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Just looking at Mary 6's cry for help - how on earth did she get to the point where she knew it was MAUPASSANT, ASSUMING and GREGARIOUS when she self-confessedly doesn't have a clue as to how the cryptic wordplay works, and didn't understand WHY these were the correct answers?
She must have filled in a fair proportion of the grid to even guess at these three - three that I for one found particularly difficult - unless she just thinks 'novelist? 10 letters? Oh, yeah:[GUY DE] MAUPASSANT
Is she an intuitive genius, or a disingenue?

Mary6 please explain yourself - how do you do it?

Wish I could.

Quixote: Until Mary replies, here is an experiment for you: supposing you had solved all the across clues, the known letters could be put into "quick solve" on this site. In the case of 11 down and 2d there is only one answer for each.

Jazzgirl has it spot on , rare that it would happen with 3 clues but indeed it does, just tried it on Chambers Word Wizard.

Hi Quixote - to explain myself: I had ?a?p?s???t. Thought the answer must be the name of a novelist who wrote a collection of short stories. (ok so that bit's wrong). Had studied Maupassant's Quinze Contes many years ago and there we are. The final A gave me artful so figured it was as good an answer as any.
Got the answer to 45d by putting l?p?a?e into quick solve.

Ah, Mary. You introduced yourself by saying: "I'm quite new to these puzzles & although have got some of the answers I really don't understand why - if anyone would be kind enough to explain I'd be very grateful."
You have to admit that that suggests a complete novice - but you must have got a LOT of across clues solved before you asked(and of course you can't use Quicksolve or whatever it's called until you've got quite a lot of completed crossings, so you have to start with naked intelligence) - I reckon you're not half as naive as you think you are!

Maybe I'm a little prelapsarian!

jazzgirl, Mamya - of course she could put the down partials into the mincer if, as you say, she'd already solved most of the across clues - but how would she solve most of the across clues if, as she said herself,she didn't really understand why the answers were correct - "..although I've got some of the answers I really don't understand why"
Mary, are you relly telling me that you guessed all those across answers without really understanding how cryptic wordplay works? Prelapsarian maybe - but I think you've evidently eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge!

I was in no way meaning that Mary merely solved using word wizards etc, I am sure she is a very capable solver - sorry if it came out wrong.

I agree with mamya. I was pointing out the facility available on the site in case you had not noticed it.

in my time I've used every crossword cheat in the book in pursuit of those bottles of fizz....Crossword Compiler's huge searchable English wordlist, into which you can pop [?]and [*] wildcards; Chambers Dictionary on CD - complete with reverse serch and wild card facilities - (search just for 'Scottish' for those 'Mac' and 'Ian' clues, for instance) and good old Anagrammer (mainly fr scrabble.
But in my old age I want to prove to myself that I can do it in my own head using just my general knowledge and native wit, without rushing through the rainforest with bulldozers (12). Of course, with puzzles like the Listener, where they set words so obscure that very few even really well-read people have ever come across them, you do need the occasional final machine help to complete.

Maybe the prelapsarian ability of A & E to match words to things was lost in the fall......
here, incidentally, is Joyce's representation of the sound of The Fall from Finnegans Wake - now wouldn't that make a darlin' crossword solution - I'm going to nominate it for Clueless!!

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