Listen With Others

Last year, Aedites had entries acting as though they were on a Möbius Strip, dropping off one side of the grid and appearing diagonally opposite. Before that, Hamlet and before that, American states. Fair to say then that Aedites gets around a bit. This week we were back in literary mode.

Extra letters in wordplay will spell out the title of a book with the perimeter being filled with five characters from it. No difficulty here, with the book quickly being identified as The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley, he of Westward Ho! fame. I have forgotten if I ever read the book, but if I did, the full title was news to me: The Water Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land-baby, although which words, if any, were to be hyphenated or the comma colon-ised was difficult to discern from the interweb.

With KINGSLEY to be highlighted in the leading NW–SE diagonal, all that remained was for the perimeter to be completed: MRS BEDONEBYASYOUDID (you’d have thought she’d have hyphenated her name a bit), MOTHER CAREY, ELLIE, GRIMES and TOM. Sadly, Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby (also unhyphenated) couldn’t make it this week.

All in all, a fairly easy one. Thanks, Aedites.