Listener 4097: Half-Thyme by Dipper

[midazolam]

In a way typical of what we expect from Dipper, although harder than recent efforts. Initially a quick start developed into a much slower finish. I enjoyed tracking down the herbs but I thought the placing of the misprints was slightly unfair. At least it left something else to tackle near the end (unlike previous times).

[Ruthrobin]

AHearer, your earlier comment about 'half' or 'halves' had me wondering. A variant spelling of one herb does justify the use of the word in all cases, doesn't it?

[IntoTheBlue]

I've just finally seen how my last answer works (the one that contains most of the first word of the phrase).
If I had had this word before the words that crossed it realisation would have come an awful lot earlier! (Although saying that, it was a new word for me.)

IntoTheBlue

[AndrewG-S]

The instructions seemed pretty straightforward and I am fairly sure that I alighted on the thematic phrase pretty early on. However, finishing off the handful of remaining clues is proving very slow going - time for a bit of a break.

[Cruncher]

I'm not so good at reading preambles so it took me a while to take on board that the other halves of the herbs were hidden in the down clues rather than the down answers. So that made for a slow start. Otherwise all worked out nicely. I enjoyed the weirdness of the "jug" clue and also struggled with 18ac despite having all the available letters and a fair guess at the missing ones. Agreed rather more taxing than some of Dipper's previous puzles

[AndrewG-S]

Just got 18a, clashed made this tricky! My hunch on the theme was right and without this not sure I would have got there. Bottom right hand corner left to fill now

[bobbycollins]

Finally finished this one. Definitely more difficult than previous Dipper offerings.

[flocker]

utterly stumped by 18 ac in spite of suspecting the phrase - have tried every possible combination - adding possible first halves of remaining herbs of 4 letters - zabadak's "dividing" and "lifting" of the first two words is obscure still - what am I missing - anagrams? - removing letters signyfying unknown - does the answer relate to a unit or dividing? at sea! Nor can I see what the suspected first word of the phrase has to do with it - at the moment less than half the letters from crossing down clues would confirm it. Suppose i could just fill in the supposed first phrase word and post it off - but not sseing the logic at this late stage is very irksome indeed!

[bobbycollins]

18 across is a beast. As has been hinted earlier, think of a Listener/EV compiler to get half of the wordplay. Bradford's will help.

[x_word_fan]

18a was one of the first clues I got - many years of teaching a related subject did help - not that it helped me overall - if anything it made solving all the connecting clues more difficult.

[flocker]

thanks bobby and word fan. But a subject related to what? And being fairly new to this I'm not quite sure what EV is, and there have been hundreds of Listener setters over the years I discover! Still unable to make any sense of this whatsover. At this point you begin to question whther the crossing letters are all wrong and whether this 2 word phrase, which is most definitely theme related in a negative way as commented on above, are correct. Would I be correct in assuming that only 3 of the checking letters in 18 remain in place when the phrase word is entered? Or am I barking up a forest of wrong trees?

[Lewap]

My apologies first of all for a fairly unrelated post - but I am hoping some of you listener fans might be able to help me out - especially those who enjoy the quarterly numericals.
I am looking for a quick and easy way to calculate and list possible answers to sets of numerical clues. For instance, in a recent Magpie numerical, there is a clue: G + ILL, where G, I and L all equal a different number between 0 to 15. Now I could manually work through each possibility... or even list all possibilities in Excel and let it do the maths... but I'm sure there must be some program out there where I can say "If G,I & L < 16, what are the possible answers for G + ILL" and it delivers a (long) list. Any ideas? Appreciated! Please email me on [email protected] rather than take up more space on this! Thanks in advance!

[contendo]

Flolcker - Like you I am resorting to posting it off with the thematic phrase in place, assuming that 18 ac fits it, though I can't see why, despite all the helpful nudges. I think there's a limit to how much help one should accept. EV is Enigmatic Variations, the Sunday Telegraph thematic crossword.

[flocker]

finally managed somehow to crack now it by dint of dligent searching, contendo - this is the value of spending all this time on this I suppose - conquoring one's doubts and believing that one must be on the right track somehow in spite of contradictory evidence. A great feeling when you finally get there and see the logic - although it might not have been a waste of a stamp anway. I agree about help - but a few gentle nudges in the right diection are on order I feel.

[contendo]

I've finally managed to twig the answer to 18 ac but "clashing letters must be resolved to reveal a thematic phrase" and three of the letters don't come from across/down clashes. That's what threw me.

[JackDeCrow]

I was another who thought it was looking pretty easy on Friday night, only to spend much of the weekend trying to explain the last few wordplays! Given that none of the ones I was stuck on had more than one sensible alternative, I'm not sure whether that makes this one difficult or not. And I still don't really understand 14a!

[JackDeCrow]

Oh, or the second jug, come to that!

[x_word_fan]

Jack

I also spent ages on those two. Until I realised Barry was not the place in Wales or Scotland or any other place. My guess is the last 2 letters of the answer made 2/3 of another jug.