Listen With Others

For a while I thought it would be “Yes we have no idea”! For a Song proved to be the toughie of the season, and a couple of passes through the clues yielded only a couple of answers.

Fortunately CYESES (5a Type of irritant gas enveloping eyes affected pregnancies) was one of them. But then it wouldn’t fit. More answers slowly came to me and it became clear that CONES was the entry. Thank goodness it was in English and I could recognise the YES/NO device – take the opposite, and reverse it. This was confirmed by NYET and misled me into thinking all the negatives were reversed. Life proved not to be that straightforward!

I was confused by 40ac “Temporarily transfer black [solids] in equal quantities” (6, two words)”. SECOND was clearly the entry, and fitted the definition, but the wordplay made no sense, even once I’d removed solids, and it was only one word, not two.

It was then a massive leap to find the second set of answers, having missed the nudges of Queensland in 32dn, “Queensland WWII soldier sweet, not deceased”, and SPLIT for 30dn, “Crazy liberal found ballerina in bed” – how can I split SPLIT into two words, I wondered? The light dawned eventually, and 40ac SECOND BANANA now worked perfectly, though BAN instead of B for black was a bit sneaky!

The final hurdle was the online mis-spelling of Cohn’s name, but once that was resolved I could enjoy the satisfaction of having reached what I hope is a satisfactory conclusion to a fine puzzle.

Thanks Elfman for this original and challenging crossword,