Listen With Others

Kea’s last Listener was just over a year ago with his Dunmow Flitch based puzzle The Bard’s Coupling. (For those of you who tackle the EV, he had a fun puzzle at the beginning of this month with Something Wrong.) Here he seemed to be taking a leaf (pardon the pun) out of Dipper’s book with a gardening-based theme, the grid being in the shape of a flower.

But what flower? Carnation and chrysanthemum came to mind, but a bit of googling revealed that it could be a dahlia. I was not in my comfort zone here, but I hoped that the unclued thematic entries wouldn’t take too long to deduce. We had a bit of spoon-feeding as well in that all entries went inwards, with clues grouped under Clockwise and Anticlockwise.

In general, the clues were fairly forgiving. For example, 5ac Inside submarine pen, the Annapolis is oblivious (10) was a generous hidden, and 7ac Natty ball requires dressing without shame (9) a generous anagram.

Eventually, the unclued flowers came through, 17 being my first with Y•L••WOXE•• leading to YELLOW OX-EYE. This is defined under ox-eye in Chambers and given as “the corn marigold”. That in turn gave “Chrysanthemum segetum” (obviously) and finally revealed the flower that we were celebrating, 9th September being Chrysanthemum Day. This is observed in countries such as China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

All in all, less than two hours to solve this one, so thanks to Kea for a gentle week.