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Many thanks drxx. My mistake was due to a fuzzy photocopy which disguised that hyphen! All good now.

Drxx,
The reason I retracted my earlier statement is because I had made the mistake of treating the game like noughts and crosses. There is a crucial difference. In this game the playing area represented by the grid has to be viewed vertically. Any placement of a disc must rest on the base or on a previously placed disc. After thirteen moves (I think) each player has a diagonal line of three discs, but neither can extend the line to four discs because they can't place the disc in the necessary position as it will simply drop down to rest on the disc below it.
Unlike noughts and crosses this game is governed by gravity.

Thanks murky, I thought I'd accounted for gravity but having gone through the process again I see that you're right - and thanks also to turast for alerting me to my error in the first place.

I'm sorry to have added unnecessary confusion to what is already a very complicated puzzle. I can see now that it's an even more impressive construction than I'd originally thought (and I was very impressed to begin with!).

I think we have to accept that the players play imperfectly and we have to follow an actual rather than perfect scenario. Indeed if both played perfectly the first player after entering his counter in the centre column would be bound to win - and by working he lost.

Hello, i’ve just completed the grid, with plausible messages from the spare words and the first instruction, but I’m perplexed by 7ac. There’s been no mention of it here but I have no idea what my solution of EHWHOW represents, or where to split it. Something to do with the Dumfries football team maybe, or a Maori cat? Never having played the game in question in my life I doubt I’ll progress much further but some mistake surely...
Thanks

Spoke too soon - just found it in phone App version of BRB. Now back to the counters.

Just finished, very enjoyable. Nice idea, clever title, the 6 double clues were very clever. Didn’t solve the CM til I read the thread, haven’t heard it called that before. Also didn’t know it was always winnable by player one til I read the the thread, interesting,

Slightly surprised at the comments around the construction though. The grid would have been relatively straight forward, all the ingenuity is in the clues, which are always much easier to finesse than the grid.

Very enjoyable and well executed though, no complaints from me.

smellyharry - I think the construction/design of the puzzle has only been commented on three times - once by me - and none of these specifically mention the grid construction.

When we disagreed over the construction of a previous Listener, I did specify the grid construction, because the rest of that puzzle's design was less impressive (in my opinion).
As I remember it, a full 40% of that grid contained thematic material and there was a thematic jumble running vertically through it all!

Very fair comment Drxx. I guess different features impress different solvers. I agree this was cleverly thought through and complex and worked very well. For me on this one though slightly too much of the cleverness was in the clues and not enough in the grid for it to be absolutely top notch.

Yes, I agree - it all works very well and much of the cleverness is in the writing. However, if the game hadn't played out properly it would have slightly spoilt it for me - I'm very glad it did.