Listen With Others

The last Salamanca was two years ago with its TS Eliot Four Quartets theme plus some anagrams of his name, including litotes and toilets. This week’s puzzle appeared to have a theme more appropriate for Christmas afternoon with a Listener (or two) to help the meal go down! (I wondered what the Editors had in store for us over the weekend before Christmas.)

My first pass through the clues uncovered precious few across entries but over half of the downs, so I was expecting a quick solve. I liked the way that a grid could have a lot of 3-letter entries which were clued as a 6-letter answer, jumbled to give two 3-letter words.

Although most of the grid went in fairly smoothly, the unclued thematic entries were not revealed early on. What’s more, as I entered the likes of BURNing CORKS and CHIPping GLASSES, I still had no idea what was going on. Luckily Salamanca thought we (well, I) might have a problem, and provided the source in circled cells. Doodling these in my notes, I had BHITBOEHT and THE HOBBIT was soon identified.

A bit of googling was needed to identify the lines from the song sung by the adventurers, culminating in “That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates!”

Not a tough puzzle, but entertaining. Thanks, Salamanca, and well done on getting all the thematic elements into a neat 12×12 grid.