Listen With Others

I started off this blog hoping to find all sorts of words beginning with the letters BR- where I could then wilfully disconnect them from a larger entity just to see what happens, as part of some kind of nightmarish experiment …

However, having got not much further than:
BRadman’s BRother’s BRan BRailing BRidler,
I decided to put off further work on it until April … or May … or …

I took me too long to find the correct set of 27 country codes (oh, that Chambers 😉  ).  I suspect I have spent too much of my career looking at 2-character Internet country / domains.  With the right list in place this became a difficult matching game – find eg HR as part of 1ac’s cHRome, where only ‘come’ is in the wordplay, and then find the synonym for ‘Chrome’ hiding elsewhere in the clues (‘Metal’ in 25d, since you’re asking …).

I tried initially to avoid resorting to Excel but soon succumbed, slowly matching up entries with deleted words.

I’m probably the only one to have initially made this mistake with 6d?

Perhaps Darwin (Northern Territory) – one love is perfect out walkabout (13)

I had quickly skimmed it, at this point not knowing what word was to be removed before solving.  I thought I’d found the anagram fodder {NT I O IS PERFECT}*, looked up Charles Darwin on t’Internet to find that he was seen to be a PERFECTIONIST and pencilled it in.  It was soon clear from crossers that this had to be wrong but it took a comparative age for me to correct it.

28d’s BB GUNS also took me a while (Bulgaria, BG, in BUNS) – though I can’t now see why!

And perhaps Kevgar’s puzzle can now be re-published every few weeks when the ‘next’ Brexit date keeps appearing?

Thanks KevGar!

Cheers all,

Tim / Encota