Listener 4742 Short Seats By Yorick

[HawkCrossword]

A top quality multi-layered puzzle, requiring a fair amount of lateral thinking to complete, but which thankfully ends unambiguously. Many thanks, Yorick - that was one of the best of the year.

[perseverer]

Virtually every week I marvel at the wonders of construction we find in these puzzles but this one is almost beyond belief. I had solved just about every clue and had the grid almost filled (after a fashion) before the penny finally dropped. And the diversity of the clues!
Thanks Yorick

[Cruncher]

No idea where this is going yet but enjoying solving the clues and tentatively fitting the grid together. No idea what half the preamble means - but hey

[emcee]

I've had a full grid since yesterday afternoon, have the "Others" written beneath the grid but have no idea what the single letters are nor can get a message from the internal thematic letters in clues!

[perseverer]

No help emcee, but once you get the message, you will get the single letter bit.

[Cruncher]

Little further on in that I have a complete grid, reasonable deduction about the single letters, highlighting, significant others unscrambled, but no clue about how to derive the message which now seems superfluous. Hmm

[Canary42]

Rather an elitist thread since many of us haven't a clue (pun intended) of what you're talking about.

Or is it a carefully disguised bit of spam for The Listener ?

:-D

[upsetter]

An amazing construction.

Many many thanks Yorick.

[Philoctetes]

Agree that it is amazingly built - how, Yorick, how? And it is doable and informative. But fair? Effectively a 90% cold solve, and too many double-unch spaces (though it is really difficult to see which is which). My mind is torn

[HawkCrossword]

I can see how I would construct it, but I'm not sure I'd attempt it. It would be a very manual exercise, and I wouldn't have a clear idea of the amount of checking in the final grid, as you say. I disagree that this was a 90% cold solve. I was able to enter most answers, but had to go back and make corrections at times. It got considerably easier when the theme fell. The difficulty was also mitigated by having normal clues - quite an achievement to do that and retain the multiple puzzle layers.

[danielmason1938]

Too hard for me - I am giving up. There appear to be too many unchecked letters and others already found can't be relied on. At most one clash in any answer would have been nice; or knowing how many clashes there were might have helped. There, I've got that off my chest! Best wishes.

[perseverer]

I know this will sound patronising but one of the attractions of the Listener is the range of setters and the levels of difficulty from pretty easy (there have been a few recently) to nearly impossible. Solvers new to the puzzle will over time become more used to the various nuances but it will take time before they are managing to solve every week or anything like that and they should not be disheartened.

[upsetter]

@perseverer - I quite agree.
Every now and then there must be a puzzle so tough that you start to despair of ever finishing it.
When you find one like this you think back to the others that made you feel that way and remember that perseverance got you over the line.

[danielmason1938]

(Thanks to perseverer and upsetter for their replies to me last week. I went back to the puzzle later in the week and unsurprisingly new ideas came and led to successful completion.)