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Recovering from nearly two days on aircraft and in airports (Ushuaia to Edinburgh via Buenos Aires and Paris) I, possibly alone among forum contributors, was profoundly grateful for a gentle Listener. Many thanks, Chalicea.

In my opinion, #29 is saying too much about the theme of what we agree is a gentle puzzle.

My apologies for eliciting too much info. My bad for making assumptions about the instructions - perimeter means All of the perimeter of course

I'm sorry if I gave away too much with my post.

Are one or two of you getting a bit arrogant. I have been attempting the Listener Crossword for at least 30 years. They have been getting steadily harder and more abstruse over the years. Even 20 years ago there were usually several puzzles that were accessible as well as being clever. Duck for instance was usually accessible and Kea's were always very clever.
I hardly attempt it now, so I for one welcome a more accessible puzzle. I think one can still appreciate the skill of putting it together even though the clues were easier than usual. Well done Chalicea

Not being a setter, I don't know how the process works in practice but I would imagine that for a regular contributor such as Chalicea, the commissioning editor would say "give me a puzzle of such a level of difficulty please". It's hardly the setter's fault if the end result satisfies the commission.

I like Chalicea's puzzles for a lot of reasons, not least because of the scrupulously fair clueing

It doesn't work like that Rob.

Setters set whatever they want and send it in. The editors then manage the publication order with what they have available, presumably to try to get a good mix of puzzles with not too many easy or hard in a row, which they generally do pretty well I think (and subject to some puzzles having definitive dates due to being anniversaries etc).

As a published IQ setter I don't think it would be giving too much away (it's kind of observable if one pays attention to such things anyway) to say that the difficulty range is broadly managed in batches of five puzzles i.e. there will be three 'averagely difficult' IQs along with one more accessible and one tougher in a batch.

Haha ignore that last comment as I mistakenly thought I was still on the IQ thread!!

(but maybe Listener works in a similar way...)

Yes, very straightforward. But I think good to have one like this now and again for complete newcomers to the Listener. Otherwise the audience will dwindle as we retirees die off!