Listen With Others

Well! Having appeared there and everywhere since 2010, it was time for them to appear here. Their puzzles have covered everything from Winnie the Pooh and Jules Verne to Red Dwarf and butterflies. I looked forward to seeing what was on offer this week. Nothing seemed too daunting at first glance with an extra letter to be removed from the wordplay which would tell us what to do in the endgame.

In fact the first pass through the clues took me about an hour with a fair smattering of entries in the grid. That was followed by another 40 minutes to finish the whole thing off. That included sussing the unclued entries in the top and bottom rows once I got N–T-NE and S—-N at the bottom. Planets soon presented themselves with URANUS, JUPITER, NEPTUNE and SATURN. ART in the isolated square would give our own planet, EARTH.

Those who have seen the sort of clue I offer as my favourite won’t be surprised that 29ac was this week’s culprit: Terror sources mostly without agents? (6). Removing the extra letter a left gents and led to BOGLES [BOGLES(s)].

All the removed letters spelt out Replace all planets with the name of one of their satellites. This took a little bit of Wikiing since Jupiter and Saturn have over 160 moons between them, some not more than large lumps of rock. OBERON, HIMALIA, LARISSA and TETHYS were the guilty parties and slotted in to reveal 17 new words, SALTCAT the only word not changing.

Final change was to replace EARTH by MOON in the middle to give two more new words there. NB, the sizes of the planets and moons in the animation are not to the same scale.

Thanks for a very enjoyable puzzle, Eclogue. Hopefully you will give us a second Listener soon.