Hob sets today’s brain-teaser…..
…. and it certainly tested us, with several clues that require a certain amount of knowledge of rather specialist subjects.
We expect Hob’s puzzles to feature a theme, and initially we thought that this would be SONGS (11ac) which is referred to in three other clues and connects neatly with FOLK (10ac) and DANCES (25ac). However, as we progressed with the solve we realised that there were also a number of references to cities and countries (1d, 3d, 4d, 18ac, 19d, 23ac), so we wondered whether it might be a geographical theme. However, the giveaway clue was HUNGARIAN at 9d – connecting directly to Béla BARTOK at 5d. Not only did this reveal that Bartok was Hungarian, but also that he was born under the sign of Aries! We are not well up on orchestral music and knew very little about this composer, but an electronic search reveals that he was very interested in and influenced by traditional 10ac/11ac from Hungary and other East European regions. He also composed a ballet called The 7d/17d. It was only finding out about this ballet that enabled us to have a stab at parsing 17d.
We like themed puzzles, but we prefer puzzles where knowledge of the theme is not required to complete the grid. Unfortunately in this puzzle, a reasonably detailed knowledge of Bartok’s work is required to solve and parse both 17d and 26ac – a reference to Bartok’s only opera. The inclusion of ‘Nine Enchanted Stags’ in the clue for 12ac and ‘The Miraculous Mandarin’ in the clue to 15d both refer to Bartok compositions. Whilst we have enjoyed researching the connections and finding out about this composer, we feel that the level of knowledge of the theme required to complete the puzzle might have put off a lot of solvers.
We needed some help with the parsing of the non-thematic 3d. It will be interesting to see what other solvers thought about this one.
We have highlighted the composer, the ballet and the musical and geographical connections in the grid. We wondered whether 2d, 19d and 21d should also be highlighted, but cannot find any evidence that Bartok lived or worked in Vienna, or that he composed any Polkas or Song Cycles but these entries do have a loose connection to the wider theme.
B E (first and last letters or ‘covers’ of Blondie) LAYS (songs – 11across)
PAWn (‘piece’ in chess) without the last letter or ‘short’ – repeated
T (last or ‘ultimate’ letter of assist) RAVEL (‘scorer’ – composer of musical scores)
A reference to the warning sign ‘Max HEADROOM’ which was the inspiration for a fictional AI character in TV programmes in the late 80s
F (fine) + pOLKas (21 down) without ‘pas’ (step)
SONS (children) round or ‘welcoming’ G (first letter of grandchild)
First letters or ‘lead parts’ of Original Nine Enchanted Stags
BACH (composer or ‘barman’) round or ‘drinking’ C (cocaine – coke) + NA (sodium) in (‘inter’) ALIA
VALSe (waltz) reversed or ‘back’ without the last letter or ‘briefly’
R (right) with PIMP (‘solicitor’) round
Hidden in filM I RAted
HOB and ME (‘two setters’) each reversed or ‘retiring’ + I (one) AraucariaN (first and last letters or ‘extremes’)
NINA (message that’s hidden) behind LA (‘the’ in Italian)
An anagram (‘drunk’) of CANS and ED
CAtTLE (neat) with S (last or ‘final’ letter of yes) replacing the first ‘t’ (time). Apparently Bartok’s (5down) only opera is called ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ – hence Hob’s use of ‘Bluebeard’s home’, not ‘An Englishman’s home’
oSLO (capital) without the first letter or ‘heading’ + A K (king) in or ‘entering’ VI (six) A
If CYCLES ‘describes’ or goes round A D (day) you would get Cyclades (Greek island group)
We were really stumped on the parsing of this, but with some electronic help, we realise that it is: MArIA (‘The Sound of Music problem’ – from the song ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’) with the middle letter or ‘heart’ replaced by LAYS (songs – 11across) – is this a step too far?
