Listen With Others

Well, KevGar, you’ve set the gold standard here for everyone else to aspire to! What a brilliant, thematically-packed and enjoyable puzzle.

Naturally I managed to make it harder for myself. Take the clue “Having multiple fates, church timelessly in pursuit of god with hymn”, where I resolved“church timelessly” as COPIC (COPTIC – T, made sense to me). I then tried to shoehorn in D…..SCOPIC. Or a little further down, “Rubber in mostly solid drawer” where I wasted time with HEAVER from HEVEA before alighting on HAULER – but only by reverse engineering it from the composers.

I love all the thematic material and the way you used the discarded R from the title with the other discards to form SCHUBERT and SCHUMANN.

I raised my eyebrow at the definition of EAVIE as “name – not for a boy”. I’m not sure how long that delineation will be valid in today’s world. I assume it’s in the back of the BRB so is fair game.

Thank you for a great work out and several days (on and off) of mental gymnastics. I had assumed with a name like KevGar you were a combo but now I have time to look at the setters’ site, I see you’re a singleton – even more respect!