Listen With Others

After muttering about an over-long preamble with too many things going on, the other Numpty started solving at such a rate that all I could do was wield the pen and try to keep up. Clearly music was a theme as Rachmaninov appeared in the first clue – even if he only gave us an R for ur anagram,’After bizarre opening of Rachmaninov music is later orchestrated (12)’ SURREALISTIC, with an extra M, declared the Numpty, and followed that with SYNTHESISERS at the opposite end of the grid – but we had an extra word there: LATER – that was going to give us a potential L or R and define a word that was to lose a letter. An original device!

I hardly had time to scan the clues to check KevGar’s retention of his place at the bar but there was plenty of evidence as our solve progressed. ‘Sneaks back in service as beer brewing comes around (9)’ We couldn’t work out the wordplay of that one but REABSORBS fitted our grid and brewing BEER seemed to give us an extra E. ‘Scary actor using old rum dropping dead (6)’ was less of a problem. We dropped the D(ead) and got LUGOSI with the anagram USING OL giving us an extra N. ‘Tree debarked and chopped down when imbibing top class port tanked up (9)’ added port to the beer and rum – no wonder he was ‘tanked up’! Cheers KevGar!

We decided that the PORT was extra in that one and defined RIO which had lost a T in clue 13. (t)RE(e) was FELLED around U, so REFUELLED. That was another fine, generous clue and we were keeping a careful record of the MARIJUANA/POT, FEMALE/SHE, SISTER/CLARE, URINE/PEE, LATER/AFTER, ELVES/PERIS, REFEREE/HEAR, PORT/RIO, HOUSE/QUINTA and FOOT/PES that were going to give us a choice of first or last letter to unscramble together with the ten letters docked from defined words. Those, we decided, were TTTSHPANEP.

It was CARL NIELSEN who appeared next, along one of the diagonals (where else!) and we used the two letters of REFEREE to correct the spelling of his names so we knew what 19 letters we had to produce the work that preceded the INEXTINGUISHABLE. ‘Music is life and like it ….’ our extra letters had told us. There was the infinity symbol coiled round the centre of the grid and Google told us that we were looking for THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS to write below the grid. Still, it is always a good idea to check — and consternation: our letters didn’t work. We needed another M and we seemed to have an extra P. It sounds as though KevGar has invented temperapents – some sort of intermediate ski slopes. Thank you anyway!

Later: Ah, a correction has appeared that gives me a metropolis instead of a port so goodbye to my intermediate ski slopes!