Listener Crossword 4711 Cycle Of Crime And Punishment By Aver

[upsetter]

A lot of very clever clues, thanks Aver.

[emcee]

I agree. The endgame was pleasingly short too.

Thanks, Aver.

[Dim16]

Post Mortem re 4708.

It will be interesting to find out next year what percentage of the entries are incorrect given that I WONDER is not a totally unambiguous next step IMO and that there were several ways of tracing a path spelling it out if like me you're an absolute dunce at music, which is why I didn't complete it.

Of course I didn't complain about last year's Scholar's Mate puzzle because I am familiar with chess notation, so yes I am no doubt guilty of sour grapes and hypocrisy.

[emcee]

Quite true, Dim16.

My second set of symbols, in their correct places, were "?" symbols as I thought they best represented "How I wonder".

Doubtless I will have been marked incorrect!

[Dim16]

A clever construction and a very enjoyable puzzle to work through.

My only concern is that I have correctly identified the location within the grid of the three initials, but it seems unambiguous.

Thanks Aver

[HawkCrossword]

I hope the setter receives the credit this masterpiece deserves. To weave so much thematic material throughout, and to produce such a broad range of clues with the restriction they set themselves is most impressive.

A minor flaw in the preamble - a sentence?

Many thanks, Aver!

[HawkCrossword]

And about an hour later it dawned on me...

[Scorpius]

I found last week's puzzle by Sabre a doddle compared to this. I never fare very well with cycled entries, particularly when they affect across and down entries. There was also the added problem of the disordered clues. Constantly scanning the puzzle to locate entry numbers that still needed filling drove me up the wall. It must have increased my solving time by a third or more.

I thought the endgame with the initials was quite lame, but the setter deserves credit for some well-concealed misprints, and for the deployment of "further thematic material".

[sunny-dave]

Back from a short break in the UK - only just had a chance to look at this.

Excellent puzzle and rather trickier than it initially appeared - the cycling letters were nicely ambiguous in some cases, until several crossing clues were solved.

Loved the extra "hidden in plain sight" thematic material too.

Thanks Aver

... now to find some displacement activities to avoid looking at the numerical puzzle ...