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Yes, Crates, I have little time for 'A Brief History of History.' Paradoxically, I have much more time to look at history in depth.

I suppose a lot of things change now, with the internet : less will be deliberately forgotten, or just mislaid. But I keep saying to the younger ones: "Back up everything in case something happens to the internet; there is no security in a cloud."

Hello. I'm a relative newcomer to The Listener and am normally more comfortable with The Times. I've had some success with what contributors to this site regard as the "easier" (or sometimes ruder descriptions) models over the last year or so but this puzzle strikes me as a good example of one of my prime difficulties - moving from a completed, or nearly completed, grid on to the "endgame". In this one I had a virtually completed grid and a virtually complete message but then came to a standstill. Can anyone offer me guidance on how you make the jump from Lang (or possibly as I still had it Leng) to the particular poem of his many writings in which the fifth line guides you to the ultimate theme? I couldn't make that leap without considerable help from this forum. And finally is there any more to the title than Chap =man and stick = bat? Thanks for any help.

crovig - to do the Listener, you probably know that you meed to be able to access the Chambers Dictionary, the big red book as it is often referred to. Setters sometimes assume you will be able to access, through having a copy or via a library, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. In this case The ODQ has very few poems by Lang, so checking the fifth line in them is very straightforward.
If you have not come across it, is well worth having a look at
http://listenercrossword.com/List_Intro.html

Hi, crovig, I share your frustration. I don't have a copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. I have the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Quotations, but this quote isn't included. I'd forgotten that I have an old edition of the Everyman's Dictionary of Quotations and Proverbs, but when I just checked this, I found that it includes the key quotation but not the previous four lines, so it wouldn't have been obvious that this was the line hinted at by the missing/extra/first/last letters.

I was able check the key quotation when I went into work on Monday and could access the ODQ online. There was only one quote from Lang in the ODQ that had five lines or more, and so identifying the key quotation was straightforward at that point. I had a fairly good idea of what was required from hints on this forum, but it's always better to work everything out.

I don't think there's a magic formula for working the endgame out, which is why people talk of the PDM (penny-dropping moment). I think that, for all of us, there are times when the penny drops almost immediately (sometimes knowing that there's a key anniversary can help) and other times when the penny stays annoyingly undropped.

Just to add that The Chambers Dictionary is available as an app for ipad/iphone or android devices for considerably less than the book and has advantages in search and anagram functions. Also many local authority etc library cards allow access to online reference books like the ODQ. or Oxford Dictionaries.

Hi Crovig, and welcome. I see that you've had responses from two of the regulars, so I'll confine myself to the title and endgames.
I think if you interpret the title as 'Chaps, stick' then it becomes a suggestion of overlap.

Possible Listener endgames...I don't know I can recall all the many types, but generally they fall into recognisable categories. This is a downfall of the Listener nowadays : there aren't really so many innovative puzzles, but mostly iterations of various previous endgame types. Such as, 'wordsearch' which is basically staring at the completed grid until something horizontal, vertical or diagonal seems to make sense. Probably not the most skillful endgame, but variations of this theme have involved plotting the course of famous journeys, battles etc., which have been quite clever. Then you get the origami fetishists, thankfully not so frequently now, and the Blue Peter brigade, who encourage destroying the grid with scissors.

Not every puzzle uses an endgame. Many of the radials don't, and I remember an entertaining puzzle which converted letters into atomic numbers which was quite fun.

Having missed the last two listeners due to work commitments, I was looking forward to cracking on with this one. Far be it from me to have a query but, without access to chambers I am stumped by 1d and 36d, both of which are ( in terms of the theme) fillers, and neither of which seem to be straightforward words. the crossing 3LWs are (imo) much more tricky than filler clues might have been. Clearly the process of clueing is relatively easy one the theme has been decided, but imo there are too many unnecessary leaps of faith here.
The only definition of RUTTER I know is the Dutch map, and maybe a cross stag, I presume this is right but, to clue it so obscurely seems almost deliberately perverse.

An awful lot of non-words are also used here which needn’t be there except to add a veneer of impenetrability. Don’t think me niggardly but this has been a slog (ahem).

n00b.
My main frustration was yhat without ODQ it was virtually impossible to identify the theme. I think the clues were fair.
1d is a word for a spicey nut on I ans the first letter of clubhouse. The definition needs an extra letter.
36 down is not RUTTER. A collective noun for cattle can also be applied to birds. The answer is an old word for cattle (hoof).

Oops. Not a spicy nut - just a run of the mill woodland one. I responded without referring back to the original puzzle and misremembered the clue.

Thank you for your helpful replies and in particular Meursault for pointing out the overlap in the title which, of course, I had failed to pick up. I was surprised that nobody in the forum had mentioned the title - perhaps it was just to obvious to most of you. I hope to learn.