Comments on: Guardian 24,967 – Orlando

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:56:00 +0000

Many thanks, Andrew

Just to set the record straight, Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels but her dad was British and her ma was Dutch.

Moreover, her birth was registered at the British Consulate.

Both my children were born in the Netherlands but they are 100% British.

By: Daniel Miller

Daniel Miller — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:18:54 +0000

But no Marouane Fellaini! Interesting clue that might have been

By: don

don — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:16:41 +0000

Thanks, Sil. Just looked him up on Wikipedia and there’s a debate raging over his name, with some wanting to refer to him as King Baldwin!

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:07:44 +0000

don (#21), Boudewijn (as I call him, and his real name) was born in 1930, so passed away rather young (62 years old), in Spain (he was married to Queen Fabiola – who was Spanish).
Boudewijn was King of Belgium from 1951 (hey, that’s the year I was born) until his death.

By: don

don — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:45:25 +0000

Failed on 24 down, my last one, so stuck in ‘beer’, which is mainly what I think about when I think of Belgium – and bags of chips with mayonnaise!

King of Belgium from 1930 to 1993 – 63 years, is that right?

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:41:05 +0000

When I saw the Belgian theme, I, like you, Andrew [thank you for the blog), immediately had to think of that other one a year ago].
To be honest, it made the crossword less exciting for me, because they were all there: BREL, MAGRITTE, SIMENON, POIROT, HERGE … And, of course, Belgians are/were my geographical neighbours, so Eddy MERCKX is very familiar (King of the Tour de France, although the French have a different view on that, as probably has Lance Armstrong), Cesar FRANCK is the obvious ‘composer’ and BAUDOUIN did ring many bells (although the Flemish called him Boudewijn (which in the UK would be Baldwin).

As this theme is so specific (with such a limited database for a cryptic like this) and Paul did this before, I found it a bit odd that Orlando made this choice today.

Despite all this, it wasn’t an extremely quick solve.
And despite all this, there was a lot to admire.
I’ve read all the posts (until #19) and 9 clues were mentioned as being nice.
With me adding another 3, which means 12 out of 28 clues were hugely appreciated.
That’s not bad!

The ones I would like to add are 1d (HARA KIRI) [a typical example of Orlando's gift of writing fantastic surfaces, as there are 11ac, 15ac and 16d], 3d (STOLEN) [lovely construction, concise, but everything's there] and 7d (MERCKX) [with the fine use of 'King's Cross', another feature of this setter].

On the minus side, I wasn’t happy with 10ac (FAME), especially as there was no indicator to tell me in which order I should combine FA and ME.
I didn’t like the surface of 9ac (HERGE) either, had a feeling that Orlando could have made more of it [BTW: Gent is the Flemish name for the town Ghent] – but then, there is no point in criticising a setter who week in week out opens a tin can full of cryptic miracles [Dear Friends, try some Cincinnus in the FT, too - there is hardly any response to these crosswords, which is a shame, I think].

So, a nice puzzle, not completely up to Orlando’s standards (I found, for example, 4d (GET AWAY) and 22ac (FAN OUT) not so very good), but still.
And you can’t fault him (well, hardly) on precision.

PS, Andrew, in your blog you say Flanders is ‘roughly’ a part of Belgium. I don’t get that. There are two provinces called like that (East F and West F). Nowadays, basically, Flanders stands for the Dutch speaking part of the country (as opposed to Wallonia).

By: muck

muck — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:40:00 +0000

Thanks Orlando for a great puzzle, and thanks Andrew for the blog.
Belgium is a much underrated country, despite the flemish and french speakers hating each other.
I once left my laptop bag in a motorway service carpark just S of Brussels: a kind Belgian found it and couriered it back to me!

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:07:13 +0000

William @ no 15 – I was trying to be clever at no 10 (and clearly failing) with the rah! comment – but it also took me a while to see what was going on in 1dn.

But as I have discovered, there’s no such thing as a thickie question on this blog – someone out there in cyberspace will always be willing and able to help you.

By: Grumpy Andrew

Grumpy Andrew — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:14:04 +0000

Apart from 5 I don’t think there was any needless obscurity, so found this a mainly pleasant jaunt, even if I didn’t get 20 or 21.
Thanks for explaining them.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:08:43 +0000

William – it’s RAH (cheer) “up”, i.e. reversed, + A + KIR (drink, as you surmised) + I (one), and HARA-KIRI is “ritual departure”.