Listen With Others

Gos last entertained us here with his Graham Greene Third Man themed puzzle. This week, we had a fairly short preamble telling us to remove a word from half of the clues before solving and do something similar with half the answers before entering.

One of the things I like to do when approaching a Listener is to look up every word in the title for unusual meanings. If only!!.

After unsuccessfully tackling half-a-dozen or so across clues, I decided to try the downs. Immediate success with 2dn Two old guys married at cathedral (5) sort of looked like DUOMO… but not quite. Luckily, I managed to work out 5 Canada confusedly changing name for independent old eastern part of it (6) as ACADIA, although I’d never heard of it, and 8 Puzzle misset some-blessed-how, say (6) gave TMESIS. A short while later, and ADELANTADO went in at 13dn, and I was up and running.

Except, of course, the T of TMESIS and the first D of ADELANTADO clashed. Nothing in the preamble told me about that! The clue that finally came to my rescue was 25dn. At first sight these airport roads are mostly concrete-covered (6) was obviously TARMAC, except it didn’t quite work until are and mostly got swapped.

Even then, it would be some time before I looked up removal in Chambers: “change of place”. Then, it was an entertaining time juggling with words in either the clues or the grid.

My favourite clue was 23dn Garden oddly overlooked connected parties alongside a different part (6) which had to change to Garden parties… and led to (g)A(r)D(e)N(p)A(r)T(i)E(s). 36ac Songster, little fella, trapped by flood recurrent after precipitation starts (10) when adjusted took a bit of time to rationalise as TICH in SPATE< after P(recipitation) — I think.

10dn BATTLEDORE reminded me of a Rustic EV puzzle in back in 2012 which was based around the game, and at which the late James Leonard himself (Citrus, Mr Lemon, Rustic) was, apparently, highly proficient.

Thanks for a very enjoyable puzzle, Gos.