but I have to say I'm getting tired of ever more obscure proper names being used to indicate region-specific words in advanced cryptics.

Happy Easter to all.

[s_pugh]

Tough but fair, although I thought the highlighted entry was a bit poor. A neat red herring too - nearly came a cropper! Thanks Dysart.

[olichant]

I thought this was superb. The theme was new to me, and I loved the way it all came together. And wonderful, tough clues. Thanks, Dysart. And Happy Easter to everyone.

[olichant]

I meant to add - nice to have an interesting clue gimmick and entry method.

[starwalker]

I agree with all that has been said, particularly Hagen's comment on the use of proper names. I was somewhat stymied at the end when attempting the highlighting, because my copy of the work contains a spelling mistake! Thanks Dysart.

[Philoctetes]

All very impressive - until the endgame, which struck me as a mess - so much so that I am not fully convinced I am right.

[perseverer]

Could it be that the messy bit of the end game is quite deliberate, as a way of representing that aspect of the work?

[upsetter]

We knew that this was going to be difficult as soon as we saw that it took AHearer over three and a half hours to complete.
Excellent clues, all completely fair if a little opaque from time to time

[icynorth]

I echo much of what's been said. Tough clue devices, but very fair, and many ingenious examples. Thanks, Dysart!

The hidden geographic names was a bit weak, I have to say, but overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[sunny-dave]

Jolly good fun - if a bit of a stretch - typically I am far from home and short of a few of my usual armoury of resources when 'the hard one' arrives.

But it's all eventually done and thoroughly enjoyed - a favourite theme, some devious clues and not too much of the gridstaring at the end.

Thanks Dysart - I shall now entertain my holiday companions with the work in question :)

[BobMinor]

I think I must have the same edition of the work as Starwalker - the spelling mistake held me up for ages at the end. I found this a very tough puzzle: I got the theme and clue gimmicks quite early on, but it took me ages to complete the grid. All done at last - thanks, Dysart.