Listen With Others

In typing that title, I have just now understood it. Of course, in Pope Gregory’s well known ‘Non Angli, sed angeli’, there is an extra E- so it had nothing to do with those classes for new immigrants after school finished, so that they could catch up with the language!

That was a long way ahead when I was scanning the clues to check whether Raffles retained the membership of the Listener Oenophile Club that he earned last year with his Mashonaland. Evidence was slow in coming: ‘Soak has run out after harking back (5)’ gave us RETRO, then we had ‘Take in a drink, aged with a broad smile (5)’ R going into GIN giving us an old word, AGRIN.

The old SOAK continues with ‘Sedans climbing steep bridges start to grumble (5)’ ‘Steep’ or SOAK climbed around G(rumble) giving KAGOS (tough one that; some of these clues were!) He was becoming aggressive with the next clue where he had moved onto ‘punch’. ‘Punch topless wa[i]ter in leg on Cyprus (8)’ PIQUANCY came from PIN round [a]QUA CY.

Fortunately Raffles then moved onto cordial and squash; ‘Cordial protests h[e]ard after week passes (6)’ giving SQUAWKS less WK + H = SQUASH, and we found him in the pub in the penultimate clue uttering a scornful word; ‘Old-timer’s scornful word[y] hostilities only in pub (4)’ PH round HO, giving PHOH. Well, Cheers, Raffles, see you at the bar somewhere in the north next year.

By this time, solving was steadily plodding on and we had identified the two clued entries that contained clashes 7d and 30d. ‘Running after child in Greek clothing (6)’ led to CHIT ON but the crossing words gave us BRERUB. A similar piece of head-scratching was produced by ‘Raffles bringing in money to expand first half of police beat (6)’ Which gave us POL round M ME, so POMMEL. However, the intersecting words gave us AZRAIE.

Of course, we needed the remark made by Pope Gregory, on seeing those fair ANGLI in the market place, ‘Non Angli, sed angeli’ to understand that we had to select the letters that gave us angels (CHERUB and AZRAEL) and reject the Angli (BRITON and POMMIE). I really admired this clever bit of setting.

We still had to find a couple of angels to replace the ROOINEK and the LIMEY who had appeared in the unclued lights and, of course, RAPHAEL and ARIEL slotted neatly in, leaving only real words. Fortunately, we recently won a Collins dictionary which confirmed that AGRIA is an outbreak of pustules, so my anxiety on that score was appeased.

Good fun; thanks to Raffles.