Listener 4221 - In Season By Lavatch

[TheBear69]

What a masterful construction by Lavatch...This could be the puzzle of the year. I found the clues to be highly challenging; figuring out the quotation and author certainly helped with the final third of my clue solving.

The endgame is extremely satisfying...This one is well worth the struggle! Thanks Lavatch

[Ruthrobin]

Answering this one as TheBear69 seems to have gone further two minutes later. Indeed the solving has been tough and we too needed the quotation and author and are rather intrigued, now that we have a complete grid etc. about what we are highlighting. (Indeed, not the Friday club but the Saturday afternoon club!)

[aldanna]

This seems to be all the comments I can find, so it really must be hard. I am progressing very slowly and things look like catching up on me. Probably another failure but there's more to life than crosswords. Happy Christmas everyone.

[Mesnilpat]

I'm with you aldanna, I have made little headway and will put this to one side until I have more time. Happy Christmas one and all.

[trux]

Could not agree with TB69 more ... the endgame is just pure magic. Love it. Do please persevere everyone. It's a true gem.
And absolutely unambiguous!
Thousand festive thanks to Lavatch for the beaming smile I now will keep on my face till Boxing Day (at least).

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, one of the most beautiful endgames I have ever seen. I think this will keep my smile going till New Year. Sheer magic Lavatch.

[starwalker]

Very neat endgame with another quotation that was new to me. Definitely worth the earlier struggle. Puzzle of the year ? Not so sure about that, and there is still one more to come. Thanks Lavatch.

[IainGrace]

Making progress and looking forward to more, encouraged by posts to date.

[AHearer]

Yes, very pretty -- but like TheBear69 I'd have been totally stuck without the quotation and author to help me out. As it turned out, it was the theme word which yielded first, followed by a lucky guess at the author, and then a quick look at ODQ filled in the rest of the second ring and yielded the first chuckle.

[teuchter2]

Still working on this one, with about five more clues to go, three of them involved in the theme word which I haven't got yet. Apart from that I have the quotation, author, the thematic phrase and the instructions, so I guess I am getting there. The weather is awful here. I couldn't face going out to the footie, which is a pity as they won for once.

[IainGrace]

Are we correct in reading the rubric to mean that the quotation, author etc need not start at 1 in the second outermost ring?

[TheBear69]

The starting point is unspecified, IainGrace

[contendo]

A lovely crossword. Still not quite there. I have the quote, the author and the thematic word but I haven't quite got the messages from the hidden/extra letters, but they're slowly yielding. Teuchter2 - that wouldn't be Newcastle United by any chance?

[IainGrace]

Contendo, teuchter2's allegiance is to a different north east, and I think he's being slightly unfair as they've been doing comparatively well so far this season.

[Alekhine]

After some disappointment in recent weeks, this was much more like it.

Seasonal best wishes to all from Alekhine Towers. I usually advise not to overdo it ... but where's the fun in that?

[kwyjibo]

Contender for best of the year

[perseverer]

I have said this about a succession of puzzles this year, but what stunning grid construction. Challenging but fun, and why do the most impenetrable clues always seem so obvious when the penny does finally drop.

Re teuchter2, they had lost 3 out of 4 previous league games ......... and going by today's news reports, the weather got even worse in the area.

[Texasetes]

Having gone to bed some time after midnight on Friday, confident that I would manage to polish this one off after an hour or two more effort, I find myself having made precisely zero progress since Saturday morning. Embarrassingly, a block of four contiguous clues is proving completely intractable, and I don't really understand why.

As yet I've found no ambiguity which needed to be resolved, which is slightly worrying. I have the quotation, its author and the thematic word, and only two letters are missing from each of the thematic phrase and the instructions, so I'm pretty sure I know what they are. They in themselves tell me that the construction cannot be run-of-the-mill and that the final PDM will be worth the effort.

I hate relying on thematic devices to reverse engineer the grid fill, but I've got nowhere in the last day and a half.. Maybe analysis of the positions of the omitted letters will shed some light on the obstinate clues.

[Staurologist]

"Magic" was the word that sprang into my mind as I finished this, before I tuned in here, and I see that others concur. And what a refreshing change to the usual kind of thematic material we get at this time of year.

Incidentally, for those who may be struggling with 5/6, the girl referred to is not Irish but [Scots] Gaelic.

[Coalminers]

Yes, that was great fun. And it was so rewarding to be able to use some of the skills I learnt when I was six years old!
Changing the subject, did anyone understand the significance in the title of the latest CAM crossword, Sacco Mala? I can't work it out.

Happy Christmas to all

[teuchter2]

I'm pleased to see so much discussion about my north-east 'donkeys' - omit the key and you have it. I finished the puzzle late yesterday evening with the exception of carrying out the instructions. I left the pleasure of that little exercise for morning. What fun! I'm surprised I had not heard of the thematic word as my late husband was into that sort of line, though perhaps in a slightly different field. I think that if you carried out the submission instructions to the letter, you could maybe send in a pile of 'confetti'. I'm not intending doing that however as I did not understand it in that way. Weather better here today, but a lot of devastation about, and water running off fields like rivers. I think I'm fairly safe being situated near the top of a cliff, but not too near!