The whirlwind of travel, performing and end-of-summer issues is finally over, and I can settle in to some proper solving sessions and not writing these blogs in a mad rush (maybe). Stan appears to be a new setter, S.J. Mulligan according to the Listener page. Diagreement has a few blocked off squares (on that main diagonal), extra letters in wordplay and (ouch) some squares that need ttwo letters side by side! Let's see how it shakes out...
The 1 across test is not met, I could not see that one straight away, but 6 across rectifies that - A,LAMP and we've got ALAP and an extra M. M as the second letter of a quote? Working through the clues, after the first solving session I had a nice little half-filled in grid and one of my double letters - REBEL crossing BEARABLE and BE checking. That helps in finding these doubles, when they're checked!
The clueing seemed pretty gentle, particularly in terms of anagrams with extra letters, so I also had a bit of a handle on the quote... --AL-EST-U----SUMOF-WOC-B--IN-W-WAY-
Looked like smallest two something in two ways... C-B--??? Cubes? A google of "smallest two cubes" brings up a wikipedia page about 1729. 1729 is the Hardy-Ramanujan number, and it looks like the latter of the two can be written in that conspicuous diagonal (pity - at the time I didn't know 5 down and was hoping I could replace that U with something more helpful).
So the disagreement is the story about Hardy and Ramanjuan (Hardy thinking there was nothing special about 1729, Ramanjuan saying that it could be formed by adding 1 cubed to 12 cubed, or by adding 9 cubed to 10 cubed.
I got all the thematic stuff with about eight answers left unsolved (all in the top half). The CU and BE double letters appear in the first cell of 1, 9, 10, 12 (10 being unchecked!). I still can't figure out the wordplay on 1 across, but I'm pretty confident of the word from the definition.
But finally, the drought is broken and I believe we have a victory for George! And a fun puzzle to go with it, I had never heard of the number or the story. Tsk tsk to Stan, didn't Stan know that this week is the numerical puzzle? Hope to see some more Stan in the future.
2009 tally: George 20, Listener 12. Current streak: George 1.
Infantile humor time - I was introduced last week to fenslerfilm, who overdubbed the GI Joe public service announcements. Some are terrible, but some are hysterical in their simplicity. Here's my favorite.
Feel free to comment, and see you next week to find out of I'm cut out for Lato.
1 comment:
Hats off to you on that one George- my normal fogginess here meant I just didn't solve enough clues to get going. I had spotted a cu and two be's though, which ought to have got me a bit further. Pity though, as I would have enjoyed the theme.
Post a Comment