Toughie 2425

40 comments on “Toughie 2425”

1. Not only a double pangram but also totally lacking in anagrams – I bet that’s a combination that’s rarely seen.
   I liked the puzzle a lot. My podium selections went to 22a (for the penny-drop moment when I realised what Power was), 2d (for the clever use of the cricket ground in a football-related clue) and 16d.
   Many thanks to Osmosis and to Dutch.

   1. ah! – the 2d answer meant precious little to me: I found a football meaning and used that for the illustration. However you are absolutely right, Old Trafford refers not to the football stadium but to the cricket grounds, and the answer is much better known as a cricket term, a shot into the off side near 90deg, apparently

      1. In fact, the correct name for the football stadium is Trafford Park. There’s actually no ambiguity if one is being totally precise.

2. Rather heavy on GK I thought and how many of us are there left who remember 15a.?
   I had never heard of 1d. That was given me by a word search looking for something between f and h that fitted the description.
   I got 18a but query if a composer and a maestro are synonymous while the car obsession reference is, I’m afraid, beyond me
   22a was clever and COTD has to be 4a

   1. There was an annual London 1d until 2003.

      15a’s stint as PM ended over a quarter of a century before I was born, but the period of World War 2 is covered more than most, so 15a is probably better known than several who came after him.

      (Not that I solved either of those clues without Dutch’s excellent hints. I’m just hear for everybody’s comments and to marvel at both Osmosis’s setting ability and that anybody manages to solve it.)

3. There’s also a nice symmetry in the 4 corners!
   I’d give it at least 4* for difficulty – especially the NW corner.
   Loved 26a and 19d.

   Many thanks to Osmosis and Dutch.

   1. well spotted! i hadn’t seen that. i wonder what i’ve missed in previous puzzles. Very interesting, it puts some of the hardest letters into unchecked positions but in an elegant way

4. A very good double pangram – all ‘stuff’ I knew’ – finished in a 4* Toughie time

   Thanks to Osmosis and Dutch

5. This may have been a puzzle well within Dutch’s vocabulary and GK but it was too obscure for me and I found it nothing other than a dull drag. I am surprised I did not give up. 1d and 9a were unknowns so the NW corner was problematic. I have meet Barnet in crosswords often but only know to associate it with a hair style, not what it looks like. I have never heard of Mr Power so that one was nigh on impossible. I knew the maestros surname but not the first name. Many of the clues with words I know well were fairly easy so I think it is impossible to give it a star rating for difficulty but a one star enjoyment would be about right from my view point.

   Apologies to Osmosis – I don’t like GK puzzles – and thanks to Dutch for explaining that I could not have got 22a no matter how long I tried

   1. I don’t think a Barnet looks like anything, though I’ve been known to be wrong. I think Barnet as in Barnet Fair just means hair, so the answer is what “some of” that might be, much as glove could be an answer to clothing. My 2p worth, anyway

      1. Never heard of Barnet Fair so I guess it is cockney slang – something that has cause me much grief in crossword land

      2. You’re quite right Dutch. Well known Cockney slang. I had more trouble with the “obstruction” than the “Barnet”.

         1. British passports contain the following sentence:

            Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.

            1. Indeed Gazza, but it wouldn’t come to mind at the time!

6. Somewhere along the miraculous way, I realised we were in double-pangram territory: I could count double Zs, Qs, Js, Xs, and Ks. and so I thought I was on my way towards stardom. Not so! Even after smugly arriving at the right PM and conductor (though I tried to squeeze Pappano into 6 letters; after all, he’s still maestro-ing, I think), 8d and 9a did me in. And I thought that answering 17d and 26a first of all had really set me up. Never heard, of course, of 9a but I should have got 8d–well, maybe, even though we don’t ‘tot = reckon’ over here. But how great is this puzzle anyway?! I ended up using 3 electronic-gifted letters and still didn’t finish since I tossed in ‘equips’ at the end, without having a clue. ***** / ***** Thanks to Dutch (whom I esteem highly as a setter) and to King Osmosis.

   1. I meant to say that I did in fact notice the symmetrical diagonalising of Q,X,J,Z in the four corners, and I forgot to say that I Googled a lot to double-check on the Rower, the Irish festival, and the hairdo.

7. Great crossword apart from 1 down, I don’t much like the use of obscure foreign words that are no in Chamber (1998) when there are English words that will fit. It meant that I had to resort to electronics to find a word that I had already looked for. However I do now know that Dvorak is spelled with an invisible j, so I’ve learned two things today.

