Listener 4593 Death Row By Ifor

[olichant]

I thought this was brilliant. Not quite as tough as it looked at first sight, although a lucky early guess at the theme helped. It all came together very neatly and the final step was beautifully elegant. Thanks, Ifor. That was great fun.

[12barblues]

Yes, feeling pleased with myself for guessing the theme before solving any across clues which helped things along nicely. Still struggling to parse the final few answers though, To remove that nagging doubt..... Many thanks to Ifor

[Flocker14]

Yes, very satisfying. Couldn't quite see the final step last night (because some of the extra letters were incredibly hard to extract) but a good night's sleep revealed all in a few minutes this morning. How I like it. It did look daunting at first sight but if you keep chipping away at it (so to speak) slowly and patiently it all falls together very nicely indeed. A new theme too for me. A tough workout but most enjoyable Many thanks Ifor.

[Hagen]

I found this incredibly hard, but as always Ifor gives us enough to make solving rewarding rather than a slog. The jigsaw element is, of course, totally justified rather than a let's-make-it harder obstacle, and I laughed out loud (which I hardly ever do) when I twigged how to resolve the ambiguity. Brilliant, Ifor.

[upsetter]

An excellent puzzle helped at the end by an amusing related poem.

Thanks Ifor.

[Scorpius]

One of those extremely rare occasions when I tentatively guessed the theme from the preamble, confirmed after the first thematic solve. This helped me to get started on the grid, but I still found it tough, and a notch up on last week's.
I still have some parsing to work out.

[sunny-dave]

An excellent puzzle - just enough info to enable a toe-hold to be obtained in the grid at a reasonably early stage and then some delightfully tricky clues to make the rest of the gridfill interesting.

Some of the excised letters were brilliantly disguised too.

The removal of the ambiguity made me smile - very neat indeed.

Thanks Ifor

[pushmi-pullyu]

Really good fun. And the clearing up of the ambiguity was the icing on the cake.

[emcee]

Brilliant.

Many thanks, Ifor, for such an enjoyable puzzle.