Comments on: Financial Times 13,034 / Cinephile

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:04:54 +0000

John
According to Chambers it can be Battenberg, Battenburg or Battonberg.

By: John in USA

John in USA — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:52:22 +0000

17D Oh! Oh! Did I find a mistake? I think the cake is spelled Battenberg, not Battenburg. But I had never heard of that cake, nore of the one in 20A, bannock. At least I knew all the battles!

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:09:38 +0000

Thanks Eileen.
I knew I could rely on you to put me straight (I think, though I may now be even more confused regarding 1a.

Well done for knowing all the battles. I had never come across ‘Senlac’ before, though the other less well-known ones were rattling around in the back of my brain somewhere.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:57:02 +0000

Hi Gaufrid

I saw your blog just before going out and had no time to respond. At that point, 31ac was bugging me, too, but the ‘bad’ penny dropped at the bus stop!

re 1ac, I pronounce this ‘Can I’, the Classical way, as you say: however, ‘ae’ is usually anglicised to ‘ee’ [cf 'vertebrae]. [Conversely 'i' [Classically 'ee'], becomes long ‘i’, as in ‘side’, in English {cf ‘radii’}]

I was reminded by this of one of my favourite Guardian clues which I found in the archive as being from 8th January, 2008: ‘Where Rome couldn’t win, Scots can’t.’

I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle – and knew [of] all the battles!

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:52:06 +0000

Agentzero
Thanks for the explanation of the German spa towns. My reading of ‘Hastings’ was similar to that already expressed by Smiffy.

Octofem
Good to see you here again. Thanks also for the info re ‘Bad’.

Smiffy
“It might be a bit too recent (or obscure?)to merit inclusion, …..”

I wouldn’t have thought that 1918 was all that recent (though I suspect that you are referring to the later battle in 2002

Too obscure, probably. Googling ‘Battle of Nablus’ only generates a couple of dozen hits.

By: smiffy

smiffy — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:08:27 +0000

I’m relieved that so many of the down clues were amenable to cold solving. With that assistance, I through before throwing in the towel on 1A, 24D and 3D (the first two being unknown to me).

I read “hastings” as being a nounal version of “to make haste”, which seems reasonable enough to me.

It might be a bit too recent (or obscure?)to merit inclusion, but did Cinephile miss an opportunity to shoe-horn in one last battle in the SE corner? If 19D was switched to ANIMATES then we could have had NABLUS at 31A (thereby avoiding the German bathtime experience).

By: Octofem

Octofem — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:59:07 +0000

Hi Gaufrid – thanks for all your hard work on the battles. I got most of them but was stuck on ‘The Nile’ – obvious once you are shown it. By the way, ‘Bad’ appears as the first name of many spa towns in Germany, indicating a town with baths, or can be a suffix as in Marienbad, or incorporated as in Wiesbaden.

By: agentzero

agentzero — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:52:29 +0000

Thanks, Gaufrid. This was a pretty difficult one, I thought.

German spa towns are generally named “Bad” something — Bad Ems, for example — so maybe for that reason C. thought it was fairer than simply giving us an English word and expecting us to know he was looking for the German translation.

15ac brought a smile.

I would be grateful if you could help me understand how 10ac (HASTINGS) is a cd.