Listener 4531 Superpower By Shenanigans

[Hagen]

I hope nobody minds me starting the ball rolling again. Nice unambiguous ending this week, but rather too much cold solving needed before any sort of grid fill could be attempted. I'll be interested to see what others think about this. I wonder if the red herring suggested by two of the clues was deliberate? Needless to say I fell for it.

[s_pugh]

I thought that was one of the toughest in a very long time with some fiendish clueing. I think I started filling after cold solving about 75%, but then it fell together reasonably quickly allowing loose ends to be tied up. Not quite as enamoured with the end game as you, I wish it was a standard to say how many cells should be highlighted when depicting representations as I'm not overly impressed by one of them (assuming I have it right of course).

[s_pugh]

... and of course I didn't! That was exhausting. Thanks Shenanigans.

[sunny-dave]

Crikey - don't think we've had one that hard for a while - needed well over 30 cold solves out of the 46 clues before there was any way of working out some entry points into the grid.

Came together quite quickly towards the end and the final grid stare was mercifully brief.

Thanks for a good workout, Shenanigans

[upsetter]

On a scale of one to ten for difficulty we marked that as one hundred.

[sunny-dave]

Agreed, upsetter.

It was actually harder than the numerical from a couple of weeks ago - not often that happens.

[pushmi-pullyu]

Thank you, upsetter, in a funny sort of way your comment cheers me. I've cold-solved nearly three quarters of the clues and still can't get started, despite the table being covered with little strips of paper.

[upsetter]

Pushmi-pullyu - you might find this site helpful

https://www.crosswordsolver.org/forum/707012/listener-4531/

[PhilipW]

I rather enjoyed the gridstare….found one quickly but the other took a little longer, and I do always enjoy the carte blanche format. The clues were tricky - even though I have finished, I still have two clues to fully parse (despite knowing the answer and the misprint!) - thanks Shenanigans.

[emcee]

That was a real workout. The clues were very tough and it took a giant leap of faith to get the grid started.

As usual, once there were around three quarters of the answers in, it was much easier to finish it off.

The endgame was mercifully short but sweet.

Thanks, Shenanigans. Another *really* tough puzzle for 2018.

[kdgs2]

Finally over the line on possibly the hardest Listener of the year. Some fiendish clues and obscuring of misprints, coupled with few long answers, made for a lot of cold solving before I could make any attempt at filling the grid. Thank goodness the clues were split across/down and in alphabetical order. Last one in, and ultimately my favourite due to its sheer deviousness, was the last down clue. Thanks Shenanigans.

[olichant]

Really tough - a difficult grid to fill even by normal carte Blanche standards! I do feel a sense of achievement for limping over the line after very nearly having given up. Some nice clues to enjoy on the way.

[olichant]

I meant to add - I’m not sure why the puzzle needed to be carte blanche. It seemed to me just to make it arbitrarily difficult. That said, I could be missing something. And it’s kept me out of trouble for many, many hours.

[tnap]

Phew! Well done to anyone who found the correct layout early on. The theme was appropriate as I seem to have tried every possible permutation of the longish answers before finally stumbling upon the one that worked. Annoyingly, it was the one that I had started with but had dismissed due to an error.

If this was an attempt to reduce the number of all corrects for the year, it has probably succeeded! Good luck to anyone still trying; the solution's out there...

[perseverer]

Can I claim some sort of prize - 44 clues solved before I managed to make a start on the grid, and a huge sense of relief when my guess at where to start actually worked out.

[IainGrace]

Agree with comments. We seem to have moved from the original “ crossword” concept of the solution of clues aiding the solution of further clues to lots of cold solving in the more challenging puzzles. Not sure if this is a good thing. We also needed to solve more than half the clues before attempting the grid but fornutately our first hunch about grid construction was correct. Not our favourite puzzle of the year but damned if we weren’t going to finish it.