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quisling

26th December 2020, 23:34
I thought the clashes were unnecessary. It’s a challenging enough puzzle without them. And while I admire the construction, Harribobs is in grave danger of becoming a one-trick pony. He may have written a program to compile such puzzles, but most solvers don’t have that luxury. Sorry, but if his next effort uses the same motif then count me out
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pentlandsound

26th December 2020, 23:36
Agree with loge that this is one of the trickier puzzles! After spending much of the day on it I'm still short of 13, 13/17 and 7/11, but have enough of it completed to enable extraction of (some of?) the singers. I'm not familiar with the work, so had to reverse-engineer my list of singers by consulting Wikipedia and hunting for certain letters in the grid. There's also a nice touch in the run from 15 to 19.
Not going to spend too much more time on this, unless I have any sudden flashes of inspiration!
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muraria

27th December 2020, 00:15
I sort of enjoyed this one once I'd finished! I lost count of both the letters and circuits a couple of times before it all fell into place.
13 is a famous Alpine Peak reversed
13/17 is a band famous for their ubiquitous Christmas song round a three-letter abbr. for "in English"
7/11 is a Roman General
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loge

27th December 2020, 08:10
Puzzle sent, Luftmensch.
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luftmensch

27th December 2020, 10:47
Thank you Loge (autocorrect keeps trying to change that to Love!) That's my Sunday sorted - last night's storm seems to have ended my hopes of a walk in Epping Forest anyway.
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ozzy

27th December 2020, 10:51
Not my favourite, I am afraid. Counting through six lead singers was overly tedious rather than an interesting challenge.
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loge

27th December 2020, 12:06
Agree, Ozzy. I had head start with this as it's one of my favourite themes, so I was able to guess what I was looking for from the first one or two letters of each singer. But it still took ages to count them out. One slight lapse of concentration and you have to start again.

Quisling, you make a good point. Was there not a similar point raised with a previous Harribobs puzzle (an EV, I think)?

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pentlandsound

27th December 2020, 12:32
Thanks muraria - all finished now. Never heard of this particular 'fabulous beast' before! I had a wrong letter in one of the entries crossing the Alpine peak, so no wonder I got stuck there.
Agree with other posters - the puzzle is a work of art in its construction, but there do seem to be too many unnecessary clashes. That said, I liked it and found it enjoyable - certainly difficult, but not so difficult as to make me give up on it entirely.
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quisling

27th December 2020, 12:41
There was, loge, not only for his EV, I believe, but for this year’s Listener 4609 in May, which took us to Shepton Mallet and Budleigh Salterton in the same way. Again, a hint of inaccuracy in the endgame meant sliding down the snake to the beginning. I wasn’t one of the critics then, as it happens
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loge

27th December 2020, 12:54
Thanks Quisling, I remember now that you mention it.

I’d add that two of the singers identified here aren’t really lead singers, although they are important to the theme. But that’s nitpicking!
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