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I don't know if any of the criticisms were referring to my posts, but I don't think I'm dissing the setter by saying that I don't like puzzles where I have to muck about with the answers before entering them!

I made a cursory attempt (less than usual Prize effort) and abandoned with three solutions unfilled. Posted "pass" and regret it...Not related to the setter, but IMO posting "no interest", "pass", etc. on a specific puzzle thread is pointless and not really good form.

I’m firmly in the appreciative camp for these “special” prize crosswords. The Christmas one was pretty brutal, what with the lack of vowels or composers I’d ever heard of, but we had all holiday to solve, so fair enough. Last week’s was easy and this week’s fair

Now the shiver alternative meaning (which I didn’t know) has been cleared up and the balance issue (I too couldn’t see past the apostrophe s as part of the anagram fodder), I have only one query. In 1d I have a word for diet and its antonym, but how does the wordplay work for the word for diet?

I filled in the stragglers and finished, so no longer in the naysayers camp. Really clever construction, thanks to Brummie.

Only slight niggle is that, once a particular word is deemed to be an antonym, one can ignore the wordplay and write in the solution from crossers (I think that was already mentioned upthread). But that heuristic is hardly different from any other crossword.

Hi Mdmaylwin,

I;m not sure this is correct, so if somebody comes up with a better option I'd go with that, but..

If you your watch "is not the right time" it could be "fast"/diet

Can't believe how long I was also staring at 30a trying to find a three letter balance. I guess it is coincidence that the middle anagram could have been six letters not five, but fiendish if not.

I'm still unsure of the chasm parsing (31a) and also not totally sure about the wordplay for diet in 1d although I supposed something about a fast watch as well.

I am sure of the 31 parsing: it's 2 ("next to") into 3 ("fool").

100% agree. What if the crosswords aren't too clever by half, but we're sometimes too... er... 😁

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed that and (assuming my parsing of 1d is correct, see@75) I'm happy with all my answers pre and post antonym.

Yes it was difficult, but this is the Prize crossword after all:-)

Hats off to Brummie for a real challenge and for showing a dash of ingenuity... or should that be "ineptness" See what I did there😉 - yes, very clever Bren, we can hardly contain ourselves 😂)

Geeker@70

Sorry for the delay in responding, I somehow managed to miss your post.

Possibly, but that would be the first time I've ever come across a setter to use "endlessly" to get rid of 10 letters - not saying it's wrong, just that I haven'r encountered it before:-)