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I am so pleased that I thought "life's too short when" I read the preamble on Saturday. Hats off to the intrepid souls who persevered👍

It would have been too much time out of what I have left, and this week's Times Cryptic Jumbo took at least double the normal time. Thank goodness for a Shirley puzzle with EV!

@bobbyc I felt/feel v much the same about this one. I keep looking at it and cold solving the odd one but it's a step too far for me I think...no answer lengths, blank grid with holes in? Meh.

I've given up too.
Phi, if you're checking in to see how we are enjoying it....sorry!

Yes. I don't remember the last crossword I just gave up on having cold solved 60% of the clues. I'll gnaw away at the Magpie D and E grades for up to a month knowing 'you can't win 'em all' but I'm afraid that this one is for the recycling quite soon.

Granama1, if it’s any help, that’s about how much cold solving I did before I was able to start putting the grid together. The information about symmetry is useful in that regard, as once you have the length of one across answer you know the length of its counterpart. And you can make a fair stab at the location of the middle block of cells. Hopefully you’ll have a few early downs to tie in with the first couple of acrosses, and you’ll be on your way. But of course if you can’t be bothered that’s fair enough!

Quisling, I have the first 5 acrosses and the first 7 downs! There seems to be a lot of short answers although I have a few 7's an 8s.

I suspect I'll nibble away at it until either a) the solution is published or b) the next Magpie is issued. 😄

That sounds like more than enough to start entering! Yes, plenty of four letter answers. I’d just start pencilling them in. They can easily be moved. And bear in mind a comment I made earlier. The empty blocks show 180 but not mirror symmetry. Narrows the options from 3 to 2

And a couple of 2s, of course …

Thanks Quisling. I'd spotted a 2 and a few 3s.

Q? Given that 'blocks may be skipped across initially clued answers' I assumed that the presence of so many short answers they weren't split across the empty blocks but find the wording suggests they may be. It's a little unclear, to me. (The possibility that they may be was another reason I was prepared to shrug and move on!).

The two letter answers aren’t split, to ensure symmetry on their row. The three letter ones can be, but only by the middle block of cells. And the first and last across entries are