Listener No 4237 Restitution By Schadenfreude

[trux]

Very well crafted grid with some devilish elements. Clues not too difficult but quite a lot of cold solving required before one can start hazarding any sort of gridfill. Much enjoyed the PDM after which relatively quick progress to the end. This type of cipher device seems to be becoming a bit of a trademark for SF. Many thanks for the work-out. Back to the golf!

[aldanna]

As contendo went from my state of bemusement to almost there, I had another look last night and am now pdm'd to a correct solution. As you all said, very clever. Thanks to Schadenfreude (and to contendo!).

[magichour]

Took me a long time to work out how to enter the many cold-solved answers, but as others found, once the penny dropped it was fairly plain sailing. Excellent puzzle - another beautiful construction.

[IainGrace]

On hols (feeble excuse) but cold solved only about half the clues so far and no idea about the grid, so suspect we will abandon this. Shame, but well done to those who have finished it.

[ArchieLeach]

Please persevere - it does all fall into place quite quickly once you figure out how the grid works, particularly if you have solved the 8s. And the clues to the grid are all in the preamble.

[Postigod]

Cold solved less than half the clues, but have the grid mechanics, theme, cipher and decoded message, thanks to an early pdm about grid structure (and a related assumption) and the luck of having solved most of the clues that ended up in the SW corner.

With another assumption made, Qat helped me find the first of the losses. from which the rest of the theme followed very nicely. Now just have to solve the rest of the (tough but fair) clues and complete the grid! Am well on the way to saying "wow" to this one - it's certainly worth persevering with...

[TheBear69]

G ihgtt lu auh oalgoihcal hzg Uull otog. G ciioeg hzg ouoogohgl wuol gi ‘Uoll’ zoh zuw lugi hzch tgcl hu hzg caiwgo? Cal wzl cog hzuig eceecti ‘zgszgo’?

[Cloverjo]

Please excuse the daft question. When we restore the missing words, are we meant to have new words made from the existing ones plus the extra letter that has now been added?
I assume yes, but the reason I ask is that I cannot possibly make proper words by adding a letter to each of my down answers in the SE corner, whereas I can with the across clues in the SW and NE corners. My answers fit the clues, though.

[jim360]

Nerts to you, Bear - I'm going to have to decode that now!

All words in the final grid are real. I think.

[IainGrace]

Will see, ArchieLeach, but no more clues solved in last couple of days, don't have the 8s, and not a scooby about the grid. White flag territory here, I fear.

[Whenland]

After a good deal of fun all done here now although, like others, still struggling to understand the Jody clue.

[Alekhine]

Just finished.

This was fabulous. Some tough clues, the occasional bewildering moment ... but real joy at the point of completion.

[Coalminers]

We've had a few ciphers in recent crosswords, and almost always there are comments on here using the cipher. I would say that the compiler has carefully designed the instruction so as not to give too much away and I am a little concerned that our messages would make the decipherment trivial without any recourse to the other elements of the crossword. Sorry to be so picky!

An excellent crossword in every respect. Thanks Schadenfreude

[LankyLanky]

Just sat down to this yesterday evening. Enjoyable puzzle, Schadenfreude. One quibble - "Taking the clues in normal grid order..." in the preamble is ambiguous in terms of numbering of down entries. Before restitution, the entry to eg. 1 down should be sequenced after the entries to 7 & 8 down, as it starts on a lower row. But the ambiguity is soon solved as thankfully the same type of ambiguity cannot occur for across clues, and the theme becomes apparent.