Dave Hennings’ Crossword Database tells me that this will be Aedites’ 29th Listener crossword.
We find an unusual 14 X 11 grid that is not symmetrical and an unusually short preamble that tells us we’ll be looking for the surname of an author spelled by letters in six cells that are not given by the wordplay of their associated clues. Five other clues will consist of wordplay only, for answers associated with the author. We had to ‘illustrate these answers by drawing a curve through precisely 18 cells that contain a relevant phrase.’ Finally we were to highlight a three-word name associated with the phrase.
Fine, gentle clues and the right-hand side of the grid filled quickly with a couple of intriguing words appearing with wordplay only: DIMITY and SABAOTH – as well as a little red herring. JOHN shared his final cell with LENNON – were we in Beatle country again? No! Co-solver Wiki explained that JOHN, together with those two bells DIMITY and SABAOTH, and JERICHO, GAUDE, TAILOR and BATTY THOMAS were the bells in ‘The Nine Tailors’ by Dorothy Sayers. So that resolved the A S S E Y R, we had found as extra letters and helped us to fill the other half of the grid with JERICHO and GAUDE.
Aedites, of course, confirmed his retention of his Listener oenophile membership with ‘Miami friend served up excellent port (5)’ We served up that Miami friend (or BUD) with AI for excellent, giving us DUBAI. You won’t get port easily there but it merits a “Cheers, Aedites” as did so many of these entertaining clues.
So there we had our grid with a BELL theme and we somehow had to illustrate those bell answers by drawing a curve through 18 cells (precisely). Well, it had to be a BELL CURVE but there was a bit of Numpty head scratching before the words NORMAL DISTRIBUTION designed a lovely curve and the symmetrically placed CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS.
There was more to it. What was the nautical signal of the title? I’m told that five bells signify not just two and a half hours into one of the naval watches but also mutiny. How much we can learn from a Listener crossword and how nicely this was all incorporated into Aedites’ compilation.