Listener 4671 Ours By Xanthippe

[Hagen]

A terrifying preamble. Ugh. Jumbles. Double ugh. Definition/letter mix clues. Ugh to the nth power. Yet this was brilliant! Once the method of entry of the across revealed itself, a smile was permanently plastered on my face as I proceeded with this difficult but rewarding puzzle. I'm never going to like D/LM but there was an obvious justification for it here. The pain of the jumbles was minimal thanks to Xanthippe's helpful guide to the placing of some letters. And best of all, the discovery of the link between the two writers brought it all to a satisfying conclusion.

Lovely puzzle. Thank you Xanthippe.

[emcee]

I think there may be a word missing in the second half of 27ac. Can anyone verify this?

All else done.

[ProfessorMaisie]

27a works for me.

[Hagen]

27 across OK for me too.

[emcee]

OK. Thanks!

[HawkCrossword]

I was delighted to see such a long preamble, as it means they can't reject the puzzle I've just finished for that reason :-)

For all it's confusing structure, though, it was a pretty rapid grid-fill once I'd cold-solved most of the down clues. When I went back to tackle the acrosses, well, it was a little bit deflating to be honest. The entries could be written in, then the answers back-solved. There were, however, a few tricky little clues tucked around and about which kept me entertained. Thanks Xanthippe!

[Cruncher]

I enjoyed that and, likewise, was very happy to discover that the preamble wasn't quite the maze it seemed. Taught me a new abbreviation en passant.

[Philoctetes]

Much better than last week. Like most, I groaned at the preamble, then had a pleasant workout through the various mazes. Thanks X

[upsetter]

An amusing entry method which made life a lot easier in the end.

Some tough clues but all very clear in the end.

[Dim16]

Enjoyed this to start with, have almost completed the grid, and I think I've identified the writers. BUT I suspect, as is often the case, that I won't see the link since it requires some lateral thinking, not my strength. No doubt I shall spend some time fruitlessly trying to identify the path down the grid but since there are approx 500,000 paths that is a mug's game. Nice puzzle though!

[sunny-dave]

A joy to do - I really liked the challenge of trying to work out the across grid entries from the clue answers (or vice-versa in several cases).

Wiki was my friend in spotting the relevant link & then finding the path through grid was easy enough.

Thanks Xanthippe - excellent puzzle.

[Scorpius]

Like Hagen, I don't like DLM clues, mainly because I'm not much good at solving them (no fault of the setter) I don't mind jumbles within reason. In this case the DLMs weren't too hard to solve once I seen the thematic derivation of the entries, and I appreciated the help given with the jumbled entries. I've only just finished after leaving for a day as I could not see how to complete one of the entries. Another one eluded me for a long time previously.

HawkCrossword, it's not the length of the preamble per se that is a limiting factor; it's the overall length of preamble and clues. Counting the gap between preamble and clues, this puzzle takes up 42 lines. That's pretty close to the limit. Anything over 43 lines may present problems.