Listen With Others

Here we had the last Listener of the year, so no silly mistakes from those few of you who are so far all correct. This was Paddock’s second Listener, the first being Battleships from two years ago.

A lot was going on here, with Group A and Group B clues providing answers that needed to replace entries already in the grid to reveal lots of characters, some causing an incident, and a chronicler.

I started rather bizarrely with the Group clues. Bizarre, since there was nothing to do with them until the grid was filled! The A clues were nice and straightforward, the B clues less so.

The normal Acrosses and Downs were on the tricky side with some good definitions and/or wordplay(s?). The strangest definition for me was 15ac BROMIDE meaning ‘commonplace’.

The trickiest clue (for me) was 30dn, Texan’s second person present rising to acclaim endless source of liquor (6) — YO (present) + LAU(d)< + L(iquor). The one that caused raised eyebrows (and a smile) was 11dn, Ask what audience might expect to follow Haydn? (4) — sounds like Hide ‘n’ Seek. My favourite was probably 17dn Starter with crusts of toast dumped over thick soups (6) — (SETTER-UP – T(oas)T)<.

Back to the Group clues, and it didn’t take long to see where the A ones needed to go… across the middle, with NIOBE becoming ATLAS. A bit of reading confirmed that, at the behest of LATONA (revealed in row 1), Niobe’s children were killed and Niobe returned home and turned to stone. ATLAS, on the other hand, was turned into a vast mountain range by PERSEUS (finally cropping up in row 13). All these stories are courtesy of OVID in Metamorphoses.

Thanks, Paddock, good fun.