1ac was typical of the problems that were to be faced: They baffle revolutionary reserve holding line. The corrected misprint could be raffle, waffle, deserve, or indeed devolutionary … plus a whole host of possibiities like pine, lone, live and link. So I ignored 1ac for now and went on to 6ac which was likely to be horse depicter rather than Norse depicter, and that could only be STUBBS. I decided to linger in the top right corner for a bit, and 6dn STOWE and 8dn BROTH were soon slotted in.

It’s always fun when the setter conceals a misprint in a word that forms part of an anagram, and 9dn was probably one such clue Transporting aid once ruined the boats. Here again, the corrected word could be one of many possibilities, although knowing that the answer began with B (from Stubbs) did reduce the options: I reckoned that boots and brats were the most likely. Of course, I was wrong. Getting 23ac VELCRO a bit later made BAT-HORSE look like it would be the answer, but it wasn’t in Chambers … at least, not under bat! For some reason I was assuming that both it and ‘batman’ were derived from the flying creature, rather than from a French word for packsaddle and therefore had their on entries. VELCRO was another entertaining clue, with the answer being hidden not in novel craft, but in novel croft.

I won’t say that progress was quick, but then I rarely do (last week’s Dipper puzzle being very much the exception). There were some good clues and, I have to say, some deceptive definitions to be found, like:

 
I found that what the corrected letters were spelling out took some unravelling, especially the second half. DRAT and BUT seemed to be lurking, but I decided that the last word was probably POPE. There was only one thing for it, and that was to look through all 11½ columns of Alexander Pope’s entry in the ODQ. Luckily I soon came across An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot and “‘Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’” Indeed, the corrected letters spelt out Who breaks upon a wheel with a butterfly missing.

So where was the missing butterfly? According to the preamble, it was in the grid “in an appropriate form”, presumably that of either a butterfly or a wheel … or possibly a Rorschach ink blot! Despite guessing, correctly, that wheel was most likely, I failed to see anything obvious, probably because I was starting in the wrong place. I resorted to Chambers Crossword Dictionary. I’ve said before that I like the way this reference book lists words by length, and here I was looking for a 16-letter butterfly. Well it didn’t have any more than 15 letters. Hmmm. I sat back in my chair and pondered. Believe it or not, I pondered for about five minutes before I decided to consult Bradford’s! There I found three: Camberwell beauty, chequered skipper and tiger swallowtail. The Camberwell beauty was soon being highlighted in a wheel shape around the centre of the grid.

Thanks to Hypnos for an enjoyable, if tricky, puzzle. It took me about 3½ hours to finish the grid and a further 20 minutes to eventually find the butterfly. Just as last year had a fair number of science-based puzzles, I’m now wondering whether the editors are getting us ready for a year of horticultural themes!
 

A few Scots words helped. The Scottish numpty actually uses the words TRAUCHLE and OCHONE and we had a stab at those, working backwards from what we decided had to be the solution, to the wordplay. ‘Drudge from Edinburgh given tons by male in Glasgow touring hospital (8)’.  T(ons) was followed by RAUCLE around H(ospital). The Pacific resident had to be a COHO so, for some reason, we were removing the NE from OCHONE and anagramming the OCHO. I still don’t know how the N corrected misprint in TOP persuaded us to do that!

Our struggles continued with the pattern being repeated – think of a word, make the wordplay fit! It only became easier as the grid was populated, but we had lots of doubt. Could SHOT really be the answer to ‘Part of firm spell (4)’? If it is ‘part of fiLm’ the ‘spell’ is ‘informal’ and also comes from the same headword. Hmmm! NOTE held us up for a while as well. This too seemed to be the same head word used in two different senses (Cry of bird in murk – mArk). Double hmmmm!

‘Striker loud once in lines about end of union (5)’ We had HENR? so this looked like a reference to Thierry HENRY but surely we are not allowing Arsenal to invade Listener territory? Was that ‘loud’ giving us an A misprint in ‘loAd’? (And the ALL BLACKS seem to have snuck in too – is Hypnos a sports freak? At least he had the decency to include the usual Listener compiler tipple with a bottle of fine BEAUNE at 42ac.)

Fortunately Dr Arbuthnot appeared and put us out of our misery. The letters we had confirmed that the fruitless effort of the title was the breaking of a butterfly on a wheel. (WHO BREAKS A BUTTERFLY UPON A WHEEL? of Alexander Pope’s EPISTLE TO DR ARBUTHNOT.)

