A memorial puzzle to IMPEI, who passed away in May of this year at the age of 102, which is remarkable in and of itself. Of course, his claim to fame as a STARCHITECT (never heard that before, but I love it - I guess Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry fit into that category as well) is the main focus here. He has a strong connection to Boston, and despite the difficulties that surround the New John Hancock Tower, its shape and silhouette have defined the skyline in my home town as long as I've been around.
Certainly the ROCKANDROLL / HALLOFFAME and the LOUVREPYRAMID are iconic for Mr. Pei. Now having done some image searching, I see that the BANKOF / CHINATOWER is immediately recognizable as well.
I had a little difficulty in the NW today because I importunately entered DOdo at 4D: Noodlehead (DOLT), which made a lot of the proper nouns in there difficult to see. 1D: Soul mate? (BODY) is quite good. I didn't have the same difficulty in the SE because TOSCA was an immediate entry for me. I happen to have just been playing some of the music from that opera on the piano yesterday.
We all love GROMIT (and if you don't, I don't want to hear it). And George BRETT brings back fond childhood memories of baseball.
As always, there's a few entries of lesser note, such as ISOLE and AFTS. But I think the puzzle holds well together overall. And since I ended on a poetic note yesterday, here's some YEATS:
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
- Colum
9:13 (paper)
ReplyDeleteCobb did quite a bit in and around Boston - the Green Building at MIT (the tall one by the river with the ball on it), the West Wing of the MFA, the Kennedy Library, and, sadly, City Hall Plaza's master plan. And that's not all! The Hancock, however, was designed mostly by his partner, Harry Cobb.
I liked this one just fine, and I like the poetry trend!
18:46
ReplyDeleteThere was a rumor in Douglas MA when I was growing up, evidently untrue, that BRETT grew up in Grafton (close to the YBH, relatively) and his mother was a cafeteria lady in the Douglas school system when I went there, although I can't quite picture the woman in question now. Anyway, ORIOLE goes in pretty quickly now whenever we're looking for a baseball team name (after checking at least one cross), and that practice didn't make me LOSEFACE today. OCCULT was nicely clued, and the theme was well-done; not much to BEWAIL. All right, I'm caught up again. Busy summer.