Listen With Others

Some solvers will always associate some setters with a particular puzzle. Poat will, in many eyes, always be remembered for that bloody hare (RIP!). Jago, more fondly (?), for his Origami wren. There didn’t seem to be any folding required here — that was Zero’s prerogative last week — and it seemed very unlikely that a wren would be lurking in the grid. [Hold that thought. Ed.]

Here we had a grid where some cells needed to accommodate two letters with a diagonal line separating them. It turned out that there weren’t as many of these as I had expected… only eight. 1dn 26dn and 20 were unclued thematic entries referred to in the preamble. Once these were revealed as WHITE LIGHT and PRISM, it didn’t take long to spot the colours of the rainbow in seven columns to the right of the prism.

I seem to remember some time back being in a quandary over exactly what colours to use. Blue and Indigo have always confused me, and don’t mention Purple, Violet and Mauve! Anyway, I think that JEG is fairly tolerant when it comes to that sort of thing.

This turned out to be a very gentle solve for the last Listener of the year. Forty minutes saw everything fall into place. Thanks, Jago.