As usual, having those misprints helped us solve our final clues, especially those nasty little four letter ones – ‘Retired Latin with a look showing dejection (4)’. Now we knew that we had to produce a Book, so our retired Latin had to be an RC going into reverse mode before AB, and CRAB conveniently produced ‘dejected’ in the bumper vermilion volume.

Am I moaning again? Yes, but more about my own solving ability than about Hypnos’ subtle clues. Once we had the quotation, life became easier and, for once, we were not desperately struggling to find the endgame for a couple of days after filling our grid. We knew we had to find a butterfly and that it had to be ‘upon a wheel’, and there, of course, right in the centre, was our Camberwell beauty. I think my effort filled more than sixteen cells – heigh-ho. Thank you, Hypnos.

The February Magpie has just hit the (virtual) newstands, and with it a very worrying editorial from AJ (Mash) concerning the future of the publication. It appears that subscription renewals for 2012 have been much lower than normal, and if this does not improve, then this may be the Magpie’s final year.

So, I’m sure all crossword lovers will join me in saying:

If you haven’t tried the Magpie before, head over to www.piemag.com, and have a go at the sample puzzles that can be downloaded. And, if you like them, please subscribe – only £35 for the year, with pro-ratas available. £35 for 72 puzzles top quality puzzles a year – why wouldn’t you subscribe? Even if you only solve a handful of those, it’s still as cheap as chips.

If you have subscribed before, but haven’t renewed, why not renew now? Again, even if you solve only a few of the puzzles, it’s still worth it.

The editors are also keen to hear any suggestions for ways to increase the readership, so I’m sure they’d love to hear from anybody with any ideas. And, of course, from anybody who would like to subscribe.

It would be terrible to see the Magpie come to an end after ten years of publishing such an ecelectic range of high-quality word and number puzzles, featuring most of the setters who appear in the Listener, Inquisitor and EV.

Besides, if the Magpie did come to an end, I’d be forced to find some people with whom to start my own monthly subscription puzzles magazine. It wouldn’t be as good as the Magpie, and I’d have to commit so much time to it that my wife would probably divorce me. So for the sake of my children, please help!

A quick run through all the clues, and I got half a dozen across entries and the same number of downs. That was a pretty poor show, but was probably due to the ‘interference’ of the extra words. Luckily, these entries gave enough of a skeleton for solving to progress quite quickly. In fact, very quickly — the puzzle was finished in just under an hour and 40 minutes.

Near the end, I looked at the initial letters of the extra words that I had identified: MAN••ING•OWI•••LA•TI•GOFKI•C•E••A••ENS. It didn’t take much guesswork to deduce that the title of the book was Manuring, Sowing, Planting of Kitchen Gardens. It didn’t seem to be a particularly catchy title, and I suspected that it wasn’t one of last year’s bestsellers.

Having completed the grid, there were just the the two unclued entries to complete: RI•HAR• and •ARD•NE•, so it looked like some guy called Richard Gardener. With no additional references given in the preamble, a quick check in the ODQ was called for, and revealed that it was actually some guy called Richard Gardiner, born c1533, and the full title of his book was Profitable Instructions for the Manuring, Sowing and Planting of Kitchen Gardens. In fact a search on Amazon reveled a reprint with the following even less catchy title on the cover: Profitable instructions for the manuring, sowing, and planting of kitchin gardens Very profitable for the commonwealth and greatly for the helpe and comfort of poore people. Gathered by Richard Gardner of Shrewsburie (1599). So how did he spell his name? Anyway, I’m guessing that he was the Percy Thrower of the 16th century.

It was time to check my entry clue by clue to make sure that there were no silly mistakes lurking. 1ac Shrill noise, according to Scots, made by most of stuff I installed in Motherwell school was SCREICH, the extra word being ‘Motherwell’. Well that didn’t work!! SCH for ‘school’ was there, and an I, but ‘most of stuff’? It should obviously be CRA(M) I in SCH to give SCRAICH. I had jumped to the conclusion that ‘shrill noise’ was SCREECH, but with an I in it. Chambers has:

screich, skreich see skreigh

Percy Thrower on Gardening Club

skreigh, scriech, skriegh, screich, screigh or scriech (Scot) n and v (to) screech, shriek.

