Today sees the migration of Listen With Others to fifteensquared under the category Listener. I have been setting blogs over at LWO for the best part of fifteen years although there has been a bit of a gap since my last back in May. However, it’s not as long as the gap since Hypnos’s last puzzle.
For him, it has been over ten years since that one, and that was an Inquisitor in 2014. He was, or is still, one of the main question setters over at Only Connect, so perhaps that has taken much of his time away from setting, and he has over forty puzzles under his belt. Anyway, this was his third Listener, with no. 4057, Inside in 2009 having porridge as its theme and then no. 4172, Fruitless Effort with Alexander Pope and butterflies.
[For those of you who want more information about Listener puzzles past and present, see the Listener web site. For general information about thematic puzzles from the last 30+ years, see the Crossword Database.]
Here we had Malined Work, and I refrained from wondering if Hypnos and the editors had suffered momentary spelling lapses! Every clue had an extra letter not entered in the grid. (Regular readers will know that this is not my favourite clue type even though it is very popular.)
At least there was only one clue type (and nothing normal!) so it was just a question of cracking on and solving. In the end, it was nothing too taxing and I remember that Hypnos is a very fair setter. My favourite clue was probably 32ac One enjoying it in revels wrong to detain first person in chat (7) for ORGIAST — [T]ORT around (I in GAS). Overseas solvers had my sympathy with 16dn Corruption found by former front-line reporter, one employed on tour? (6) — RO[T] + ADIE — Kate Adie being an ex-BBC news correspondent.
The extra letters spelt out Anagram of first column bar last letter. W Friedkin. My first thought was that Friedkin was some sort of philosopher but I would eventually be proved wrong on that. Trying to unscramble HEROIC TEXTS proved a struggle, with TOXIC THREES making little sense.
Of course, it was likely that the eight across entries that crossed with the first column would give new words. This gave me •HEE•ORC•ST and fitting the remaining letters TX and I revealed THE EXORCIST, a film from 1973 directed by William Friedkin. I was lucky that all eight entries would be different. A final bit of highlighting of PAZUZU in columns 9, 10, 11 (which I thought a bit superfluous) completed the puzzle.
Welcome back, Hypnos.
I’ll start then, I very nearly solved this and was tickling myself to death at getting so far. Parsing some was the problem that put elms in 34. And I didn’t suss the need for typing in the film title. The six letter, I was convinced was Damian, or, at a push Popeye. So, so near and yet….
The river was,indeed , a stinker. Bro as blood, I simply don’t agree.
The two obv anagrams at top and bottom were my starting point, and I was really pleased to nearly get there. Oh, and noll instead of boll held things up for a while. Thanks all round.