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I haven’t quite finished yet, but the need for food, wine and music means I’ll do the rest tomorrow. I haven’t found the clues particularly tough, but with coded entries intersecting with jumbles, filling the top half of the grid is like peeling off a stubborn sticky label. To me this is very much a “let’s make this as hard as possible” puzzle which will delight some and vex others. I’m enjoying it more than recent Sabres, but after the recent Android, Skylark and Aver puzzles I can’t get too excited about it.

He's notorious, always one of the toughest of the year. The expert solvers love him but I find him unfair most of the time, mainly because you normally have to virtually cold solve 3/4 of the clues, which are tough, before you can get anywhere.

This looks like it may be slightly more approachable than some of his others but will still likely be about 10 hours of frustration then giving up about 2/3 of the way through with a solid brick wall hit, which is my normal experience with Sabre.

Loge, I’m sure this puzzle will vex more than it delights, but so what? The answers, theme and everything else will be given away on here by this time tomorrow, anyway, as they always are. I hope it’s not a popularity contest. I for one am delighted that the recent trend of dumbing down has been halted, for now at any rate. I do agree we’ve had a fine run recently.

Thanks Sabre - really enjoyed the challenge.

Couldn't resist a last look before bed - finally crawled over the finish line. It is a stiff challenge that will please those who feel the Listener has dumbed down. I'm all up for hard puzzles if they're entertaining too - but in all honesty I found this to be a duty rather than a pleasure.

I have a full bottom half and a virtually empty top half. The PDM on the missing letters helped a lot but, without a second PDM on the substitution code, I do not (yet) see how this can be solved. I'm off on holiday for a week now, so I will be AWOL until next Sunday (unless that 2nd PDM occurs in the next 30 mins!)

Persevere Gitto - I must admit by 11pm last night with about a dozen clues to go I thought I was beaten, but two hours this morning and a fresh pair of eyes work wonders. The last stage (resolving the coding) is one of those where you just have to follow your instincts - but there is a fairly obvious way in.

A real toughie, but then I knew it would be - thanks Sabre.

The long thematic entry has a helpful pattern with one often repeated character - a bit of trial and error will reveal the theme but it's still a grind after that!

Splendid puzzle. I’m always struck at the end by how scrupulously fair the clues are, even if it takes a fair while for the penny to drop with each of them. Satisfying solve.