Just dropped my entry into the mail for this weekend’s Listener puzzle, “Atom Smasher”. Another fairly simple one: After solving eight or nine clues, I found one of the 13 “clashes” in the grid (places where a pair of across and down words have different letters where they cross), and just looking at the letters I’d filled in already in the grid, my puzzle brains kicked in and I had a hunch about what was going on with the 13 clashes, and that turned out to be right.

I worked on the puzzle on my commute home, and a little more after dinner, and by bedtime I had solved enough to read the message that told how I was to resolve the clashes in the grid. I didn’t work on it again till Saturday evening, because I spent all afternoon working on the play I’m working on, but once I’d started again it didn’t take me long to finish. Having spotted the sort of pattern in the clashes was a help when I got to the last four or five clues, as it helped me know where the last few clashes could and couldn’t be.

Pleasant puzzle, not great, not bad.