Listen With Others

This was fun!  Some tricky clue constructions, what with misprints and definition swaps – I like it!  But with a Title like that, was Bob The Builder going to make a guest appearance??

The Grid went in ‘fairly’ quickly.  I wasted ten minutes with one clue where I mistakenly thought it was one of the seven (9d) with another’s definition – but as soon as it became apparent what the misprints were going to spell I corrected that.  Now for the gridstare, at which I am a serious novice!

I thought I’d better be very thorough on the seven exchanged-definition clues, as it felt likely to be important.  Could ‘slip into’ in 26ac be anything other than DON, for example?  Just checking…

So that left the ‘affecting 19 cells’ part of the Preamble.  Which 19 cells?  Perhaps the missing letters from the seven swapped clues are something to do with it?  Let’s have a look.  In order these are: EIN (or NEI), EG, I, N, E, E, G.  What does that mean?  Try colouring them in. Ah, that shows a bit more order – EINEG.  Is that something German beginning EINE G… – after all we did have some German (d.h. for id est somewhere else in the Puzzle) – was that a clue?

Doh!  It’s GENIE reversed.  That’s five of the required cells – where are the other 14?  Aaah – that’s why there’s so many Zs: NEBUCHADNEZZAR needed two of them!

So it’s “Putting The Genie Back In The Bottle”.  Can you do it?  Yes You Can (and You just have, so – as the 24 hidden letters have told you to – HIGHLIGHT YOUR ACHIEVEMENT)!

Thanks to Atlas for a great debut Listener puzzle.

Tim / Encota