Listen With Others

Redstart and Wren flew out at me as I was printing Mr E’s crossword so I suspected that we were going to have something like a Hedge Sparrow compilation. Of course, I then checked that Mr E was retaining his admission to the Listener Oenophile Elite and he left me in little doubt. The ‘pints’ started it off (though they were ‘cuckoo’). ‘Sundials upended – note one among cuckoo pints (9)’ gave us SOL + I in ARUMS = SOLARIUMS. Things became a bit more boozy with ‘Members of Russian sect do OK mixing brandy with shrub (9)’. We extracted the brandy as an extra word and mixed DO OK with SHRUB to get DUKHOBORS (fortunately the other Numpty had heard of them so our grid fill advanced substantially).

Things improved after that shrubby brandy, ‘When imbibing spirit, they may favour the young bourbons (7)’. Again we extracted the alcohol and opted for AS rounf GEIST, giving us AGEISTS. With the pints, followed by the brandy then the bourbons, we can safely say “Cheers, Mr E!”

The grid filled easily except for those wretched jumbles. Yes, we spotted the WIRE, the MUSTELINE and the SUCKER but how were we going to jumble them. Fortunately a phrase emerged from the extra letters WHAT AN ADDITION TO … THAT WOULD BE and better still, BECKETT. I pride myself on knowing Beckett’s works quite well having worked with students on ‘Malone Dies’, ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Endgame’ many times, but I had never encountered ‘Company’, and the ODQ was no help. Yet again, thank you for the Internet.

And what a delight to see that adding a little COMPANY (CO) to those jumbled words would give CONTUMELIES, COCKSURE, COWRIE, COPPERNOSE and CONCIERGE. We were left with one empty cell: TOE? Well, I know that the TOEA is the coinage of Papua New Guinea and that is ‘sort of’ on edge of Australia’ but can ‘ordinary’ be coinage and is TEA a writer of mysteries. Flummoxed! I wondered whether any solverswill opted for TOEA (and not TEY round O, TOEY, which apparently means ‘on edge’ in Australia.

Gentle and good fun. Many thanks to Mr E.