PORT (left) in or ‘during’ O-O (no-score draw)
A clue-as-definition: BART (Lionel Bart, composer of musicals) OK (yes) – the central thematic character, composer Bela Bartok 1881 – 1945
An anagram (‘rewritten’) of ODE NOW
HUNG (kept in suspense) ARIAN (one born under Aries, as Bartok – 5down – apparently was)
CAP SIZES would fancifully indicate how much head room (9 across) is available
M M (first letters or ‘pieces’ of Miraculous Mandarin) in I (one) UNITY (concert). ‘The Miraculous Mandarin’ was apparently a ballet by Bartok (5down)
An anagram (‘stewing’) of OLD MAN – we were puzzled by the ‘usually known by another name’ but we think this may be because almonds are usually referred to as nuts, not fruit
This one had us completely stumped – we were sure that the answer is PRINCE (‘the artist formerly known as….’) but we couldn’t parse it until we did some research into Bela Bartok and found that he composed a ballet called ‘The Wooden (7down) Prince’, and that this requires a very large orchestra. Certainly too much specific musical knowledge for us, but we have learnt a lot today!
E (English) N (name) in an anagram (‘around’) of VAIN
POLK (US president James Polk) AdamS (US president John Adams) without ‘mad’ reversed or ‘about’ – Polkas are dances originating in Bohemia (23 / 25)
I rather liked this one by Hobs. He’s a wee bit too clever for me sometimes. Nice nod to Barton the birthday boy though.
The nearest I could think to Song Cycles was Mikrokosmos?
Oh my word sorry
Thanks to BertandJoyce and Hobs ?
Random question Mark. Bad morning
Usually find Hob difficult but found this ridiculously so. Gave up in the SE and I’m glad I did. Fans of Bartok will probably love this but, IMO, such specialised knowledge shouldn’t prove fundamental to solving a cryptic. So a thumbs down from me. (I did get MALAYSIA though.)
We feel that the level of knowledge of the theme required to complete the puzzle might have put off a lot of solvers.
Yup. I do the Indy puzzle religiously every day, and this is the first one I’ve given up on for many a long time. Just saying.
I shall certainly be commending this to one regular G solver! It was difficult with several unparsed (though I did get MALAYSIA, parsing it exactly as B&J suggest in the blog). LA NINA was LOI and I had completely forgotten El Nino’s counterpart. I’d agree this was a bit convoluted at times though the clueing is fair when explained; a bit too much bung and pray today on my part. I don’t think I’d have explained CASTLE, PRINCE, SLOVAKIA or SLAV in a month!
I ticked several that I admired amongst those I could parse: BACCHANALIA, the important SONGS and BARTOK, BELAYS for the definition and CYCLES which I thought was delightful and the island group rang a bell once the solution had occurred.
Thanks Hob and B&J
A DNF for me, as I couldn’t see 17D at all, despite realising that there’s a Bartok theme, and put ‘grande’ in desperation – it half fits! However, I can add to the mix that today is the 140th anniversary of Bartok’s birth in 1881 – as heard on BBC Radio 3 this morning. Despite DNFing, I did enjoy this, unlike some other solvers, so thanks Hob and B&J.
Well got there in the end.. I really don’t like clues tied to other clues.. as in 5ac,10ac,2dn,3dn,9dn,14dn,21dn… but after I got over that it seemed to work out OK.. I was looking at Chopin and Liszt first before going for Bartok.. this helped a lot .. the entry clue for me was 5ac (includes Bartok’s first name Bela!) which yielded 11ac .. I failed ultimately as i put GRANDE for 17dn as LOI..still thinking Chopin! Not to worry..
Thanks Hob n Bertandjoyce
We put Rogers in for 5 d initially, forgetting that it was Hob not Cyclops….
After that poor start we did finish but with some questions about parsing…thanks bertandjoyce and Hob
I could identify only a few of the BARTOK references and the parsing of PRINCE and the significance of ARIAN in HUNGARIAN passed me by. Nothing to do with the theme, but LA NINA was entered from wordplay alone – thanks for the explanation.
