Full disclosure: I attempted this puzzle while also watching a playoff hockey game - my home town Leafs being embarrassed by the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning - and as one of the dozen or so Torontonian Leaf haters, I will bask in schadenfreude tomorrow. Ah, pro sports. Anyway - maybe it was the multitasking that slowed me down, or maybe it was the tough, gristly, challenging nature of this Wednesday puzzle, but I found this a tough go. A pleasantly tough go!
Why tough? Because I am not the most literary person and so I was not helped by the theme, which manifested as an octet of doubly-clued entries in the four corners of the grid. I suspect Frannie or Horace, or likely Colum, would have twigged right away that the clues comprised both literal definitions and also poem titles - with the answers being not just regular words but the poets in question. Neat! POETSCORNER, see? POETSCORNER*S*, really, but that's splitting hairs.
Clever clues - PIT for "Place to retire in a hurry?" was excellent - my favourite - and took me several post-solve minutes to understand. I gotta say though, I found the grid a bit too heavily laden with obscurities for my liking. Or was it just me? Never heard of NASIM Pedrad, for example. Or Ingvar KAMPRAD. or HELGA Estby. As I say though, this may be more a reflection on me....
So I sign off with the feeling of OWEN you more - more of WHATTHE readers want. PEPPA you with bad puns, USA? Well, HARDY har har. I shall bid you a SWIFT fairwell - until the morrow...
-philbo
Tough one for this solver, also, especially for ALLA unknown-to-me persons mentioned above. I didn’t understanza the theme until I discussed the puzzle with Horace ipso post solvo. The little attention I gave to the theme while working on the puzzle made me think vaguely of song titles - RATINGS me an FCLEF in musicology and the poetry of architecture.
ReplyDeleteI liked it. Had SOY *Nog* for 'way too long of a time before finally reading the clue for DEA. Didn't know HELGA or KAMPRAD but the cross-words were helpful. Anyway, I appreciated the theme...and the execution.
ReplyDeleteI did, in fact, get the theme immediately with POPE and POUND, but for all the poetry I've been reading (and writing!) lately, I still didn't know Adrienne RICH, and I didn't know that Jonathan SWIFT wrote "A Maypole," so it didn't help aallll that much.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, from what I can find, Thomas HARDY (pictured in our masthead) is the only one of these eight actually buried there (all but his heart, that is, which was buried separately near his first wife), but POPE and BURNS have memorial plaques.
Sadly, when we go to London in a couple of weeks, Westminster Abbey will not be available for visiting. Somebody's getting some kind of celebratory event in the building, Charles somebody or other. Whatever.
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