Listen With Others

This was Miles’s first Listener, although he has had a fair few over at Magpie — some of them D graded. I think Ds are slightly more difficult than the average Listener, so I was hoping for a challenge. Mind you we’ve had a couple of those in recent weeks.

A carte blanche faced us here. Nine clues omitted one letter of the answer, and they would spell out the puzzle’s theme. Four unclued entries were the only other difficulty, apart from having to jigsaw the answers into the grid. And yet again, the endgame would involve some drawing, although “shapes” seemed to indicate there little or no artistic skill would be involved.

The clues were solid with some easy and some tricky. My favourite was probably Just about highest point orbiting round earth? (6) — an &lit. for APOGEE. The letters omitted from wordplay gave Euler line. Although I’d heard of him, I hadn’t heard of it, so an enjoyable journey round the Web was educational. I normally paid attention during Maths classes, so I’m sure we didn’t do this way back when!

Identifying the three X’s was straightforward, seeing that they probably gave a triangle, and it wasn’t a giant leap to then look for some O’s. The only O’s in the grid seemed to form a circle. Rather than describe the construction of an Euler line, I hope the animation on the right tells all. (Egg on face if there’s an error somewhere!)

Thanks for a fine puzzle, Miles.