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Malone, following the instruction gives two crossing chains of diamonds, i.e. the cells that are not made 39, whereas the thematic object should consist of two bands. The only way of doing that would be for the unaffected areas to extend beyond the cell boundaries, which would breach the preamble.

Re the alleged dumbing down of the Listener in earlier comments, the average level of difficulty so far this year has been about the same as most other years. Last year was a tough year but it wasn't typical. I remember complaints about dumbing down in 2007, which was a particularly easy year because there were few really challenging puzzles. This year I think there have been around ten puzzles that were above average difficulty , and one, the most recent numerical, that was at the top of the scale (for some it was off the scale).

Thanks, Murky. I held my solution at arm's length and looked at an online depiction - they were similar enough for me! Other aspects of the puzzle bothered me more - I felt the clueing could have been a little tougher.

I'm not a regular Listener solver so can't contribute much to the ongoing debate. I notice the very easy ones and the very difficult ones, though regular solvers no doubt find the latter less challenging.

I'd agree with others that this was a rather tame Listener crossword with generally uninspiring and a several poor clues. The best setters never allow the surface reading to compromise the clue's essential elements, for example in 7d where a reversal rather than an anagram indicator is required, and the editor really should have spotted the indirect anagram in 29a.

Crosswhit

Hi. I don’t have an indirect anagram in 29a. I have an old word for jobs minus P.

I agree on 7, but wasn’t sure on the convention there. A reversal is an anagram obviously - is it considered bad form to use an anagram word to indicate a reversal?

Hi Smellyharry

Your parsing of 29a is far better, thank you.

Regarding the wordplay in 7d, whilst swapping the first and last letters in a three letter word does make an anagram it isn't much of a jumble and would usually be indicated as a reversal.