tpg (Anthony Barra) has kindly provided a puzzle for the York gathering…if you want to solve the puzzle before reading the blog, it can be found here.
Some ‘Special Instructions’ are supplied as well:
“To support your solve, this puzzle includes a classic British film’s:
– title
– writer
– director
– lead actors
– and source material
– along with a memorable line of dialogue”
After a couple of initial passes, the grid started to fill up gradually, and the first PDM came when I got (David) LEAN at 5D – well signposted as the definition is ‘director’, despite a cheeky bit of misdirection with ‘German’!
Unfortunately that didn’t help much, as even this bear of relatively little film knowledge knows a few David Lean films: A Passage to India, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Doctor Zhivago. But I couldn’t see any of those words appearing in the grid…
Pressing on, I eventually got to Noel COWARD appearing at 18D – but this time defined as a playwright, which is what I would automatically associate with him, along with his witty and pithy songs, like ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’, and a cameo appearance in The Italian Job.
By this point the grid was almost full, and all the thematic material I seemed to have was these two names – no title, no stars, no source material, no dialogue.
It took a little Wiki-oogling research to establish that Lean and Coward collaborated on a few films around the time of the Second World War, including In Which We Serve, Blithe Spirit, This Happy Breed and Brief Encounter.
And the last one triggered a few face-palm moments as I realised that:
- Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, the lead actors, are name-checked in 18D and 2D respectively
- Coward’s one-act play ‘Still Life‘ (17D) was the ‘source material’ for the screenplay, adapted by Coward himself
- the title was hidden in plain sight as an acrostic in the first letters of Across clues
- those unches around the edge – which should have had Nina alarm bells ringing in my head from the start – contained the line ‘NOT EVEN LIFE LASTS VERY LONG‘, said by Johnson, as Laura Jesson
- the preamble says the PUZZLE contains all these items, not the GRID, as I misinterpreted it…this needed some thinking ‘outside of the box’!
I have to confess to never having watched it (cue a Bateman ‘The Man Who admitted to never having watched Brief Encounter’ cartoon), but I was familiar with the title, Lean, Coward and the two stars. I am sure many others will be aficionados who sussed it out as soon as they saw Lean, Coward/Howard and Celia. And others more observant than me might have looked for the Acrostic straight off…
Anyway, I think all that remains is for me to thank tpg for an entertaining (and educational, for your blogger) diversion, and I trust all is clear below.
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 7A | TYPO | Boo-boo? Yep, on vacation slicing tomato when exhausted (4)
T_O (TomatO, exhausted of inner letters) around (sliced by) YP (YeP, vacated of inner letter) [the first words of each Across clue form an acrostic giving the thematic film’s title] |
||
| 8A | THE LIKES OF | Representatives such as Rocky ok with filth, see? (3,5,2)
anag, i.e. rocky, of OK with FILTH SEE |
||
| 10A | ORNITHIC | In distress, tiny tailless choir of birds (8)
anag, i.e. in distress, of TIN( |
||
| 11A | HANKIE | Endless gratitude to friend essentially providing nose rag (6)
( |
||
| 12A | NYSE | Financial market regularly tense: yen backsliding (4)
reversed (backsliding) regular letters from ‘tEnSe YeN’ [the N of the solution is the start of a clockwise perimetral Nina, giving the thematic memorable line of dialogue] |
||
| 13A | BANANA PEEL | Eel, following boy’s lead, advanced near grandma with papa chasing yellowjacket? (6,4)
B (leading letter of Boy) + A (Advanced, as in A-level) + NANA (grandma) + P (papa, P, phonetic alphabet) + EEL |
||
| 15A | ERASE | Nullify rule in facility (5)
E_ASE (facility) around R (rule) |
||
| 16A | REPEL | Chase away salesman, rejecting terms of legal loophole (5)
REP (representative, salesman) + EL (LE, terminal letters of legaL loopholE, rejected) |
||
| 19A | GREENSTONE | Oddball enters wearing departed’s Māori jade (10)
G_ONE (departed) around (wearing) REENST (anag, i.e. oddball, of ENTERS) |
||
| 21A | LIMA | Unwrapped ACME’s variety of beans (4)
( |
||
| 22A | NEEDLE | Nag Miss Lee interminably (6)
NEED (miss, want) + LE( |
||
| 24A | AMOROSOS | Tolerable Roman mainly coming back for sweet sherries (8)
SO-SO (tolerable) + ROMA( |
||
| 26A | OUTFIELDER | Extraordinary life detour defines ballplayer (10)
anag, i.e. extraordinary, of LIFE DETOUR |
||
| 27A | ISNT | Risk undressing? Nice at first; in the end it ain’t (4)
( |
||
| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 1D | EYE-RHYME | Dewy web periodically gathered frost, wood and … food? (3-5)
EYE (periodic letters of ‘dEwY wEb’ + RHYME (homophone, i.e. gathered – RHYME can sound like RIME, frost) |
||
| 2D | VOCIFERATE | Cry out to Celia, gutted, if ever struggling (10)
anag, i.e. struggling, of TO + C( [the Celia in the clue being a reference to the thematic acting lead, Celia Johnson] |
||
| 3D | ETCH | Get topless and groove (4)
( |
||
| 4D | NIGHT NURSE | She’ll relieve you in the dark and barely clutch beneath the head (5,5)
NIGHT (dark) + ( |
||
| 5D | LEAN | Pick up missing debut from German director (4)
( [David Lean, our thematic director] |
||
| 6D | IODINE | Symbolically, I eat with cow (6)
IO (Greek mythology, a maiden turned into a heifer by Zeus, so cow) + DINE (eat) |
||
| 9D | EX-CONS | Some Libs freed criminals (2-4)
punning double defn. – some Liberal politicians will be former Conservatives, or EX-CONS; and freed criminals are EX-CONS; and I guess the two groups are not mutually exclusive! |
||
| 13D | BEEF SKEWER | Live a little eccentrically facing loud critique as one held to the fire, say (4,6)
BE (live) + E (a little, or first letter, of Eccentrically) next to (facing) F (forte, music, loud) + SKEWER (a negative critique, or review, of a work could be said to have skewered its subject/creator) |
||
| 14D | POPE LEO XIV | His Holiness, Pele, beginning to organize team into position (4,3,3)
PO_V (point of view, position) around PE_LE + O (beginning to organise) + XI (eleven, team) |
||
| 17D | LAMPOONS | Still Life, primarily capturing a mop with no changes, sent up in parodies (8)
L_S (primary letters of Still Life, sent up) around (capturing) AMPOON (anag, i.e. changes, of A MOP + NO) [Still Life being the thematic source material, a 1936 play by Noel Coward] |
||
| 18D | COWARD | Howard gets cast initially to play husband’s part for larger-than-life playwright (6)
( [the Howard in the clue referring to the thematic acting lead, Trevor Howard; and the Coward of the solution to the thematic writer!] |
||
| 20D | RUEFUL | Not entirely true? Full-stop: Sorry. (6)
hidden word in, i.e. not entirely all of, ‘tRUE FULl-stop’ |
||
| 23D | DEFY | Idolize heartless rebel (4)
DE( |
||
| 25D | OGRE | Frog recalled boxing hideous giant (4)
hidden word in, i.e. boxed by, ‘frOG REcalled’ |
||