Hide directory listing? chmod 730 /home/share?

So I want to hide the listing of all files to a particular group, yet I want them to be able to create/read files in that same folder. The following permissions on the folder appears to work (write and execute for the group) -

chown root:shareusers /home/share chmod 730 /home/share

Disabling read for the group prevents them from listing the contents (which is what I want).

"execute" against the directory then appears to permit the users to both read/write files in the folder (which is also what I want). Just attempting to understand why this works?