Listen With Others

What a neat puzzle!  Thank you Twin! 

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The clues were accurate and generous, with very precise definitions throughout.

The most beautiful part of the puzzle was of course the definitions in 1 through 14 down.  Coming up with ways to clue the words in the form AiB and AoB, e.g. 11d’s RIOTED and ROOTED, with the same definition must have been great fun!  Those verbs where the past participle is unchanged came in handy of course helped – e.g. defining both SMITE and SMOTE using ‘Traditionally beat’!  But there were several delights that went beyond that!  11d’s ‘…caused radical upheaval’ for RIOTED (the behaviour of human  radicals) and ROOTED (the uprooting of plants) probably being my favourite.

Of course the fun in the puzzle didn’t stop there.  The first hint EVEN CLUES ENDS led us to looks at the last letter of 8a, 12a, 18a etc, which spelt out ODD CLUES OPENING LETTERS.  Then reading 1a, 15a, … it spelt out THE LISTENER NO. IN BINARY.  4630 in base 10 becomes 1001000010110 in binary, which then gets entered into Row 3.  Excellent!

As I say, all great fun – it was only a shame that it was over too quickly!  Please pass my thanks on to Twin.

Cheers & stay safe,

Tim / Encota