Listen With Others

Nothing to worry us in this neat little preamble. Six thematic components that would have wordplay only and make up eight clues; two other clue answers that would give us the theme. A further hint would be given to us by one extra letter produced by the wordplay of one answer in each row and column. These were too be read in row and column order.

That was what gave us our way into the crossword. HEINRICH HEINE rapidly appeared as the letters down the side of my grid and, with FRAN? ??????RT appearing along the bottom, I made a lucky guess that we were looking for the Schubert’s SCHWANENGESANG. And SWAN and SONG had appeared symmetrically as the first and last down clues, explaining the title. A visit to Wiki gave me the six relevant poem titles and they filled the cells that had been puzzling us, like A?ME?R. ‘AM MEER’ of course.

We used STADT, DOPPELGANGER, FISCHER MADCHEN, ATLAS and IHR BILD to complete our grid. A gentle, very musical solve with LIED, ARIA, MAESTRO, TROMBONES, ORCHESTRA, TENOR as just a few of the words used.

No hare scuttling around in the grid this week, and the alcohol? Well, we leave to join family in Germany first thing tomorrow morning (so this was a good foretaste of German for me) and I think we might spoil ourselves with the DOPPEL G & T’s so Cheers Llig!