Therefore not a puzzle I could fully appreciate, but of the non-thematic clues, I did like ‘The Sound of Music problem’ in MALAYSIA and the parsing for SLOVAKIA, especially the 6A for VIA which I don’t think I’ve seen before. BOHEMIAN and BACCHANALIA also scored (no pun intended!) a tick.
You could make a case for the clue for 21d being ‘Three US presidents, two not mad about 23 25’, but I won’t quibble.
Thanks to Hob and B&J
Just re-read Tatrasman@7.. of a similar mind re 17dn… probably should have looked up Bartok a bit more.. altho tbf I didnt feel a great depth of Bartok knowledge was essential… he liked folk songs..
Thnks Hob and BnJ
I don’t have sufficient knowledge of Bartok to get the full ingenuity of the gridfill, but loved it nonetheless. Don’t like the grid though – 4 mini-puzzles with minimal connections.
You don’t seem to have parsed 17d. Crossword staple (prince) Igor is hidden in bIG ORchestral. No Bartok knowledge needed.
Also I don’t think you need to know any Bartok to have heard of Bluebeard’s Castle. It’s a fairytale.
Happy 140th to Bela B!
Keep up the good work Hob and B&J.
I have always felt Bartok deserved more obscurity than he enjoys, but I didn’t find much or any knowledge of the theme was necessary (though using his zodiac sign was a bit naughty). I did not spot Herb @13’s parsing of 17d, but I concur with it entirely. With all the cross-references, it was quite chewy, but fair.
Thanks, Hob, B & J.
Oh, I should have noted (and forgive me if it’s already been mentioned), but it is surely no coincidence that Béla is “hidden” in 5a and intersects with 5d. Hob had cleverness to spare today.
If Hob had changed 18ac and 19dn (skipping the V), 23ac (BOHEMIAN) could easily become ROMANIAN.
Why do I say this?
Romanian Folk Dances is another well-known work by Bartok.
As to the crossword as a whole, I found this the hardest Hob I’ve ‘ever’ done.
I needed the blog to (fully) understand a handful of clues (like eg 3dn and 16dn), so thanks for that, Bertandjoyce!
Not sure whether I ultimately liked the crossword, perhaps a tad too intricate.
Apologies to Hob for missing the BELA in 5ac and the hidden IGOR in the clue for 17d (thanks Herb @13) – much too crafty for those of us who knew next-to-nothing about Bartok. We missed his birthday too!
We know a bit more about him now, but we still think this was perhaps a step too far for a weekday puzzle. It was very educational though!
PostMark @6: Thanks for the prod in this direction!
What a fun crossword and what a great theme!
Bartok WAS accepted to the Vienna Conservatory but decided not to go – had he done so, he’d have come under the influence of the Second Viennese School and we’d have had a VERY different Bartok.
In terms of “Cycles,” two immediately come to mind – “For Children,” pedagogical piano pieces for younger players and the Twenty-Seven Choruses for 2 or three parts. There are some songs in the lieder tradition but I wouldn’t say they are well known at all.
I wouldn’t really classify the great Mikrokosmos as a “cycle” – it is an astonishing set of teaching and learning resources more akin to Bach’s “Art of Fugue” than anything else.
There is one reference to – his “Romanian Folk Dances” (orig piano solo) have a movement “Romanian Polka.”
Whilst Bartok was influenced by folk songs, he didn’t “set” them in the way that a Vaughan Willams, Grainger or Butterworth did – instead, he used the sounds and shapes of traditional music to build his own.
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is wonderful and has to be listened to at maxumu volume in a darkened room – the performance I saw at the Proms a few years back in the half-light of that space sent shivers down my spine…
Thank you Hob and Bertandjoyce – that was a really wonderful puzzle and I’ve just found my Folk Dances score so I’ll give that a bash later today.
