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My apologies to Norah and other solvers for being overly explicit at #72 sometimes its hard to know where the line must be drawn. Finally staggered over the finish line and staggering is an apt word for the complexity of the setting. Brilliant work Elgin. Those pennies just kept on dropping (albeit slowly). See you all next week. Thanks for the support

Lumen - did you not see Norah's latest post? People need to stop giving the cleverness of the endgame away.

I applaud Norah's efforts.

If you think the endgame doesn't quite work, then you've got more to do. Or If it all fits perfectly, well done.

Ditto re Norah ... when with the honest objective of assisting someone who has requested assistance ... carefully re-reading your answer before posting should hopefully alert you to 'have I said too much?' ...

I accidentally (!) solved this correctly first time round. It is only reading all the comments in the forum which make me realise the absolute genius of the incorrect solution being there too. What a masterful construction.

Since I can't see any 'masterful construction' or suchlike I must assume that my solution is incorrect.

All very puzzling.

Anyhow all will be revealed in a few weeks!

Now that I've been attempting Listener puzzles for over 4 years, I usually look at the website to see if I've had any previous encounters with the setter. Not so with Elgin whose previous puzzle appeared in 2020. But I was struck by the stats of an earlier Elgin puzzle which attracted an entry of 300; 32 were correct and 268 incorrect! Yikes!

Dim,
I may not understand all of this puzzle's secrets but, for what I think is the incorrect solution, the 4th friend highlighted in the grid, wouldn't link to the 4 original friends as required by the preamble.

Buzzb, I’ve amended the text of Lumen’s reply as I received a complaint about it.

Thanks to Mullinger for apologising and to Iratus & Crates who applauded my efforts in monitoring the Listener thread.

I can’t even do the simple Daily Mail crossword and so have great admiration for our members who tackle puzzles like the Listener.

I try and be fair both to experts and beginners alike but it’s very difficult for me to decide if certain text crosses the line so I generally play safe and delete it. In deleting these posts, I hope that I’m not thwarting beginners who need more help than our more expert solvers. I certainly don’t want to pander to those members who would rather that no information be given at all. At the end of the day, this is a Crossword Help Forum.

This fence upon which I sit is very uncomfortable at times.😂

You're doing a fine job Norah. Bravo. This thread works really well almost all the time these days. Think we've managed to hit a pretty good spot of providing assistance but not answers on individual clues without giving too much away about the overall theme, thanks in no small part to your moderation.