Listener No. 4346: Nonconformist By Towser

[AHearer]

Grid entry only took half an hour, but then I'm ashamed to say that it took another half hour for the penny to drop. It raised a chuckle, so thank you Towser.

[salveMe]

the "someone" bit makes more sense if combined with the puzzle's title, I think.

[Scorpius]

Earlier I expressed disappointment that the grid could be filled rather too quickly for my liking. However, I must now speak up for the setter. There are two particularly nice features. One is the transformation of the ten group members so as to reveal the eleventh; it was probably not that easy to find enough suitable candidates without resorting to totally obscure members. The second is the pleasing endgame. I'm afraid those on this forum who have expressed disappointment with that feature have completely missed the point.

[AndrewG-S]

The use of the definition only clues and extra letter was novel and a decent challenge. I stumbled over the final part and the someone reference in the preamble but kicked myself once the penny dropped. I would like to have seen a little more use of clue gimmicks - it would have been fairly easy to have shifted some of the preamble into an instruction in normal clues, which is probably all it would have taken to up the challenge a notch as I think the reason the clues were on the easy side is because there were no clue gimmicks. Overall fun though - congrats Towser.

[fyellin]

@Scorpius. Okay. The Wikipedia article on a certain three-word phrase lets me know that the phrase has two meanings, the second of which I didn't know. The second meaning is slightly closer to the wording of the preamble, but I'm still not happy.

I don't know if this is just a problem between US and UK English. The three-word phrase is only ever used as a plural collective. No "piece" of the phrase is ever called a ThreeWordPhrase in the singular. Hence, unhappiness with "someone".

[Scorpius]

Fyellin, I take your point about the unusual singular version of the three-word phrase, but I would allow the setter some licence on the matter in the interests of the puzzle. It seems to me perfectly plausible that the 'someone' should be referred to by a phrase in the singular, rather than 'one of the...'
Of course, the setter could also have taken a close associate of the eleventh member, whose title provides a rationale for a cryptic representation, but some might have complained about that as well.

[fyellin]

@Scorpius: Yes. My immediate reaction, also, was to expect the cryptic representation to be a close associate with an appropriate title.

On the US/UK differences. One particular clue made be laugh out loud as I realized how cleverly the setter exploited an ambiguity that exists in one but not the other.