Listener Crossword 4585 - In This World Of Sin... By Pointer

[Cruncher]

Well- halfway stage for me. An seemingly impenetrable grid fill has finally fallen into place and I have four spare words to play with but not a lot of idea of what happens next. Hmmm

[Hagen]

The endgame looks interesting, but I get nothing at all out of puzzles which consist almost entirely of definition/letter mixture clues. I'm going to pass on this one, and I hope it will appeal to others more than it does to me.

I wouldn't normally post about a puzzle I haven't done, but as I have family coming next Friday and won't get to look at the Listener for at least a week after that, I'll take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

[contendo]

I must say the preamble reads like a parody of a typical Listener crossword. Is it really possible to make it that complicated?

[PhilipW]

I have a surprising challenge on the puzzle...it is all "completed" and the theme hangs together absolutely perfectly, just like a typical Pointer puzzle, but I've found 10 different possibilities for the circling yet we are supposed to choose 9. Two of them are obscure, so not quite sure which one to ignore. Not sure that extra grid-staring will resolve since that is normally the cure when you have too few and not too many!

[logophile]

Probably best to ignore the duplicate in row 7 as Pointer might have intended the 9 words to be all different even though the preamble doesn't make that stipulation.

[Cruncher]

Does indeed fit together very nicely. Good luck all!

[NickorWan]

I really struggled to get started, but once I got into the grid I thoroughly enjoyed it. A fabulous construction.

Thanks, Pointer.

[sunny-dave]

A serious slog of cold solving enough of the jumbles to have a (luckily correct) stab at starting the gridfill - then it got much easier.

The endgame was nice, but perhaps not quite tidy enough - or am I being unreasonable in wanting the entire internal perimeter of the quote to be butted up to the looped items?

All in all, though, a very good challenge for a quiet pre-festive-season Sunday.

Thanks Pointer

[perseverer]

I did wonder if Pointer had initially thought that the word in the bit which doesn't butt up to the perimeter might qualify as a tenth word of a kind.

[ProfessorMaisie]

I can see no reason to disqualify the isolated example, and I can see only one other possibility to make up the nine. It butts up (very snugly) to the perimeter - but is it really thematic?

[IainGrace]

Coming to this late, we are with Hagen on this. Definition/letter mix even in sophisticated form holds no interest for us. The Inquisitor this week is a good challenge.