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Indeed, Gitto. As I’ve said before, I do wish these puzzles were graded, like the Magpie. How is a newcomer to know? Variability in difficulty is inevitable, but I think this was extreme. I don’t know why the editors didn’t make it a carte blanche.

Slightly underwhelming although fairly neat. Got held up for half an hour on the SW corner and am not totally happy with my answer to 8d, so not a total pushover for me.

Fair play to Dr CC for getting 5 puzzles published in just over a year and a half when most setters can only get one published in that period.

I thought the answer which fits the grid (German Measles ) was a different disease(known as the sixth disease in infants and not GM ?

Smellyharry, I'm intrigued by the Dr CC reference - please enlighten me!😃

If you Google listener setters you can see a list of all setters, their puzzles and some info about them (depending how much they want to reveal).

Lysander is a collab between Aedites and a relative by the looks of things. Aedites is a Dr Covey-Crump.

Smellyharry. Dr C-C, A splendid gentleman- we were on the same trip to Myanmar as he was 10 years ago. We saw his Listener crossword on the coach seat and said, whilst we always do the numerics, we balk at the others. Nonsense he said, when we get back, I’ll mail you my latest, persevere. He did, we completed it and the rest, as they say, is history.

re my query at 13 I have now received help in the other place.
It appears the word in the grid is used only by North Americans and should be shown as such in Chambers who incorrectly show it as a another medical name for German Measles.

Thanks for the heads-up, smellyharry. I have had a nosey at The Listener site and Lysander and Aedites appear to be one and the same. No further info apparent but I may be missing something. The good doctor could surely have been a perfectly good character in The Goons, Monty Python or Blackadder?

Whilst agreeing that this was generally quite easy, I'm stuck at 9ac (not having an ODE) and also 2dn, where I have several candidates, none of which make much sense. Tips please?

Also, no idea what to do with the 4x4

dylan, each blue square in the main grid = one cell in the 4x4. The letter that goes in each of the 16 squares is represented by a 3-letter "word" within each blue square