The entry in Chambers that tells all is:

scraich or scraigh (Scot) vi to screech, to make a scratchy sound. n a screech; a scratchy sound [Cf scraugh, skreigh]

Easy to be confused … and get it wrong if you’re sloppy!

So, a pleasant first puzzle of the year from Dipper, and luckily not requiring too much horticultural knowledge.
 

We couldn’t fill the grid fast enough with not a single moan about the clues. There wasn’t even the usual Listener compiler outpouring of alcohol, just Dipper’s habitual plants, asparagus, fruit, shrubbery, stumps and umbels.

We were briefly flummoxed by ‘Lambs very poor in Arizona wolf up with any local asparagus (7)’ and as, by this time, we had spotted the book title and author, … MANURING, SOWING, PLANTING OF KITCHEN GARDENS by the sixteenth century horticulturalist ROBERT GARDINER, we knew that we were looking for an extra word that began with A. Arizona seemed to stand out. Of course, that was to justify the LOBO< that went before ARY (‘any’ in local parlance) for OBOLARY, since LOBO is US usage.

Our other hiccup was uncertainty about 1ac, ‘Shrill noise, according to Scots, made by most of stuff I installed in Motherwell school (7). We had SCR?IC? and a wonderful range of potential Scottish screeches (skraich and screich being the most viable) but had to be really careful about that wordplay. We decided we were going to put CRA[m] I into SCH and count Motherwell as our extra letter rather than a Scots indicator (sneaky, Mr Dipper).

There was an intriguing clue at 33ac. ‘Heartless Welshman injures terrapin (4)’ I’m no terrapin expert, my expertise stops short at our special variety of fire-bellied toad (not actually toads at all, a different variety, the bombina variegata), at natrix natrix - grass-snakes, newts and the Jura vipers we have in the garden in the heat of the summer. However, EMYS had to be the answer when we removed the R from Emrys, the Welshman.

Why intriguing? Well, can you find Emrys in the 2011 Large Vermilion Volume? Officially, Dipper’s crossword was the first to be using the new Chambers Dictionary. Are the kind editors of the Listener crossword tipping us a wink that we can go on using that lovely list of names that was in the appendices of the previous versions (and not even add a disclaimer to that effect!) I do hope so.

Finished in a little over an hour; almost our record time. The exhortation to SOWE CARRETS (with its quaint spelling) was just where it ought to be to render life easy – right down that diagonal. So thank you Dipper for a gentle opener to 2012. I even had time left to cook dinner and draw a few carrots, with a couple of sprouts thrown in for post-Christmas cheer (well, cheer anyway that I don’t have to smell the horrid things for another year).

His draft preamble and postamble ran as follows:

One word in each down clue requires a shift to a markedly different position before the clue can be solved. Initial letters of these words give a treated lyric (in ODQ6) that describes each down clue’s initial state. It may assist the solver if the answers to asterisked clues [19a, 30a, 12d, 16d, 18d, 20d, 21d] are entered first, with the assumption that a four-letter word has already been entered. The composer of the lyric’s score can then appear illegally. This and all clued entries are counter to a quotation indicated by two unclued entries [1a and 41a]. The composer’s thematic score appears appropriately positioned; solvers must write this (6, 4) beneath the grid and highlight two letters that are doubly relevant. Two down answers [ABIES at 5d, SHINE at 32d] must be scrambled before entry to complete a trio. Chambers Dictionary (2003) is the primary reference.

The last word in each down clue has to move to the front (make ‘a shift to a markedly different position’, or ‘swing’) before the clue can be solved and the surface reading makes sense. Initial letters of these words give “It don’t mean a thing / If it ain’t got that swing” with no vowels. 1a and 41a indicate a quote from Duke Ellington: “Playing ‘Bop’ is like scrabble with all the vowels missing”. LING was the first word entered in a normal game of Scrabble, followed by answers to asterisked clues, allowing Duke to appear illegally (names are not allowed) at 25 across, and scoring twenty five points, with KT (Knight) scoring double. (Count) BASIE and (Earl) HINES complete the trio of aristocratic jazzmen.

With his customary attention to detail, Steve noted that 1a and 41 were overunched, and also listed the pieces in a normal Scrabble set, which we needed later.

