Listener Crossword No 4274 -- Sonamb By Porlock

[jim360]

A very pleasant way to end the year. Grid is chock-full of thematic material, and despite the multiple gimmicks it wasn't too difficult to break into the clues, probably a few very generous ones to help us get started. Still got to decode the full message revealed by the extra letters/ words (missing the wordplay to e.g. 36a), but satisfied by my highlighting including the number. Thanks Porlock, and thanks too go to the Listener editors and setters for a bumper year of puzzles.

[fallster]

I needed a Brit to find the answer to the title clue. Phew, all done for the year.

[Mesnilpat]

Penny finally dropped - doh! I can believe I didn't see it sooner, a mistake in 34ac didn't help but as a fan of the context for the title I really should have twigged. Happy New Year to Al and everyone else too.

[AnFearBeag]

OK then. If you insist. Happy New Year to everyone.
But especially Al.

[Cruncher]

therefore et al....

[Contrarian]

Thanks for the puzzle, Porlock.

I think it is pretty clear which of the two possible interpretations of the title is intended.

This was my first year of doing the Listener. I started in about March, and solved my first few puzzles fairly easily. Then I hit a brick wall with Samuel's Pipes. This was the first carte blanche puzzle I had ever seen, and I was completely flummoxed. A successful solution of Bero's 2016111214 91885, which was really tough, and for which I wrote a mini-program to help decode the entries, inspired me to carry on. Since about the beginning of August, then, I am, I think, all correct.

I've been doing crosswords, mainly the Times and the Guardian, since I started at university, almost 25 years ago. As you all know, though, there is something rather special about the Listener, and I'm really happy to have discovered it this year. I take my hat off to the extraordinary ingenuity of the setters, and the industry of the editors, and thank them for helping to alleviate somewhat my existential angst.

[Staurologist]

Delightful, and great fun to solve. What a pity about the ambiguity in the title. It is obvious what Porlock's intended solution is, but the S could stand for two other things (justified by the relevant Wikipedia entry), one of which could have been (although less convincingly) suggested by the circled letters, and has a number in the grid. This could easily have been obviated by making the title RSONAMB. But perhaps I have missed an indicator that resolves the ambiguity; I cannot, for example, find an appropriate letter mixture in the preamble.

To my recollection this trope first appeared about 30 years ago, doing the rounds in quizzes, in which you had to work out about 50 of them. It has also, as I discovered on a random post hoc trawl, been the subject of a question in the Quizzes and Puzzles section of the Answerbank.

Slainte!

[Scorpius]

I'm quite puzzled by all this talk of ambiguity in the title. I can think of three closely related interpretations; one obvious possibility is discounted because the grid lacks the appropriate number; a second one is problematic because I think there could be some debate about which out of two cell numbers to highlight, depending on how one interprets the hint; that leaves the third choice, for which there is only one appropriate number, and is therefore the most clear-cut.
Of course, there may be another ingenious interpretation, totally unrelated to any of the above three, that I haven't thought of.