Comments on: Independent 7,558 / Phi – snow on the line?

By: flashling

flashling — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:56:46 +0000

Thanks R/Phi failed on zeigfeld and was buggered up by putting in in and out rather than on and off. Oh well. Thanks to my sub tomorrow and no I didn’t know who it would be!

By: NealH

NealH — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:40:15 +0000

Not really one for me today, I’m afraid. I only got the long answer by googling “time of year for a journey” after I’d guessed the last bit. Sadly, my education didn’t extend to learning many poems by heart, so it meant absolutely nothing to me. I didn’t even know it was about the magi – I thought it must be some comment on travelling on the railways. The rest of the answers were OK, but it was slow going with so much of the puzzle consumed by the long answer. I thought Ziegfeld was tricky as well if you’d never heard of Zelda Fitzgerald, especially when you were misdirected to look for a homephone of man in the middle bit.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:11:25 +0000

Thanks, Phi, for dropping in. I have to get on now with the rest of my evening/your morning, but without being too gushing, I just wanted to say that your puzzle was (you may say) satisfactory.

By: Phi

Phi — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:50:23 +0000

I have to admit I’m not a great fan of long answers spanning several grid entries, but this just appealed to me. It was only looking at the grid a couple of weeks later that the ‘Kings Cross’ thought came to me (and I’m glad the absent apostrophe was appreciated – it’s not often you can work a subtlety like that into a clue).

‘Theater’ was also deliberate (and I must demur – not ‘weak’), to point you at an American, though I was a little surprised at how quickly Flo Ziegfeld has been forgotten – his annual Follies ran every year from 1907 to 1931, which is a rather larger success than many of the big names have today. (And, of course, he inspired Sondheim’s musical ‘Follies’.) Better not offer you Busby Berkeley, then.

By: RatkojaRiku

RatkojaRiku — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:40:39 +0000

Yes, I too wondered if there was a particular reason for moving Phi’s puzzle from its usual Friday slot to Thursday, and checked to see if 6 Jan was an important date in the life of T S Eliot. However, the more obvious connection with Epiphany never occurred to me!

Again, I am always amazed to read what clues particular solvers have found easy and hard – as Eileen says, it’s easy when you know how!

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:37:48 +0000

Ziegfeld Follies: a 1945 film and a sort of early version of the Tiller Girls, and probably much greater.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:42:08 +0000

Thanks, nmsindy – and I hope you enjoyed it!

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:36:30 +0000

Re comment at 6, Eileen, I absolutely agree, tho Phi’s crossing clues did help to make it less impenetrable as solving proceeded and I’ve now read the poem for the first time…

By: scchua

scchua — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:46:34 +0000

Thanks RatkojaRiku for the blog, and Phi for another enjoyable puzzle. It was made more challenging by the missing enumeration. But, leaving them to the end, I managed to get those 17 words by googling “poem” and JOURNEY, before the expected posting of the enumeration.

I thought we were going places in a theme, with references to Australian (9A “platypus”), Italian (27A), French (2D), and German (3D), and, perhaps, American (8D), but none came up.

Favourites were 3D OSTRACISM, 8D ZIEGFELD and 20D PARVENU.

PS. 8D – “theater” instead of “theatre”? Et tu Brute! The only (weak)excuse might be that the answer is an American!

By: Eileen

Eileen — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:04:27 +0000

Hi nms

To be fair, I did qualify my comment about the enumeration being a ‘giveaway’. It’s the old story of anything being easy if you happen to know it and pretty impenetrable if you don’t.