Listen With Others

What a brilliant puzzle this was to wrap up the year! Thanks Kea for another superb runner from your high class stable. Challenging (but not impossibly so), suffused with thematic material, tightly clued, with the added bonus of an original and thematic construction – definitely a POTY for me. Especially as it ticked my “smile” box with its play on the word “wind”.

I was glad that the entries remained vertical within the 3 rows, although I did begin to wonder when several answers wanted to shift along 1 or 2 cells within the middle set. Turns out that I had made life hard for myself by entering EIREN for 20ac instead of IRENA, causing surprisingly consistent shifts. Once I corrected it, everything fell into place.

My favourite clue/answer was 1dn, BRICKFIELDER – I loved the image of the b. fool and the graphic way the Aussies describe their version of the wind that coats our cars with Saharan dust.

Many thanks to Kea for such a glorious ending to 2022.