Even with PostMark’s recommendation providing a bit of a spoiler, I found this quite hard. [I seem to remember the (Lionel) Bart OK wordplay featuring in discussion on a Guardian puzzle a while ago. Having been misled by an intentional misprint on another puzzle, I tried to read some significance in the lack of a space in TheSound of Music.
HEADROOM was at about my level…..most of the rest otherwise; to pick just one, seeing the hidden Igor and finding the answer PRINCE! No harm occasionally measuring one’s ability to research the answers, but as a crossword, where one derives the answer from the clues, it must have been impossible for the majority. Nonetheless, thanks both for obviously significant endeavour
Petert @19: spoiler? I do apologise if it was. MB has a range of interests other than today’s theme so I didn’t think the recommendation in itself would unlock the puzzle. Hard to think how I could have brought it to his attention otherwise. Again, apologies if I inadvertently gave it away.
No need to apologise. I needed all the help I could get and my general ignorance of the great Bela more than made up for the fact that I got the theme earlier than I otherwise might. In fact I only did this puzzle today because I was intrigued as to what the MB connection would be, so thank you for the recommendation.
[petert @19; Sorry!
PostMark @21: I was trying to remember the last time I did an Indy cryptic; it was “my” newspaper and I used to read it cover-to-cover at Uni (it started during my 1st year and at one point I was buying the Indy and the Grauniad – used to read it during lectures in the big lecture theatre where no one gave a fetid dingoes what you did). On graduating, I worked in the City for about 6 years and it became my friend on the commute but by then I’d stopped the crptic only coming back last year…
Really I followed the Indy thought the Andreas Whittam Smith years but fell out-of-love with it as it went through tough times but maybe I should try again?]
Petert @22: phew
[MB @23: I’m a relatively recent convert – within the last year or so. Quite possibly since Covid but the memory is vague. And I’m firmly converted. An excellent stake of setters. )
Stable of settlers. Predictive text on phone only just spotted.
PostMark and MaidenBartok it was here where we last had Bart OK. Nutmeg used Bart Simpson an I@46 introduced Lionel
PostMark@24 I was going to say that Vlad would do well to avoid the Independent in that case.
Well, we heard the Bartók anniversary mentioned on Radio 3 this morning and when we spotted ‘Miraculous Mandarin’ in a quick scan of the clues we thought something might be afoot. So we didn’t have much trouble with the thematic answers apart from being held up for ages by our last two in – LA NIÑA and (having noticed WOODEN just above) PRINCE. Not that the rest was particularly easy, with some nice misdirections along the way, e.g. ‘6A’ in the clue to 1dn and ‘not mad’ in 21dn which initially suggested Madison might be one of the presidents.
A Bartók work which didn’t feature is the very approachable Contrasts of 1940 for violin, clarinet and piano, composed for Josef Szigeti and Benny Goodman. Worth investigating even if the thought of Bartók is a bit off-putting.
Thanks, Hob and B&J
Finished up revealing LA NINA and PRINCE. May have got them if I’d persevered, but I felt I’d spent enough time on this one. Enjoyed what I’d managed.
petert @27: your Vlad is one of the Independent setters (as Tyrus).
Yes, definitely tough, but I am a Bartok fan – just been listening to The Miraculous Mandarin – and I did finish it eventually.
Feel a bit happier having read the comments, I just assumed I was having a bad day! Enjoyed the ones I got and also the many I didn’t Barman=Bach for example is very good (and it’s going to be a long time before I get those!)
CAPSIZES my favourite
Fair play to MB for amazing knowledge!
Thanks to Hob for the effort put in and to BertandJoyce for unpicking it! I personally wasn’t put off (given I rarely succeed and hardly ever spot themes so my bar is probably lower than most) and it’s yet another learning experience for me
This somehow gave the impression of requiring more knowledge of Bartok than it actually did. I have practically none and gave up on the parsing of 17d, assuming I didn’t know the reference. But I’m kicking myself after reading the comment from Herb@13. I should have had more trust in Hob.
Thanks to BertandJoyce.