Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

The clues...

Requests for help should normally include the clue itself, the number of letters in the answer and details of any you already have. Any special instructions oor additional information should also be included.
NB Hints only, please, no answers.

The theme...
Requests may be made here for a little help towards the theme. 'Little' and 'gentle nudges' are hard to define, of course, but the aim is to give a little nudge in the right direction, a little pointer to what's needed. There's no place for overly revealing information which could spoil the puzzle for other solvers. Any such posts are likely to be removed.

The Listener is a unique puzzle and deserves to be treated with respect.

Have a full grid and formed a fifth so that's it. All done. There are a good dozen (mainly down clues) that I can't parse satisfactorily which is just poor work from me .
Cheers Vagans!!

Yep, just over an hour to fill the grid and do the endgame. Neat enough.

Likewise on the down clues - I have 2 sets of the down sixes but no idea what the third set is at all. Will come back and try to tie up the loose ends tomorrow.

BRB will help, smellyharry

I'm not sure what the point of the down clue extra characters is, other than adding a degree of intricacy to these clues. For the most part, I solved the clues from their definitions and the crossing letters and parsed the wordplay afterwards. Then they have no further part to play in the endgame.

That was all very gentle; the end game was unambiguous and the relevance of the title was clear. Thank you, Vagans. I was, however, confused by the inclusion of the down sets. One seemed to have a sort of connection to the outcome, but none of the superfluous down material was necessary to complete the puzzle. No doubt I’m missing something obvious; it’s usually the case!

Agree with all these comments - first two solves in 3 minutes, lots of fairly obvious anagram solutions, now got a 99% gridfill (21a problematic); happy with most entries confidently as defined, but mystified by quite a few wordplay parsings - probably because I haven't spotted and extracted the 'characters' yet - and can't yet read the across-'characters' message.

Now to do a rather pointless Wiki-search to complete the down-'character' lists, for personal satisfaction only. A curious mix of too easy and opaque, but some very interesting words - thanks, Vagans.

Quixote, I think 21a will be less problematic when you identify the surplus character.

Figured out the third set in the down clues now. Only loose end now for me is 24d - doesn't seem to be a wordplay element to it unless I'm missing something?

Any hints as to how this clue works gratefully received.

24d I assume you've removed the character so the remainder is really an &lit.