Listen With Others

A gentle yet accurate Listener – one of the best sorts, I feel – where it doesn’t feel like 15 rounds with Mike Tyson yet all thematically and satisfyingly hangs together.

Aside: there does seem to be something of a mixed metaphor, or something, there.  My current favourite is, “Let’s run Aunt Sally up the flagpole and see if she floats …”.

I do love the tougher ones – but without the kind of counterbalance this puzzle provides it would all begin to feel a bit too much of a slog, I think.

I’d like to claim I didn’t know who John King is, or that his birthday was on 15th December, but that’d just be puerile.  Slightly more seriously I do like it when the numbers in the puzzle play some role in their own right, so it was good to see King John featuring in 12 15 in this ‘Magna Carta, Runnymede & Barons’ puzzle.  Perhaps I am slightly biased, though, having been guilty of using the numbers in my previous ‘2001: a space odyssey’ and ‘Radios 1 to 4’ thematic puzzles in recent years!

Out of time today – thanks again to Samuel.

Cheers!

Tim / Encota