I suggested a few improvements to the grid and also suggested Aristocat as the title (ditching Basie and Hines), and John thought that we should “evolve the Scrabble game a bit more”. After much further discussion of numerous ideas, we eventually settled on:

In all but seven clues a letter must either drop out [vowels] or move left/right [consonants] before the clue can be solved (the surface reading often suffers); these letters reveal a quotation in ODQ6. Two answers clued without definition form the first part of another thematic quotation, also in ODQ6. They and the answers to the seven clues referred to above must be entered in accordance with the rest of the quotation. Solvers must finally highlight those seven entries [which include every consonant, including the consonantal Y, in YRDNG]. Numbers after clues refer to the entry length. Chambers Dictionary (2003) is the primary reference.

And John produced the following fill, which formed the basis of the final version:

This all sounds very straightforward, but it actually took us almost a year before we reached agreement.

We then set about writing the clues. As usual, Steve allotted each of us one third of the clues, and created a template document into which we were to write our efforts, each in his own colour (mine being red). We then said of each other’s clues either “That is brilliant” or “Maybe this would be better” or “Total rethink needed” or whatever. Emails flashed back and forth, and eleven successive versions of the clues document appeared, but eventually we reached agreement, after about only one month, in fact.

Aristocat was the last Listener using Chambers 2008 as the primary reference. We were relieved that we squeezed in just before the switch to Chambers 2011. Otherwise two of our clues (22a and 20d) might not have been allowed, as they relied on a 2008 appendix to verify that NANCY is a diminutive of AGNES and AGNES means CHASTE.

We wonder how many solvers will have noticed that it is only vowels that drop out from the clues, only consonants that move left/right. How many will have noticed that the highlighted entries represent a vowel-free game of Scrabble (involving every consonant at least once). How many will have enjoyed the puzzle (we have in fact peeped at AnswerBank and so feel quite confident on that score).

Roddy Forman (one third of Mango).

P.S. We are of course mortified that the clue to 42a failed to indicate two words, in spite of our having spotted a similar error in 23d. A friend has asked why on earth we did not have the puzzle test-solved, when the error would surely have been corrected. Mango has only once had a puzzle test-solved, I think, for a special reason that I cannot now remember. Curiously enough, though, Steve did at the last minute suggest that maybe we should send Aristocat to a test-solver, but I argued that a team of three, not to mention two editors, had no need to bother anyone else. Wrong again, Mr Forman!
 

But it wasn’t easy! As usual, the numpties began in the south-east corner and, with SWEIR (‘So damn lazy up north (5)’) understood what was going on. The N was moving to give me a ‘sweir’ S(on) and the ‘dam’ was the weir. That was subtle enough and there were anther 42 of these little word games to complete! Ouf!  What a clever and original idea, though. I have seen the misprint device used, so that Mangled (anagram indicator), for example, becomes Dangled, but the idea of having every clue move a letter left or right, or omit one, with so many examples of word-play indicators being part of the device was delightfully novel and challenging.

We had ‘Toiled’ losing a T to give us ‘oiled’, ‘Violet’ gaining an L to be ‘violent’ (interesting that the capital letter was allowed to just disappear there!), ‘writing’ gaining an H and ‘writhing’, ‘angling’ becoming ‘tangling’, as well as ‘rap’ becoming a container indicator ‘wrap’. Part of the subtlety was that these were hidden among other tricky moves like ‘ruins’ simply losing its I to become the R of R(uns) and one I particularly enjoyed ‘Grant and Charley, on vacation, chase girl (22, diminutive)’. I didn’t know that Nancy was a diminutive of Agnes (a chaste girl), but liked the way that the randy couple of men became a simple ‘gran’ or ‘nan’ and C(harle)y on holiday with a pure lassie.

I could go on admiring these fine clues – but you solved them for yourself so move on! The p.d.m. came early when I fed my few letters of 24 ac into Antony Lewis’s Crossword Compiler word-finder and Duke Ellington appeared as one of about ten offerings. The ODQ gave him only one quotation: ‘Playing bop is like Scrabble with all the vowels missing’. What compiler could resist that temptation! (One has confessed to me that he has been working on exactly the same theme, prompted by that quotation – well, Mango preempted.)

