Listen With Others

What a rich and thematically-packed crossword. Mercifully it didn’t demand two years’ hard labour as Oscar Wilde endured, but gave me a full day’s satisfying toil. It had just enough “straight” clues to provide a framework for the cyclical ones, as well as for the phrases from the 7^th verse of Wilde’s ballad of Reading Gaol.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
  By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
  Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
  The brave man with a sword!

And how well Aver assimilated those phrases!

Indeed how neatly Aver constructed the whole puzzle! It maintained my interest throughout and enlightened me on a subject of which I had no more than a cursory awareness. I thought Aver made great use of the answer lengths in brackets to depict Wilde’s pseudonym (C.3.3, a reference to his cell location).

A couple of clues stand out for their clever before/after readings

• 19 Board train to reach (teach) where one lives (HOMESCHOOL)
• 5 Christian came (name) from abroad, dropping Indo-Germanic soul in France (FORENAME)

Cycle of Crime and Punishment wasn’t as tough as last week’s Sabre, but it was fascinating and no pushover. Thanks, Aver!