Comments on: Guardian 24,906 / Orlando

By: Sylvia

Sylvia — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:04:27 +0000

Sil, I think Alain Delon’s girlfriend was Catherine Deneuve, which makes 19a an even better clue! (are we among the few who remember old people?)

By: Gareth Rees

Gareth Rees — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:32:09 +0000

Maureen: I guess you're just being cranky, but "nasty foreigner" is a rather unpleasant way to describe John Wilkins. Are you sure he deserves your opprobrium?

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:29:05 +0000

As one from the continent, Alain + Delon was immediately clear to me.
Jsut like Y for Spanish “and”.

Only two years ago Alain Delon (now in his seventies) played Julius Caesar in “Asterix and the Olympic Games”, next to Gérard Depardieu (Obelix).
[or is this also too obscure?]

By: Davy

Davy — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:14:13 +0000

Alain Delon was in a well known sixties film “Girl on a Motorcycle” which also starred Marianne Faithfull but maybe some people have never heard of her either.

By: Gareth Rees

Gareth Rees — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:11:02 +0000

"Pixie Frou-Frou" is the fictional daughter of pop star Gary in the cartoon "Celeb" in Private Eye. The name is generally thought to have been inspired by Geldof's daughter, Fifi Trixibelle.

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:54:29 +0000

We also had never heard of Alain Delon, but having got all the crossing letters, Mrs B spotted that DECATHLON fitted and was a contest, and contained Cath. That just left Delon to which we thought “yeah, sounds like a French actor, must be right”.
Mind you, that’s how a lot of solutions seem to come – I couldn’t tell you what a Lenten Rose is, but had vaguely heard of it somewhere. Likewise FROUFROU – only really heard of it in connection with Bob Geldof’s poor daughter…

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:35:28 +0000

Message from Maureen as follows (hands over keyboard) :-

I must be getting old and cranky – doesn’t anyone know anything these days? Before nasty foreigners invented metrication, you used various parts of the body to produce suprisingly consistent measures viz
The width of a man’s thumb, or the length of the top joint -an inch; across the 4 knuckles 4 inches, or a hand used for measuring the height of horses. extend the thumb for a span or 6 inches. A foot is a foot. Ground to knee 18 inches. Finger tip to elbow 17 inches (a cubit – needed for pyramids and ark building) Fingertips to nose – 3 feet or 1 yard. Fingertips to point of opposite shoulder (eg left hand to right shoulder) is an ell or 45 inches.This is still the width of a lot of woven cloth although these days you have to pretend its 115cm, unless as I said you’re old and cranky or an American – they do have redeeming features. Rant over.

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:33:45 +0000

All a bit much for the class dummy, but my better half finished off again.

No obscurities? Apart from the ones mentioned, and allowing for the depressing fact that I can barely remember the names of English and American actors, then my response to a French actor is “who’s he?”. Not even current, so tough luck younger solvers too.

Let’s just say say if I were a setter, I wouldn’t have done that even though a person might have been known to me. It’s on a par with me using the names of racehorses. Many of you’ll have heard of some, but not most of the ones I know and regard as famous. I would be presuming a target audience if I used some of those. Which is why I wouldn’t do it. And it’s why, “oh but he was an actor” isn’t an excuse. We all have different interests remember?

By: Davy

Davy — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:43:57 +0000

Thanks Eileen, I enjoyed this Orlando but found it difficult to get into. I read through the clues twice and couldn’t see anything obvious then I saw REPUBLICAN. I thought this clue was referred to in 1d and spent a while trying to make an anagram of republican before seeing VINDICATED. These two answers gave me the starting letters of the first two words of the long anagram which I saw almost immediately. I wouldn’t say this puzzle was easy but all clues were fair. I got one wrong by putting ‘LENNET ROSE’ which sounded good to me but I couldn’t be bothered checking. I think it sounds better than lenten.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:55:26 +0000

We thought this was a real treat.
Indeed, not very hard, but as others said, splendid surfaces, not too many anagrams (but thát one was great) and a good variety of cluing types (with one or two rather original ones, like 6d).
And we didn’t even find SUNGLASSES one of the best, probably because we had seen this before.

Orlando is very good at surfaces and anagrams (as is FT’s Cincinnus), but in our opinion he is also extremely good in ‘wrong-footing’ the solver.
22ac seems to be about ‘golf’, but then it isn’t.
In 1d ’5 shown’ does make you look at the solution of 5d, but again, no.
The ‘royalty’ in the clue of 5d is another ‘royalty’ than the one associated with REPUBLICAN.
In 8d one might think: “oh, there’s that horrible ‘first seen’ = S again”, but happily not, it is ‘programme’s first’ which is not obvious because ‘programme’ is nicely linked to ‘drama’.
The word ‘pens’ in 17d is used in two different senses.

It is just a very clever way of cluing.
And we liked it very much!