It’s almost 7 months since Mev’s last puzzle – this should be good!
We really enjoyed this puzzle – it has a good mix of clue-types and good surfaces. The inclusion of several references to famous historical and contemporary people in clues and entries led us to think that there might be a theme linking the names.
We had to use some electronic help to establish that the link is the 1989 film ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ (which we have never seen!). In the film, Bill and Ted travel back in time to meet various significant people from history and bring them to the present in order to pass their high school history class. The characters are highlighted in the grid below.
Congratulations to Mev for managing to get the eight characters into a solver-friendly grid without having to resort to unusual words.
jIFFY (brief moment) with the ‘j’ (Juliet in the phonetic alphabet) missing or ‘wandering away’
An anagram (‘egregiously’) of REACTS SO
BEE (‘worker’) TrencH (missing the middle letters or ’emptied’) OVEN (Cooker)
Cryptic definition – BILLY and KID could both refer to goats (‘caprine’)
IN (cool – as in ‘trendy’) DOLENz (Micky Dolenz, drummer with the Monkees) missing the last letter or ‘de-tailed’ T (first or ‘initial letter of Tork – Peter Tork was the bass guitarist and keyboard player in the Monkees)
A GUARd (sentry) missing the last letter or ‘short’ after or ‘near’ J (Jack – playing card)
An anagram (‘upset’) of tHANk (middle letters or ‘content’ only) KEN HIGGS
CA (circa – ‘about’) W (whiskey – in the phonetic alphabet)
S (small) TABLE (piece of furniture)
Hidden (‘from’) in actOR DINA Lohan
R (Republican) mOOTED (suggested) missing the first letter or leader
NAP (snooze) O (old) LEON (Spanish city)
HOTPOT (stew) TomatO (first and last letters or ‘skin’) round A
An anagram (‘bogus’) of SAS UNITS
JO (sweetheart) + alternate or ‘regular’ letters of pAiNt On FlAt RoCk
I’M (Mev’s – the setter’s) BING (search engine) round or ‘taking’ U (one-third of CPU)
FR (father) + an anagram (‘to reform’) of DUE
OK (‘non-heinous’) round or ‘accepting’ InhumaN (first and last letters or ‘extremes’) – a reference to Napoleon (25ac) the pig in George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’
RIB (tease) CAGE (John Cage – avant-garde composer)
TELL (inform) URI (Uri Geller of spoon-bending fame) AN
Double definition, the first a reference to Dorothy Sayers, the author
First or ‘primary’ letters of Shunning Hijabs Iranian Ladies Overthrow Hierarchy – a reference to the American Civil War battle site
An anagram (‘tragically’) of SEEN CAVE
An anagram (‘peculiar’) of SLANT round IONA (Scottish island)
An anagram (‘involved’) of POTTY WAR
BRESt (French port) missing the last letter or ‘contracted’ + CIA (‘spies’)
A reversal (‘reflected’) of PO (river) WOOD (trees)
Double definition, the first referring to Abraham Lincoln
Triple definition – we had not heard of Louise Brooks – an American film actress from the 1920s and 30s
Hidden (‘inspiring’) in freshER AT Oxford
Put me down as another who’s unfamiliar with the theme film. I spotted the various characters but could discern no link and didn’t trouble Mr Google. Looking at the completed grid, I agree with our bloggers’ compliments on fitting it all together quite neatly.
I was beaten by the final clue for BROOKS having not made any sense of Louise so failing to see that it was a triple def. TWO PARTY made me smile, RIB CAGE has a very nice surface and ROOTED completes my podium – if only!
Thanks Mev and B&J
Like PostMark said in the first paragraph, except that for me it was Mr Bing that I didn’t trouble. Nevertheless it was great fun teasing out the characters. Thanks Mev and B&J, most enjoyable.
Thanks both. Impressive delivery of a theme the base of which I may or may not have come across 35 years ago. Much GK to work on, and perhaps not a puzzle for the young, as is so often the case, but youth is certainly not my affliction, though I did not know Ms Brooks, nor Jo as a sweetheart
A happy coincidence of my (old man’s) GK and this puzzle – American actresses in silent German films – Robbie Burns sweethearts – avant-garde composers all right up my street. Thanks all.
