Listen With Others

Over the last twenty years or so, Glow-worm has played a lot of games with us. These have included a 2, a 5 and a couple of 1s among others, and have finally been uncovered as the likes of Sardines, Hunt the Slipper and Tic-Tac-Toe. This week, the preamble told us that a line from a poem in the ODQ had to appear in the perimeter squares, and that this was addressed to 1.

Luckily, 1ac Mayhap a mountainous sports girl immediately enabled PAM to go in the grid. Thirty seconds was all it would take to look her up the ODQ index to reveal the Betjeman quotation Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great mountainous sports girl, Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five. Popping that into the perimeter followed by some straightforward clueing, enabled CHASE THE ACE to slot into the central column, a few female tennis players to complete the grid and A POINT OF NO RETURN to go under it.

Unfortunately, if you were like me, you really didn’t expect Pam to appear so blatantly in the index. I spent ages looking for tennis, nets, balls and rackets, all to no avail since the index didn’t reference any other word in that extract from Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden. Only as a last resort, did I check on Pam, et voilà.

Thanks for the run around, Glow-worm!