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Fortunately the other half is a genius on the particular type of clue solving required here and figured out the phrase. I would never have figured that out. Poor puzzle I would say.

Maybe a silly question (the more observant amongst you will have noticed that my rare contributions to this site always take the form of silly questions): is it not untrue, or at least misleading, to say that the four letters appear in order in the thematic phrase (the fourth appears before the third)? You might as well say they appear in order in War And Peace!

I may have a different word or phrase to you but the letters were in order in the phrase (and aren't in War and Peace)

You're right about the 4th appearing before the 3rd/4th pairing, portmantony - but I'm also confused by your reference to 'War and Peace' (unless you mean the full text of that book!).

oh, i see what you mean now portmantony and guess you're right. It is arguably misleading. I hadn't even noticed as had largely given up the ghost by this stage of the puzzle!

Sorry to confuse! Yes, I was meaning the entire text of W&P.

Then, yes - I agree that it's misleading (in fact the preamble is misleading in other ways, as has been mentioned throughout this thread).

I think some of the criticism of this puzzle has been a bit harsh. Even after the "effect of the theme" became clear some of the clues were still tricky to parse.

Most preambles are intentionally open to interpretation and I did go down several blind alleys, but looking at the preamble again in retrospect I don't think it can be said to be misleading.

You're alive, ixion! Could you warm up your Weekend Warm-up?

With reference to Chambers, I think you'd even struggle to show that the 'effect of the theme' is what has depleted the grid, ixion. And with so many justifiable alternatives in Chambers I think the preamble needed to be particularly precise, maybe even generous - we'd already been misled enough.