Listen With Others

What a great LISZT of composers to have squeezed into the grid. It didn’t take very long to unRAVEL the theme, after some good progress in the NE corner, with a LEHAR aha moment about the theme and anagrams; but keeping the SCORE of all the misprints ands dropped letters as well as the jigsaw requirements meant I was making quite a lot of lists too. 

I suppose DELIBES joined the party, breaking the symmetry, in order to allow SCHUBERT and SCHUMANN to get in from the dropped letters. It was a thematic coup to have one of those needed in the title too, though well signposted.

I thought EAVIE was a bit unfair – not exactly the most common of names – but it was fully checked, and the nom in the clue was a give away for the misprint, so stop fussing, David. You’d have struggled to do half as well with the grid. The slightly risque “Batty wife’s game, stripping fur coat (4) for NORA [misprint: name] brought a smile (I used to sing with the Holmfirth Choral Society), which made up for the fact that even as a professional mediaevalist I had never heard of the BAEDI (“Ancient Celtic tribe rioted in northern Galicia having rejected Plan B (5) [misprint: rooted] and neither had Chambers – and even Google had a struggle.

BTW, after some resistance to the idea that Galicia was settled from Wales/Ireland and really had Celts there, the latest DNA analysis shows that the caution was right, but – that Wales/Ireland was actually settled from Galicia! But then Gerald of Wales writing at the beginning of the 13^th century knew that already, even if his embroidery is extensive.

Thanks KevGar, and all the best for your crosswording year.