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Thanks Crucifer, I'd never have thought of that. Most of the clues were very good, even amusing (supermarket, dah-dah-dah etc), but that one wasn't.

Is the title of the sequel significant? Where would I find it? Thanks.

Hi Unclued, It's on the wiki site for the author, under 'published works.' It's listed 8th, in amongst other masterpieces such as, 'Metamagical Themas', 'Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies', and 'That Mad Ache.' Makes me wonder whether the page didn't get muddled with Barbara Cartland...

Wiki the author, one of his titles with 5 words should jump out as a description of the form of the grid and the title of the puzzle. Bit weak though to be honest, and you don't need it. Thought this was pretty good overall, as was last weeks, which I've also just finished, having taken a while to find my butter b and my RNP.

Apologies if I missed it but did we ever resolve the 6 dashes vs the 5 dashes in the Shackleton puzzle. The answer last week seemed to have the 5 dashes in it as far as I could see.

Cheers Meursault. I thought this crossword was routine but I would like to have had a more interesting ending.

Thanks Harry!

Sorry, Harry, I lost interest and recycled my Shackleton puzzle quite soon after filling the grid...

Harry

For the answer straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, see

https://listenwithothers.com/2017/06/25/listener-no-4453-army-navy-a-setters-blog-by-shackleton/

Thanks gem. Don't want to get off topic too far, but very poor explanation from the setter in, my view. It's a shame because the whole idea of creating the code and 'iced walks north' is brilliant. But the explanation doesn't hang together because although there are six different letters in 'to the pole', you only actually encode five of them.

Still on Shackleton, I thought the setter's original wording was far clearer, and it would have probably saved all the agonising on this site and elsewhere.

On this puzzle, having finished two days ago in almost record time for me, I'm still struggling to fully parse 27a. It looks suspiciously non-Ximenean and more appropriate to the Guardian, but I may have misunderstood it. Can anyone enlighten me?

Another clue surprised me. The Listener has always been meticulous about homophone clues, and the Chambers pronunciation guide has always been the measure of a clue's acceptability. In this case the answer is not pronounced as the clue suggests because the syllabic break occurs after the R. I don't think the final question mark justifies the deviation.