Listener 4021 Mazy by Salamanca

[Philoctetes]

Still no link, of course. But another that relies heavily on cold solving. And a lovely nod for the Classicists amongst us in the use of "boustrophedon". I suspect more such will appear.

[Apache4D]

u10, many thanks.....was pretty certain but as already noted in this thread after all that work it would be a shame to be just one cell out!

As for the chain, re-read the thread as there are plenty of details and just stick with the theme.....the trail contains no meandering within a word (hence connections are like linking dominos).....if in doubt re-read how our unmentioned hero entered and exited his formidable maze!

[u10]

Thanks Apache - I've found the path now. For some reason I was looking for a Latin quotation!! This has been a great challenge. I almost gave up on three or four occasions and it's only because I had the week off work that I reached the finish line. I notice that the path can be entered without understanding the significance of the lurker - is that a weakness in the puzzle? Thanks to everyone's assistance - particularly the nudge towards 1 down - that was the key to getting started and Salamnca was generous enough to make it a long word.

[failedagain]

The sentiments expressed here about coaching inexperienced solvers are laudable. However, there's a world of diffference between teaching a student using old exam papers and revealing answers to the actual exam whose results will affect the future career of the student and his contemporaries.
CluelessJoe makes the honourable point (see http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Quizzes-and-Puz zles/Crosswords/Question470275.html) that he doesn't submit Listener solutions for which he's had help from AnswerBank. But we see from Cruncher's post in this thread that other Bankers have no such principles: there are people here who are far from novices and are benefitting by eavesdropping on the "coaching". Draw your own conclusions.

[Apache4D]

Ok, I definitely don't want or like to be told the answer and purely come on here to discuss my progress often at great length (I don't believe any of my rambled posts asked for any answers, unless you count my previous post).

I have deliberately stopped looking at the EV threads on here as they give too much away, like complete explanation of clues, answers to clues, indication of clues that have manipulation as per the pre-amble, etc etc.

I liked this thread because it never went as far as that, and never gave enough away for anyone to be able to "cheat" there way through........

I have enjoyed the Listener immensely and after all the derision received from colleagues and friends about the "pointlessness" of doing such a complex and lengthy puzzle it was nice to find a group of like-minded people.

However I take pride in my efforts to complete this crossword and will not have it devalued because of my presence in a discussion forum.

As I do not want to get into lengthy debates about this, now or in the future, I think I will stop contributing, and therefore it will not be possible to be accused of cheating others out of their "future career", or indeed of bolstering my own.

Indeed my coaching came from the years of doing standard cryptics, reading the Listener User Guide on the Times website, and just plain giving it a go!

I certainly don't need my principles questioned as would not submit anything if I thought I had "cheated" my way through.

As for being a "lurker" (quite thematic really!), that is up to the individual again to decide.

[cluelessJoe]

Point taken failedagain, but I think that for the most part there is a decent degree of restraint shown in the coaching here. Thanks for flagging one of my posts as an example (even if your link did not seem to work) ... I have actually tended to sing the praises of bobbycollins on past Listener threads for exhibiting similar fine principles.
I know the action of a relative few can and do annoy the purists, but the transgressors do know that at the end of the day they are mainly cheating themselves.

[failedagain]

The link got mangled by AnswerBank's formatting. It should be the same as this page, but with the last part changed to Question470275.html.

[Cruncher]

My own confession was that, with qualms, I submitted a puzzle over the summer that couldn't complete under my own steam because I was abroad, had no Chambers, intermittent internet access and was unable to confirm some of the answers through online dictionaries that were available. If I'd waited till I got back I would have missed even my extended submission deadline so had to use help that was available on this thread. At the end of the day I honestly believed that I would finished the grid under my own steam if I'd had a couple of books to hand. That's between me and my maker/ess. Anyway either that puzzle is still languishing in some Egyptian sorting-office or there was some other slip along the way but justice has been done and, failedagain, I shan't be sullying the ranks of the spotless and unblemished who take the stand at the Listener dinner. Not that I can imagine going anyway but that's another matter. And then there are the uber-purists who post threads on the Crossword Centre site who reckon that using a thesaurus, anagram solver, heave forbid using Chambers reference, is also cheating. So where does one draw the line.

Me personally I applaud this site. Solving crosswords can become a very solitary and obsessive occupation and there are clearly people who become very isolated - there is an earlier post that describes this very poignantly. If I had to pitch the human value of the camaraderie and correspondence that this site offers against a bunch of statistics that at best gratify the intellectual egos of a few, I'd go for the camaraderie every time.

[Clamzy]

Hear,hear.

[JackDeCrow]

Great puzzle, great thread. Funnily enough, when I first googled for the thread on Sunday night, nothing showed up and I wondered whether everyone was as stuck as me (at the time, very!). By the time I finished and came back here on Wednesday, a lengthy discussion was well under way. I had the same experience as many with 1d - and I still in retrospect don't know why it was so important, given the actual structure of the grid.
I'm probably too late to offer much more encouragement, but how anyone can think that what goes on here is somehow worse than a bunch of friends discussing a puzzle, I don't really know, and I certainly don't think anyone is going to achieve 52 consecutive successes just from what they read here!
Good luck to those still stuck in the Maze, and roll on tomorrow!

[JackDeCrow]

Oh, and forgot to say, was quite surprised by the forays into Japanese cinema and cartoon culture. I'm not sure reference books were supposed to help with those, which suggests to me at least that the internet and, by extension, other technology like chambersreference.com is fair enough!

[Mysterons]

This thread is already longer than Salamanca's (round trip) - testament I'm sure to the quality of the challenge he has set us. Although these types of puzzle do rely heavily on cold solving to begin with, once the thematic material starts to appear then there is a lot of extra information to assist with the trickier clues. I stumbled slightly with the positioning of the fourth down clue's answer, because of the similar ending just 2 clues later, which I'm certain was just coincidence.

[midazolam]

i am glad to see "failedagain" that your comments are as constructive as usual. I think the listener is as far from an exam as you can get. Are the words leisure and fun in your vocabulary?

[failedagain]

Thank you, "midazolam", for your constructive injection of sarcasm, hitherto lacking in this thread.

[scooterbug]

Same clue as fancydan mentioned. Does anyone else think that the clue is a little ambiguous? If the last letter is what I think it is, then my answer is not completely non-directional, though it is lacking at least one direction. Thanks.

[cruciverbali]

Not the best clue in the puzzle, certainly. Strictly speaking, the of is otiose. The answer is plural, so only 2 of the 3 'directions' have been removed. I suspect that the editors considered that the eroteme justifies this device.