Comments on: Financial Times 13,011 / Bradman

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:03:30 +0000

Tony
Don Bradman is/was a famous cricketer, hence the reference in the clue. This setter uses various famous ‘Don’s as his pseudonym (eg Quixote and Pasquale) but it was not relevant in this instance.

By: Tony Welsh

Tony Welsh — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:52:11 +0000

Is it reasonable that we should need to know Mr. Bradman’s first name?

By: smiffy

smiffy — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:55:32 +0000

G’day folks.
Am relieved to see that I’m in good company with today’s consensus; in terms of both getting a kick out of 28A (and 19A) and of having to look up the second half of 23A online.

I think this puzzle is a great example of the philosophy “a battle of wits, which the setter aims to lose gracefully”.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:48:35 +0000

Hi Eileen
Like yourself, I had not heard of the padauk tree and had to resort to searching Chambers for PAD???. Fortunately the bird began with an ‘a’ so I didn’t have to go through many entries (only two in fact).

I also needed Chambers to confirm TAURINE (bull-like) and an on-line reference to verify CALLISTO (Jupiter’s second largest satellite).

By: Bradman

Bradman — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:45:56 +0000

Thanks guys!

By: Eileen

Eileen — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:30:07 +0000

Hi Gaufrid

Thanks for the blog and the explanation of 28ac -brilliant! I agree with you about the other great clues.

I got as far as PAD with 23ac but I hadn’t heard of the tree and, to my shame, TAURINE was the other one I hadn’t put in. In defence, I’ll say that ‘going over’ often means ‘going round’, so that’s what I was looking for but it was, after all, a down clue, so I should have known.