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Another useful tool if you have some letters and a word length is https://word.tips/scrabble-word-finder/ helped me hugely with the top left. Not sure I would have found 34 otherwise. Which incidentally has a lovely definition in my fairly old BRB, using two obscure words to describe another one...

What is the latest thinking vis a vis aids and/or googling for these more difficult puzzles? I enjoyed this one, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed it (or got very far) without recourse to an anagram generator. Or an internet search, as the theme emerged (if you don’t know the film/book that’s kind of essential anyway). Could it be the case that the use of these resources is now taken as read by the setters and that the difficulty of their puzzles caters for it? In other words, are the gloves off? Is ‘cheating’ allowed? Is it cheating?

Mdmaylwin, I suspect some setters do raise the bar knowing solving aids are readily available, but such aids should not be essential to complete a puzzle. I'm pretty sure that the Listner edittors solve the puzzles without aids in order to satisfy themselves that the puzzles are solvable without aids.

I do not regard the use of aids, even sophisticated ones, as cheating (though it's more satisfying to manage without). Most setters use computer programs to compile their puzzles. As someone years ago said on another forum, "The day setters stop using computer programs to compile tough puzzles, I'll consider abandoning computer aids."

As for the Internet, the Listener is supposed to be solvable without the Internet, and I know of puzzles that have been rejected because they could not be verified by printed sources. In this puzzle all the thematic material in the grid is fully checked. With an Irish name for the character and a Catholic-sounding statement in ring three, it might not be too hard to scan a list of Irish authors in some literary reference to find the one that has those consonants. My guess is that the asterisks were required by the editors so that the puzzle could, in principle, be solved without searching the Internet.

I thought this was pretty good and found it not as much of a slog as some. Not a fan of the circulars in general because if the lack of checked cells but Ace of hearts seems to have made it his mission to keep them coming and I thought this was pretty fair.

I too was troubled by the missing consonant but having done a bit of research it appears to count as a consonant when it starts a word or is in hard form, and counts as a vowel when there's no other vowel in that syllable. So in this case its acting as a vowel so is better excluded from the consonants list.

Should add that although I enjoyed the puzzle the subject matter is (in my view) total dross.

Interesting to see reactions to this one. My experience seems to concur with smellyharry. Found it on the tricky side of the spectrum. Having cold-solved most and found perimeter, quotes etc I was still left with 6 unsolved radials. Knowing 4 letters + optional letter + 2 blanks gave me 12 possibilities to look up on scrabble-word-finder which I had no scruples in using (but still took some time)...

'scruples' or 'qualms', crates?

When all else fails aids-wise, do what we do. Hire a Russian or Chinese cyber expert, available at a fee on the dark web, to hack into Drxx’s computer. Works every time 😉

Or ... just ask my wife!

drxx - Indeed - 'qualms' was what I was looking for looking for ...

Obviously - apart from selecting wrong word, I tend to repeat myself also....