L4605: ‘Times Listener’ by Artix
Posted by Encota on 22 May 2020
I finished filling out the grid with it being almost certain that the missing words were SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN and WINTER, given that they all successfully created new words. But – at that stage of solving – why?
I went to bed on the Friday night mulling it over. Fortunately, early on Saturday morning I spotted the three TURNs in the grid and all became clear. A bit of Googling of the song Turn! Turn! Turn! and its source of Ecclesiastes appeared. I could then double check the twenty words from the material to be certain how the six entries that abutted (rather than crossed) the empty rectangles were treated – and all was sorted.
Apologies for the OTT nature of the bars in the above image. Roughly half of my errors in thematics over the years seem to be from missing out bars that should be there, so I was determined not to be caught out this time. I wonder if I have still stuffed it up!?
Thanks once again to Artix for a tough and very enjoyable puzzle!
Cheers all,
Tim / Encota
Listen With Others 
Alan B said
I’d like to relate my own experience of this excellent puzzle, and I’m addressing whoever might be interested and not just Encota! (It’s good to see all three familiar bloggers again.)
I enjoyed this very much and found it to be quite a challenge. I formed the pattern of bars in the grid by degrees as clues were solved, The only problem I had was with the placement of part two of 1d because I had solved only part one (HOME), and that had repercussions below, making it hard to place the answers to a couple of later down clues. Eventually, HOME MOVE went in, I was able to solve and insert SATURNIA, and I got all the bars and solutions in the right places.
Some of the transformations were remarkable, wuch as TRACHEOTOMY / TRACHEOSTOMY, UNDEAD / UNIDEA’D, REDESIGN / RED ENSIGN.
It was the word ‘season’ and a recollection of the occurrences of the word ‘turn’ in the grid that made me think of the song. I had already made a list of several ‘interesting’ words from the clues, and I very much enjoyed trying to match them. The song was well chosen, as its source is rich with ‘life’ words (activities, aspirations and emotions).
A great concept and design.