Listen With Others

I was going to post a bumper bundle but Short Seats was such a magnificent puzzle that I thought it deserved a blog of its own.

We’d had some fairly gentle Listeners for a while, so it was no surprise when Short Seats proved to be a tough cookie!

The rubric could have been more helpful by indicating that some cells contained more than one letter per entry. Fortunately I spotted that the letters in SUBZONE cried out to be one space to the left and I twigged what was going on. DOHA then dropped out and I was galloping.

At least, until the very final stage. Before I’d solved the message I’d been fixated on replacing the capital of the country with the Capital (letter) ie initial of the country. It made sense – to me. I spotted the emerging country codes but it took a lot of mind-shifting and a friendly nudge before I replaced my beloved “capitals” with the letters needed to create the 3-letter codes.

A magnificently constructed puzzle which I hope gets nominated for POTY. Thanks, Yorick