Comments on: Financial Times 13,467 / Mudd

By: Tony Welsh

Tony Welsh — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:57:54 +0000

Thanks Gaufrid for explaining the “U”. I should have known, though I too rarely go to the cinema and in any case live in the US.

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:03:03 +0000

Thanks Gaufrid.
Maybe not Mudd’s finest but I still enjoyed this puzzle and if his humour wasn’t as much to the fore as usual,i still got a few smiles from it.
LATHE just about works for me – I think you can see what the setter is getting at even if it is a bit “loose”.
25 across I enjoyed – that type of clue appeals to me.
Other favourites were IN BLOSSOM and TWIN TUB.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:18:54 +0000

Tony
Film classifications. They’ve probably changed since I last went to the cinema 30 years ago but I remember U and PG being two of them.

By: Tony Welsh

Tony Welsh — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:31:23 +0000

Why is “U” “for all to see”?

By: Eileen

Eileen — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:07:37 +0000

Hi smiffy

Yes, 3dn was a good one – and, in these days of abdominoplasty, & lit, surely? [I've spared you a link to the video!]

By: smiffy

smiffy — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:28:06 +0000

I quite enjoyed the – admittedly genteel – vein of humour that permeated this one, with both 3D and 6D featuring as particular satisfying moments of solving enlightment. Like Gaufrid, I thought that ‘fluff on paper’ was an inspired def’n, but one that deserved to be accompanied by far less arbitrary wordplay.

My own quibbles were centred around 24D (I don’t think equates to ‘more right’, but the question mark probably acknowledges that) and 29A (not sufficiently wry as to merit an exclamation mark; and House of Orange or Mandarin Dynasty would be less tenuous puns, in my book).

Eileen, your Hollywood/LA point is perfectly valid. But similar such examples of geographic/urban fuzziness seem to be well-established and accepted (e.g. NE/Newcastle, from either a postcode or compass-point perspective).

By: Eileen

Eileen — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:01:42 +0000

Thanks, Gaufrid.

In 28ac, I took ‘to be concluded’ as a gerundive: ‘requiring / deserving to be concluded’, as in ‘Gaufrid is to be commended for an admirable blog’.

Is ‘Hollywood’ really acceptable for LA?