Listen With Others

A clever change in direction in today’s puzzle from Harpy. The leading diagonal plus 2×2 square at its end, start off reading FELONIOUS MONK. And the misprints per clue start off reading GREGORI RASPUTIN.

However … swap the contents of the first cell to read TH and it now reads THELONIUS MONK, the jazz blues (I think!) pianist. So we now need to find three of his songs:

• The first, using the 2×2 square highlighted in Blue, depicts BLUE MONK
• The second, by drawing a circle in the bottom left quadrant, could be said to describe ROUND MIDNIGHT
• And the third uses the rest of the misprints, that spell out an extra clue, ORCHESTRATING HAS MESSED UP A TUNE OF HIS. An anagram of {ORCHESTRATING HAS} finds STRAIGHT NO CHASER! Looking at 5a’s STRAIGHT and then erase CHASER at 13d – and this can be said to depict this song

The final change expands the ‘square’ MONK to become a circle, which might be said to depict a SPHERE, his middle name.

And the Title’s pretty good for a pianist during ‘Covid season’ too. Is that three Covid-related titles we’ve had now?

Cheers,

Tim / Encota