Listen With Others

We began by counting 42 clues and established that the claim from a character had to be 21 letters long. I suppose it was thematic that the incorrect letters were the ones that were going to spell out the claim, after all, the thematic character was renowned for his porkies. However, we had to keep on reminding each other that we must resist the ingrained habit of recording the corrected misprint.

Of course I had to confirm Ferret’s retention of his access to the Listener Setters’ Oenophile Elite and he began with just a drop of red, ‘Gone red at first before getting tan in Israel (5)’ AGO, we added to R(ed) + A, giving AGORA, and decided he was getting ‘tin’ in Israel, not a tan.

Things improved, ‘Outing leads to closure of gay bar (5)’ We added TRIP to (ga)Y and decided TRIPY was ‘bad’, not a bar. Fortunately Ferret redeemed himself with ‘Small measure I’d picked up to take a share (5, two words). That small measure turned out to be a NIP and we tipped it up with ID to get DIP IN. Just a share of a small measure, but “Cheers, anyway, Ferret.”

When the misprinted letters spelled out THERE ARE NO STRINGS ON ME, we suspected the thematic character who was making a false claim must have strings and be a puppet and almost immediately saw little PINOCCHIO in the centre of the grid. Of course, that was after we had changed RADIATION to RACIATION and checked that that was a real word.

We had soon solved this fine set of clues, particularly appreciating DISCLAMATION which was the only possible entry in those cells but didn’t seem to have much to do with a ‘dental gripping instrument for work in extraction’. Yes, it was ‘denial’ giving us the T of STRINGS. And sure enough, I found a CORD and a TIE on PINOCCHIO. We removed them, to make his claim true. We knew that the ‘extensive’ thematic effect was a growing nose, so obviously that NOSE had to shrink and the only way to do that, changing just two letters and retaining real words, was to convert it to a NEB. An enjoyable exercise, thank you Ferret.