Listen With Others

We are stranded on North Uist as all ferries have been cancelled because of strong gales, and, of course, The Times is not availble and I have no printer so have to solve this Poat crossword with a small computer screen and it turns out to be one where I really need a paper copy, since clues are curiously wandering around. Sort of HARE antics (no, hand slapped – don’t mention the Poat Hare!) Does Poat retain his entry ticket to the Listener oenophile outfit? ‘Matching Chinese drink from time in China (7)’ TEAMING fits what I have in the grid, though I can’t quite suss the wordplay, so I insert it with a rather lukewarm ‘Cheers, Poat!’

Our solving continues in that way, we seem to be splicing parts of different clues so that, with a lot of doubt, my grid fills until I have just one empty cell in LI?LIAS and the first penny-drop-moment. Those letters spell BURROUGHS and a quick Google check tells me that his technique is the ‘cut up technique’

So ‘Scottish one’s turned sick /during sea voyage (7)’ combines bits of two clues ILL< goes into SAIL< and, I realize that that is one of the seven clues that perform according to his technique  Joan VOLLMER is the wife he deliberately/accidentally killed during a game of WILLIAM TELL so we know that those VOLLMER initial letters lead us to the ‘cut-up’ clues and what a red herring! Poat tricked a lot of solvers by having the subject to highlight hidden in the preamble some years ago. Surely he isn’t going to hide Guillaume TELL in the title?

Thirteen letters – we desperately hunt for some way to treat two columns and then two rows with the ‘cut-up’ technique and produce GUILLAUME TELL and, of course we fail and it is in desperation that we hunt through Burrough’s works for another with thirteen letters and see THE BLACK RIDER hiding sneakily at the top right of our grid with three letters that we have to somehow ‘cut up’.

Oh but this is subtle! First I have to swap KENT/RING (at the bottom of columns 1 & 11), then I swap LACKED and LEGMAN from rows 3 & 10.

Don’t TELL – indeed, ‘Do BLACK RIDER’

Poat at his typical tricksy – many thanks.