Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

All sorted: the symmetry, and fixing my spelling, sorted my ambiguity concerns. I’ve looked through what people have said here too, and I think I agree with all the praise *and* all the criticism :-) It’s a masterful one, but definitely a bit of a slog at times, and more than a little GWIT, grid staring, and a bit of a Google hunt for quotations — my 1997 copy of ODQ doesn’t have this one in! And it’s quite harsh to have so many unches with tough (but fine and sometimes funny) clues, and a carte blanche, and a novel entry method, all in one package — the only thing to make it harder would have been to leave out the grid lines altogether: which might have helped 🤣. But a good one nevertheless, and we’re not here for an easy ride after all! I notice no one has popped up this week to say how Listeners aren’t as hard as they once used to be. So there’s that. And tomorrow I’ll start on the next one!

Maybe after a few more days have passed, someone with a longer memory could comment on whether this device for grid entry has shown up before? That would be interesting to know. I’ve not seen it, that I can remember, but I’m a relative newbie here :-)

Any help with 2d would be welcomed. I have a 4 letter answer (plural of a 70s cartoon) but it doesn't fit in the grid!

Sorry, I meant a reversal of a three letter kids cartoon pluralised. My brain is mush!

This one is now at the level of keeping me awake at night, so this is a plea for help! I have all the answers; have found a way of making them fit in the grid (albeit with 8 blank cells); I have the phrase; I'm confident I've got the right quote because it fully explains 8 cells which have either 2 or 3 letters in them. But I cannot get the addition from the bottom row up to 'work'. Are the phrase's letters added in the correct order (I.e first letter to a letter in the bottom row; second letter to a diagonally contiguous letter in the second bottom row etc.). An answer to that or a hint as to where in the bottom row to start my additions would be much appreciated. If nothing else, I'd like to move on to 4801.

Your grid isn’t quite right, there shouldn’t be any blank cells - crack that piece and everything else will fall into place

Thank you so much! I think I'm there now. Annoyingly I had noticed the point in middle of each edge but hadn't seen it through. Thanks again.

Been thinking about this since I finally completed it on Friday night. Huge satisfaction of the 2 separate PDMs related to the quote, but I needed all this forum's help to find it (the co-writer does not appear in my 3rd edition of ODQ). Essentially agree with all that's been said: tough but fair, with some lovely clues. Came back on the forum basically just to see what others are still saying about it.

longhare - if you're still looking for help with 2d; there is help earlier in the forum (which I needed at the time): 'pulpy' is an anagram indicator. The last word is the definition, the pen-ultimate is a geographical indicator.

Thanks Neophyte, I followed that reasoning for 2d and came up with a word that doesn't fit the grid (similar yo what my gran would have done at the bingo wuth her massive felt-tip). I can see another word that does fit, e.g. row of.... , but cannot see the wordplay.

Not sure how far you are into it, but note the rubric that you must deduce the entry methods to fit answers into the grid

Came back to this after getting bored with trying to tie up the loose ends in 4801.
Made heavy weather of it because of incorrect assumptions about the entry methods but finally got over the line when I realised how to eliminate ambiguities.
All without the quotation which I only identified after completing the puzzle.
The nearest I have been to giving up for some years - so a good puzzle in my view.