Listen With Others

The last Listener from KevGar had the UK’s exit from the EU as its theme and here we are, three years later, and it’s still dragging on. Hopefully something a little less depressing this week. Lots of thematic material needing to be added or removed from several answers and loads of extra words elsewhere defining the results.

10ac West African tree not near Australian magpie (5) had AFARA promptly slotted in with magpie as an extra word. I should’ve know 13ac Single-seeded fruits rodent stashed in unfinished frame (7) but it wouldn’t come to mind — SAMARAS it was [MARA in SAS(h)]. Luckily, 14ac A dozen Scots appearing behind goats knock out Chief Constable of Delhi (6) gave KOTWAL (extra word goats) and the first answer requiring thematic modification 15ac Where one could store data — empty “Cloud” (5) produced CD. I wasn’t sure whether CD was the first and last letters of the resulting entry, but that looked likely.

I only got a couple more across answers on a first pass through the clues, but 1dn Out of hours, not socially acceptable (8) for HORS got the downs going, but needed to go into an 8-letter entry. 5dn Madeira lady blowing horn to stop tide (4) got my first answer that was too long for its entry — SENHORA [HORN* in SEA]. Could the SEN be superfluous, leaving HORA, and we were dealing with dropped coins?

All in all, solving was fairly slow, but the monetary theme was eventually confirmed. I particularly liked the clue to 16dn In some places, one short wader to a man (4, two words) leading to UNA VOCE [UN + AVOCE(t)] with an AVO (Macau money) removed for entry to leave UNCE. I also wondered whether it should have just been 12dn (10), with two lumps of WONGA added in for WONGA-WONGA, but the clue was actually Lady singer is quite mad (10) giving GAGA with two bits of WON inserted. And I leave 8dn In dire need, sex produced pigeon (10) for you to muse on!

The answers needing money added:

• 15ac CD around ORE
• 35ac BE before SOM
• 11dn MAA around LARI
• 12dn GAGA after and around WON
• 18dn FARM around another ORE
• 19dn T after PYA
• 20dn TIREE around another SOM

The answers needing money removed:

• 26ac SWEERED – RED
• 3dn SOLERA – SOL
• 5dn SENHORA – SEN
• 9dn RESUMED – SUM
• 16dn UNA VOCE – AVO
• 23dn BEATINGS – AT
• 28dn FLEURET – LEU
• 33dn LATEN – another AT

The elusive figure at 1ac was MONEYCHANGER. All that was left was for the correct version of the title to be entered below the grid, and TROUBLEMAKER was a doddle. Thanks, KevGar.