From there I was on the home straight (but had to gallop for about three more hours!) 1ac had been an awkward PLYN?B?S and 42 L?S?RBBL. Well, I ask you! With them and Duke Ellington in place, difficult areas of the grid became easier, though I have never heard of YARDANG, JAPAN WAX, DISCOVERTURE or XEMA - more words to nonchalantly slip into conversation next week.

Of course Mango had the usual Listener Compiler healthy dose of alcohol. We had ‘Scotch or gin taken till mellow’ – though sadly it turned into a Scotch Tor – a  BEN, the gin drinker was ‘taken ill’ IGN giving us BENIGN. The ‘society crowd in 42ac were drinking ‘cold gin’ and a ‘pint’ in 10d turned into a ‘pin’ – a mere AXLE (Take = R after W in WRAXLE, ‘fight over maT in Devon). Is it that crossword compilers like their tipple, or just that the words for alcohol lend themselves so readily to crossword use?

So what was it all about? I highlighted my seven words that had no vowels and wondered about the other quotation that had appeared: ‘It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.’ I imagine we weren’t supposed to be solving backwards (as we invariably do) and working from Duke Ellington to the quotation. The quotation was intended to lead us to him.

What was the point of all those words without vowels spreading out from the L of ELLINGTON? Aaah, SCRABBLE! Brilliant play! Mango have the X and Y in triple word-score positions. It was a friend who later pointed out to me that, just like Scrabble, this was pangrammatic (minus the vowels, in Duke Ellington Bop mode). Lovely! (But what a good thing that there wasn’t a space below the grid where we had to enter the total score in points of those vowel-less words, or even send our entries on an appropriately coloured grid.)

Thank you Mango for a fine last 2011 crossword.

Here we had the last Listener of 2011, and the last using Chambers (2008) as primary reference before (2011) takes over. Personally, I was still trying to catch up with puzzle solving after the Christmas and New Year festivities, which invariably leave me tired and zonked out (OK … blotto, if you must)! As a result, it was the second Sunday after publication before I started Aristocat, and I prayed that there wouldn’t be any tricky engame to beguile me. There was an interesting clueing device in all but seven clues: one letter had to be omitted or alternatively moved to the left or right before solving. I was sure that I’d come across this latter technique before, but wasn’t sure where. Knowing the fixation that at least one of the triumvirate had with symmetry, I laid odds with myself that there would be twelve of each type of letter movement (left, right or out).

Little did I realise how difficult the clues would be. After all, it was not obvious whether one or two words in a particular clue would be affected. If two words, then the whole ‘sense’ of the clue could change, and I felt that my brain was being deliberately messed with! This was borne out by my first pass through the clues. The acrosses revealed only 14 ETERNAL, 27 EATHE and 39 LAMAIST. The downs started well with 1 PRECLUDE and 3 YRENT, but despite seeing likely letters that needed dropping or moving, that was it. I wasn’t really surprised to see that the few that I solved all involved omissions, and thus just one word changing in their clues.

With the help of 1dn, however, things started moving a bit more smoothly. 21ac was my first clue requiring the movement of a letter: Posh oven returned to base for mother, although it was a sneaky liittle movement, with the M just hopping across the space before it to form other. Still, at least I had a left moving letter, and we were told in the preamble that movements would alternate direction.

19ac Sedate Queen, unwell, in train broken down on outskirts of Zaire (7) was irking me. I kept trying to fit TZARINA to the wordplay, and although TRAIN was there, Zaire was not ZA, and there was no sedate or seated monarch to be found. It wasn’t Bradford’s that came to the rescue, but Chambers Crossword Dictionary. Although I sometimes find the division of words into letter lengths useful (here I was looking for a 7-letter word), in this case it wasn’t. Luckily my eyes wandered a bit and I saw TRANQUILLIZE further down with QU and ILL in the middle. What a stroke of luck! Except that there was now a 12-letter word, obviously thematic, to fit into an entry of only seven spaces. A few minutes later, I finally doodled with ruin left ten at 9dn and up popped INTERFLUENT. These two crossing entries made me feel fairly certain that only the consonants were to be entered; NTRFLNT and TRNQLLZE. But that was thematic how?

Well, the downhill ski to the finish was on, except that those of you who’ve seen me on skis will realise that I’m only a red-runner. In any event, about 5 hours after starting, all the pieces were eventually in place.

