Listen With Others

For a variety of reasons I seem to be starting the Listener later and later in the 10-day solving window. The main reason I suppose is a big change I’m having to make to the Crossword Database, but more on that at a later date. Anyway, I didn’t start Centigram’s puzzle until the Thursday, and I knew Friday and the following weekend would be busy, so I guessed I’d better get a move on.

‘Across answers must be entered in jumbled form.’ Oh, joy!! Now I know that there are a lot of you out there for whom this is a total turn-off. Personally, I don’t mind them, but they do present quite a challenge. Not, however, when you may be racing against time. For example, 13A, POSITIVITY, even if you got it early in the solving process (which I didn’t) helps very little with solving the down clues that go through it: being able to position the three Is in the unchecked squares gives some feeling of progress, but not much.

All in all then, this could be a bit of a toughie with all its cold solving. Although I remember Centigram’s Squaring the Circle last year with its John Donne quotation, my memory isn’t good enough to recall whether it was an easy puzzle or not. I suspected it was about average, and hoped this would be the same, perhaps three or four hours.

The first pass through the clues gave about a dozen answers, most of them going down, so an unexpected bonus there. 2D CANNACH, 3D LECTURES, 6D SLY and 18D HOTTER were among these, and 1D SPAE followed shortly. So 25A starts THE…. Very useful! And the initials of extra words seemed to start HEROD. So that could be Herod the Great or any one of the other Herods around early biblical times. Luckily however, the answers, although not coming thick and fast, did start to fill the grid at a reasonable pace.

Then, in one of those moments of looking vacantly at the grid, THE SEVEN VEILS appeared, and that was danced by SALOME (passing through the top barred-off square). According to my Oxford Companion to English Literature (4th ed. £2 15s and still going strong), half her relatives were those variously named Herods. Looking at the extra words again, they eventually spelt out Herod’s Brother’s Daughter followed by Dance. The final outcome appears with the head of John the Baptist (J) in the other barred off square, with the rest of him appearing at 25A, changing most of the crossing down words into different ones in the process. And under his head is the CHARGER.

A fine puzzle from Centigram, with an excellent theme, well implemented and some good clues; one of my favourites: [Cretan] god — one used in old day name (4).