Listener 4612 - Family Man By Duck

[Philoctetes]

A bit of a puzzle, this one. I would not say it was over simple, but I finished it by 10 yesterday. I think that it had a momentum, that as the clues were solved, there was the chocolate addict's "just one more". Some clues were tricky, some straightforward. The extra letters were occasionally difficult to spot, but the overall message fell out well. And the endgame just leapt out at me. Satisfying, enjoyable, but leaving me wanting a slightly bigger box. Thanks, Duck

[Hagen]

Nice description, Philoctetes. I'm fairly sure Don has gone on record as saying that recent Listener puzzles tend to be skewed too much towards complicated endgames, so perhaps this is his way of redressing the balance. I'd be interested to know if anyone got the split highlighted item from the clue generated by extra letters, rather than finding the name first and working back from there (which is what I did). A nice mixture of easy and hard clues, and it tricky teasing out some of the extra letters. Enjoyable, but it did leave me with a slight feeling of "Is that it?" at the end.

[Cruncher]

Comfortably straightforward for someone who found last week's more tricky than most of you lot apparently did. And it was nice to be reminded of the subject and its creator but couldn't otherwise see any significance behind the choice of the theme. I guess it is what it is.

[upsetter]

Some well hidden extra letters with minimal grid searching required and a clever use of of the clue led to a satisfying conclusion with a pleasing symmetry.

Thanks, Duck.

[pushmi-pullyu]

I agree, a bit of an anticlimax.

[Scorpius]

I did think this was a bit on the easy side as I filled the upper half m little more time than it took to read the clues. Some of the extra letters were tricky to identify so there was some work to do to get the message even after filling the grid.

I thought the endgame was satisfying enough - a clue to be applied to parts of the grid and a related name to find, though I saw the 'answer' before thinking much about the clue. It seems a bit unfair to me to dismiss Listeners that don't have complex endgames. I'd far rather something like this than the tedious letter counting of the Harribobs puzzle three weeks ago.

[Hagen]

I agree 100% with your last sentence, Scorpius. I didn’t intend to be dismissive, and I’m all for endgames which don’t involve interminable grid staring or a long slog. I was just surprised that there was so little thematic material, especially from a setter of this calibre.

[contendo]

All done and dusted, though the letter I have omitted from the last clue is wrong and I can't see how the correct letter can be justified.

[novalis]

Honours in cards - ace, king queen etc.

[IainGrace]

Unlike Scorpius, we were faced with what we refer to in this household as the Ginger Rogers method Of entry. “She did everything that Fred Astaire did but backwards in high heels.” We kept solving SE clues and had to progress slowly to fill SW, NE and NW.

[perseverer]

While I agree this was at the easier end of the range, I thought there were plenty of challenges in the wordplay to give you a workout, and as others have said, not all the extra letters were obvious. The theme was not something I remember ever having heard of, and having read the Wiki article on it, I doubt I will be rushing to investigate it further, but that's hardly Duck's fault.
(I have a soft spot for Duck - my first Listener prize was for one of his puzzles.)

[emcee]

"Is that it?" sums it up for me admirably.

[sunny-dave]

A perfectly acceptable 'old school' Listener - possibly a bit short on thematics and without any huge PDM - but very nicely put together and the extra letters were by no means trivial.

Thanks Duck - I won't be reading the thematic work (life is much to short) - but a browse of the relevant wiki was a pleasant excursion.

[sunny-dave]

'too' not 'to'

:+)