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Can anyone else answer the question I posed at post 26? It turns out ixion is not actually doing this one! I'm torn between the 2 alternatives and am not convinced either way. The nearest adjective does not fit in with the other three. If as many have argued our response should reflect the total sense of the poem, then one cannot take the nearest adjective etc. Am I overlooking something obvious to the rest of you? Either that or the instruction is deliberately weird, I'm coming to think!

Greedy kite - suggest you read the first few lines of the second verse - everything should then be clear.

Do you mean the first few lines of the second poem? That's what we've been discussing all along, surely! Especially lines 3,4 & 7.There is no "second verse" as I see it . I cannot be more explicit without giving away everything. Do you see any reason why , when 4 adjectives are available, all of the same sort, a quite different sort should be required for the one, unlike the other three, just because it's nearer? This is becoming more & more mysterious, though the facts seem very straightforward to me. If I am being blind, then I need some explanation!

Until now no-one on either forum has addressed directly my criticism concerning the very last step to be taken here. At the risk of boring those not interested or those who are convinced the correct answer is obvious, I will try to set out afresh all 3 points I have made, hoping at the end that everyone will see it is impossible to respond to all three in the same way.
1. The word "nearest" is ambiguous ("small" or "ivory"?)
2.It may be difficult to enter a word in white, but not impossible: how about drawing only the outline of each letter?
3. If the general theme of the poem is to be reflected in the way we enter the 4 words, then they must all be answered in different colours, not according to size! Strangely enough this proposition seems to be assumed by some participants who then nevertheless come to the opposite conclusion.
And by the way I assume the word "verse" is being used by "BeRo" in the sense of a line, whereas the only sense I can make of my predecessor's hint is that he is using it to mean "stanza" --- but there are no stanzas marked here in my version at least (I've looked at 2 different sources).
Making a mountain out of a molehill? I don't want my answer disqualified after all that work because there is a contradiction involved in the instructions, or at least a certain unclarity!
Have I now made myself clear?

Hi GK

As you know I went for small. It is one word nearer ('be' as opposed to 'yet her') so I don't think there is ambiguity in that sense.

I can see your point that the puzzle lacks a sense of symmetry as the rest of the answers are colours but it doesn't say in the preamble that all 4 have to be the same.

I think the ambiguity is to how to enter small as in (lower case or just written in smaller capital letters compared to the rest of the grid)

What do others think?

Frankly, DJA, if that is the only question at stake here, and if it played a role at all in choosing the winner here, seeing that it CANNOT be clearly deduced from the instructions, I would regard the whole competition as even more dubious! There is no defence possible, however prestigious the puzzle, for such negligence. As I said before, if it's intended that way, all the worse! I'm beginning to wonder why others are so uncritical. Anywhere else one would speak of mistakes. Where the "Listener" is concerned, that seems to be taboo.

I think that greedy kite makes some good points well. In my view, this puzzle is flawed for the reasons s/he adduces.

The requirement uses the words ‘identifiably entered’, and I wonder whether the word ‘identifiably’ is intended to rule out ‘ivory’, although I take the point that an outline approach could be taken.

More generally, it seems to me that the Listener editors have allowed preambles to become more and more ambiguous, obscure, and unfair over time. The emphasis seems to be on meretricious offerings with convoluted endgames that require leaps of imagination or logic or both. A satisfying puzzle does not have to be contrived to confound through conjuring with words.

Hi carpox1

I agree with you that sometimes deciphering the preamble is harder than the puzzle itself.

In the case of this puzzle you had some very straightforward clues and then a convoluted endgame. I have ony been doing it for 6 months so I don't know if that is a recent dvelopment or something that has been the case for a long time.

I suppose it depends on whether you think the pdm and endgame is the interesting part of the puzzle.

However surely small is closer than ivory whatever way you look at it?

Hi folk , whilst most of you are debating the method of entry for the four features and remarking how easy the clues were, I have to admit that I'm finding the parsing of 2d very difficult . Any hint gratefully appreciated.
Cheers

Just to say I don't intend to contribute to this wearying discussion any longer whatever is said.I now have to devote my energies to getting my car repaired after landing on a field here due to mud on the road! Shall send off my entry still not knowing what the setter really intended us to understand. I feel I rather wasted my time on this "gem", to put it mildly!