The central entry was DUKE ELLINGTON, the aristoc[r]at of the title. The only quotation from him in my ODQ (luckily I have one of the two editions mentioned in the preamble) is Playing ‘Bop’ is like scrabble with all the vowels missing. There is also a reference there to Mills where what is spelt out by the naughty letters in the clues can be found: It don’t mean a thing If it ain’t got that swing (the slang, and lack of jazz knowledge, hindered me for a long time). The music for this 1942 song was written by Duke Ellington.

As the lyrics hinted, the vowels were to be omitted from the thematic entries (symmetrically placed, of course), as they were from PLAYING BOP at 1ac and LIKE SCRABBLE at 42ac, the two clues without definition. It had taken me a bit of time to realise that these last entries were not simple phrases straight from the dictionary. Finally, there weren’t twelve of each type of letter movement as I had surmised at the beginning. Instead, and also thematically, it was the vowels that were dropped and the consonants which moved left or right.

Well, I may not have been right about that last point, but I was certainly right about it being a tough, fair and delightful puzzle. Great fun, guys. And among many fine clues, my favourite:

40ac   So damn lazy up north (5)   (which should read Son dam lazy up north, to give SWEIR)!

Political correctness doesn’t even come close!

There was that mildly disconcerting word ‘transpositions’, but, at least it didn’t say ‘Jumbles’ so we shelved that anxiety. Hmmmm!

It was a partying night anyway so the numpties happily solved a few long clues – ‘Black dog mainly after huge bird that’s stalked (8)’ Well, that has to be B + ROC + COLLI(E) and that will give us an extra L. (At least it wasn’t Brussels Sprouts – Oh dear, that’s tomorrow!) ‘Dog bark, say, lifted tail (9)’ RIND with EG< and BACK gives us RIDGEBACK with an extra N. ‘Poltergeist almost shocking old composer (9)’ That has to be an anagram of PERGOLESI with T extra (I love his Stabat Mater – rather Easter than Christmas, as was the ‘Horse, at first sight rather old, died in festival (8)’ R(ather) O EASTER round D = ROADSTER producing E).

Another easy anagram gave us INDISCRETE,  ’Homogenous work isn’t recited (10)’ and another spare T. We teased out CORNED BEEF from ‘Jailbird and hooligan quarrel about rule that’s preserved (10, 2 words)’  – producing an N from the CON and NED – and lots of shorter words, and shrugged our shoulders when none of these intersected convincingly with each other. Party time.

It was after midnight when I took another look. We had a vaguely coherent extra letter message: ?LL TH? RI?HT ?OTE?S ?UT NO? IN THE RIGZT ……… (Yes, I know now that BELIZE is both BZ and BH – what useful things we Listener solvers ingest, as well as Monk’s healthy sprinkling of wine. He lived up to the Listener compiler tradition with the SOAVE, the ‘cultivated wine in Belize, and the Chief magistrate drinking a lot of ale – even if the wine bar in 4d stayed closed. There was a surprising presence of dogs too!)

That message was familiar. It was Eric Morecambe’s response to Andre Previn, wasn’t it? It boded ill. I jumped to the flawed post-party conclusion that we had to move do, re, mi etc. to the end of clues, or something like that. The prospect was daunting. ORDER, the last word of the quotation, would give a DO and a RE, but so what? REDOR, DORER, EREDO?

Fortunately light dawned in the morning and I understood that all the letters except ABCDEF and G could stay in their preordained positions, but that every word save one, had to have shifted notes. The one was clearly PREVIN as he had only an E. Grid filling was underway. But what a task! So much for my gentle Christmas treat!

The biggest problem was, of course, the missing clues. It is easy to write all the potential letters, squeezed into each vacant square, and eliminate them as they are used elsewhere in the word, but this system falls down when you haven’t solved a clue. We had several we hadn’t solved. I now know that IBEX has a plural IBICES, that there was a star eighties and nineties football player called BARNES and that AMEN CORNER was a fifties somewhat oxmoronic ‘famous Welsh rock band’. Even ARROGANCE had me stumped for a while – ‘Side’ indeed!

I think DOGBEE was the toughest clue of all, but when I commented to a friend who had finished this one long before me, he said “Well, yes, it was tough, but what do you expect? It is the Listener after all!” Well, I have already told you what I expected – a gentle Christmas treat – so I had to produce my own. Thank you, Monk!