Listen With Others

The big hint this week was the pair of initials NT in Column 2: New Testament, perhaps?  And so it proved.  [Really??? Ed.]

The biblical theme was hinted at in 18a and 22a – ESAU and REBECCA – characters from the Old Testament – presumably to throw us off the scent.

Those with a strong knowledge of the New Testament will already know that it contains ~37 ‘books’.  Of these 37, there are 21 LETTERS, many written by Paul, to various parties.  These include two letters to the Romans (Rom.), two to Timothy (Tim.), one to Titus (Ti.), Colossians (Col.), Ephesians (Eph.), James (Jam.) and more.  These abbreviations all appear in the grid – I presume – I’ve highlighted a few here to show the principle, along with the answer to Clue 21: LETTERS. Simple, eh?  The hidden message had instructed us to INSERT ONE CLUE NUMBER – so I picked 21 to fit with this NT theme.

[surreal mode off]

OK, the Italian language has only 21 letters, as it has no requirement, except in foreign words, for W, J, X, K & Y.  These were neatly stacked in Column 6.  Changing them to ITALY (a translation of ITALIA at 9d) allowed real across words to be maintained.  My finished puzzle actually looked like this.

Great fun – thanks Ottorino 🙂

Cheers all,

Tim / Encota