I always enjoy the breadth of references in a Mev puzzle, and the lack of snobbery over lowbrow vs highbrow culture. It’s all good.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is available to stream on ITVX (premium but you can get a free trial) – you should all do yourselves a favour and watch it. Great film. Very, very funny.
I didn’t know the film, but spotted the various historical characters as I went, which was good fun regardless.
Thanks both.
For ‘Auld Lang Syne, my Jo’ does seem to have morphed into ‘my dear’ so fewer people now know that meaning of ‘Jo’.
Napoleon, an emperor, was a pig and so was Empress in the Blandings. A coincidence? – probably.
Lovely puzzle but was a DNF as I got stuck on 7D as couldn’t get past The Wizard of Oz although I’m a great fan of the other Dorothy. Am I right that crime-fiction authors don’t come up very often in Crosswordland? Can’t remember the last time one did. More Mev please and thanks to BertandJoyce.
Did anyone else spot SONATES upside down in the middle? It’s been decades since I watched the film so can’t remember if it’s significant or not.
Not sure if this was a pleasant solve or I was just happy for the break from Paul in the Guardian.
Thanks MeV (first time solving) and B&J
Brumbies
Thanks B&J, and all commenters for the kind words. Nice to hear my [80% of one light] & [50% of another] puzzle has gone down well. Sorry to anyone who struggled with Louise and/or Dorothy. They were deliberately chosen (as opposed to, say, Mel & Leo(‘s)) to try to add a little bit of balance to a bloke-heavy theme.
Hovis@7 I’ve read all the Blandings books (as all right-thinking people should have 😉 ), but long ago so I wasn’t thinking of The Empress at the time. That might have been fun to try to use as the reference for the oink.
[ele@8 I’m not sure. But you may perhaps like this. ]
Staticman1@9 That’s close to both Socrates and sonatas, but means nothing to me as-is, I’m afraid. In a conversation with m’learned friend Gussalufz, he suggested we needed a word for accidental or imagined Ninas, and proposed “Eddy” (as in “…in the space-time continuum”), which I have fully adopted. The only Eddy I can spot here is A TOAD ALE, which I don’t fancy a glass of.
Thanks to the boss for the slot, and a few suggested thematic tweaks.
Party on, dudes, and be excellent to each other! *screechy twanging*
Amidst the accolades, I found the use of so many individual tellurians a little bit tedious.
Outwith the theme, with its 8 “names”:- 30s flapper Louise Brooks ( of course ); 60s drummer, Micky Dolenz, ( of course ); Ken Higgs (really!); Dina Lohan; Uri Geller; John Cage; Juliet Capulet; Dorothy L Sayers.
Not forgetting Mev himself and Bing duetting in 1 ( down).
Not totally BOGUS or HEINOUS, dude, just non-triumphant.
Mev, Bert and Joyce, Bill and Ted ……..party on , dudes..
(Sorry mev , written before your post)
Mev@10 Thanks, for confirming. It was so close to Socrates I wasn’t sure if it was a coincidence or not. My memory of the film is a bit sketchy but I remember their history knowledge was not the greatest. I thought it may have been a mispronunciation of the name used in the film.
Thanks Mev for a nicely crafted crossword. I was able to solve & parse everything, recognise the famous names, but I did not know how they related to each other. My top picks were CAW, FREUD, SHILOH (an acrostic that reads coherently is always a plus), and DOO-WOP. Thanks B&J for the blog.
Well, I have seen the theme film but I didn’t spot that the historical characters from the film were in the answers. More recently I did get to a showing of Pandora’s Box starring Louise Brooks.
Dylan would have fitted them in to a song,
In fact Ma Rainey and Beethoven
Very enjoyable.
[Mev@10 Thanks for the link. Great fun]
FYI if you are using the NATO Phonetic Alphabet for the letter “J”, Juliett is spelled with two “t”s
E.N. @11 Yeah, fair enough.
Staticman@12 You may be faintly remembering “So crates” from the film.
All @13-16 Cheers.
slyzspyz@17 Yes, true, but Chambers still has the single ‘t’ version, so arguable both are still valid here in crypticland. 🙂