Listen With Others

We smiled when we saw the setter was Nutmeg. She can be counted on to give the solver a fair chance and to provide some fine surface readings in well-set clues, though there was a bit of muttering about misprints. It is rare to find a crossword with a misprint in the definition part of every clue without some of them being mildly forced or rather clunky. And the habitual Listener setter’s dose of alcohol? Nutmeg abstained in a ladylike way, producing tea instead -‘In Darjeeling, perhaps an Indian might boil it (5)’ We used CHA round AN giving us CHANA or a ‘chick-pea’.

We had coffee, too. We smiled again when we back-solved from ROBUSTA to ‘What might make Americans rude? Trace of arrogance (7)’ Our Americans became Americano, ROBUST + A(rrogance). There was breakfast food too – an ‘Icelandic dish of cereal served up in Rekyavik for starters (5)’ but we decided that had to be dosh, and produced RYE< + IR, giving EYRIR. With total sobriety Nutmeg produced ‘Wild cerebration (well, it had to be ‘celebration’ didn’t it?) uses head, nothing more (5)’, giving us BEAN + O. Chambers tells us that’s a rowdy jollification, so ‘Cheers, Nutmeg!’

We were lucky in that the letters in place for those four words down the centre of the grid soon suggested A STITCH IN TIME, which made perfect sense with the title and the preamble and we already had a likely FEATHER and BLANKET potentially running round the perimeter. Fitting in CHAIN, SATIN, CROSS, RUNNING, STEM, ROPE and BACK stitches produced yet another smile. Is it sexist to suggest that this is a feminine topic? (Well, we had to do needlework at school while the boys constructed tables.)

However, we had a full grid before we understood what those strange extra letters were that were appearing round SADDLE, LAZY DAISY and BUTTONHOLE produced by the corrected misprints. What a lovely final touch. “Of course” said the other Numpty, “we have HOUR, ERA and PERIOD surrounding those stitches. Many thanks to Nutmeg for a challenging and entertaining solve.