Listener 4836 Our Evenings By Kea

[upsetter]

An interesting gimmick that was not quite as terrifying as it first appeared to be although we got hung up on 34a which with hindsight is a perfectly fair clue.

Thanks, Kea.

[Cruncher]

Tricky one to finish off with not all adjustments immediately apparent and, to my mind, some extra words in clues that weren't entirely necessary and made me doubt the parsing.

Impressive feat on Kea's part to figure out the switches in the first place.

[Canary42]

So you finished the Listener Crossword. My word aren't you clever, well done 😀

P.S. I hope Kea is looking in, otherwise your posts are a bit pointless.

[douglas9401]

An expert writes...

[emcee]

I thought it was a novel idea. I did get held up by 6d, though and, strictly speaking, only 11 words needed to be 'evened' out.

Thanks, Kea.

[curlyfries81]

My my, did the yellow chirper get out the wrong side of the bed this morning?

[danielmason1938]

1.  I wonder, emcee, what you mean by 'strictly speaking'.  I have completed the grid with only 11 evenings out.  Are you saying there is an answer that should be evened out though it doesn't need to be?

2.  I may have got out of bed the wrong side too but I do wonder what the point of it all was.

[emcee]

Yes. The twelfth one isn't a necessary "evening out". I too had eleven and had to hunt for the twelfth!

[perseverer]

Well, I had the 12 evenings without realising that one of them was 'unnecessary'. Perhaps the end-game was to find the twelfth!

Struggled with 34 as well, but all the words are necessary.

[HawkCrossword]

This was a good challenge, but I think I'd have enjoyed it more if it led to, if not a universal truth, some form of thematic ending. I suspect there aren't many words which can be "evened" in this way (I haven't checked), and you need a good-sized word list before you can start doing clever things with the grid.  Thanks, Kea.