8. Thought I was going to get across the finishing line but was defeated in the end by the 1d field day (sorry, Dutch, but that was obscure vocab in my book!) and the class of school kids – kicking myself over the latter.
   Liked 19d despite the surface read being somewhat odd and my favourite was definitely 4a – that would be my idea of a good day out!

   Thanks to Osmosis and to Dutch for his help over the last couple of hurdles.

   1. ah, I did check chambers for the irish festival but the wordplay was clear, and to check the spelling of maestro’s first name, i think, but again the wordplay left little doubt. maybe there were a few more little checks – the football/cricket thingie – i didn’t at all mean to suggest i knew everything!

      1. That makes me feel so much better – thank you, Dutch

9. A real tough Toughie, unfinished – thank you Dutch for 1d, I had the F*E*DH but couldn’t for the life of me remember the word. So, as I didn’t finish, does that make it 5* difficulty? As for the rest, 4.5* happiness quotient. Thank you Osmosis for stirring my grey matter.

   1. Not sure of the etiquette of replying to my own post, so at the risk of incurring Moderator wrath: just finished a cuppa, and realised I could have worked out 1d – with the now blindingly obvious inclusion of the 3 letter meadow. Oh well.

      1. It seems to be the most obvious way of qualifying your own post, so completely fine – we want to hear what you’re thinking!

10. Managed to get 2d thanks to BD’s mine as usual, which opened up the NW, my last corner.
    Always thought that the Maestro was just Anton.
    Loved the Power in films and the 45mins.
    Some interesting new devices like Leaking and Abandoned.
    Thanks to Osmosis and to Dutch.

    1. Remember Tyrone as the generous and wounded hero of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises–Jake Barnes by name? I’m old enough to remember when his real-life marriage to Linda Christian (or Crystal, can’t remember which) made newspaper headlines, and he sadly died so young! I remember that day too. He was also quite intriguing in Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. (Sorry for my geriatric wool-gathering this morning, J-L.)

11. I really don’t like names in puzzles, never mind ancient ones (22a) Apparently he died 62 years ago, long before I was born, and I have never watched films. Similarly 18a – last name fair enough, but the full name of an ancient foreign person could be anything. Also, isn’t the abbreviation for Drive Dr?
    A few clues like that are enough to spoil an otherwise great puzzle for me
    Never mind, they can’t all be favourites
    Thanks Osmosis and Dutch

    1. Chambers seems to have both Dr. and Dv.

       1. Can’t find it anywhere else but I suppose, god willing, it must be ok if Chambers says so…

12. Oh my – how very clever. Sadly, I failed to notice a pangram – let alone a double one. A pity, because if I had, I would have correctly suspected I would need a ‘y’ in the one failure I had which was in 22a. (I had never heard of the actor) – and in general I found the GK beyond my comfort level. It was disappointing to fall just short, but agree with everyone’s accolades for a wonderfully well constructed puzzle. Thanks to Osmosis and Dutch.

13. Infinitely better than today’s back pager. Difficult as a Toughie should be but more rewarding and satisfying. Being relatively new to The Toughie, I did need the hints for a few. I have never heard of 1d but I should have got it from the parsing. I particularly liked 26a and its use of “forty-five minutes”.

    Grateful thanks to Osmosis and Dutch.

14. I was happy to spot the double pangram, although too late to be of any real use. I correctly parsed 1d but considered the result to be so unlikely I didn’t even check such a word existed. So a completed grid bar that, although I did spend a fair while trying to parse throne into 22a. 4a is my favourite although 21d came a very close runner up. Thanks to Osmosis and Dutch.

    1. I worked very hard with ‘throne’ as well – no chance down that garden path!

15. We thoroughly enjoyed this over afternoon beers in the garden. We had to check 1d and guessed the first word of the composer but otherwise found it doable even though it was at the tough end of the Toughie spectrum (as it should be on a Friday). 4*/4*.

    Favourite was 22d for the penny-drop moment, but several clues we’re out of the very top drawer.

    The shadows are on us now, so the next beers will be inside.

    Thanks to Dutch and Osmosis.

16. Certainly a tough challenge for us but with a bit of Google assistance we did get it all sorted. Missed a couple of the subtleties such as the placement of the less used letters and the lack of anagrams. Satisfaction in getting it all and huge respect for the cleverness of the setter.
    Thanks Osmosis and Dutch.

17. You have attached (as is your wont) a little thumbnail to illustrate the answer to 20d. Is it vulgar to ask where you acquired that gorgeous picture?

    1. Hi Ray,
       Just Google ‘pictures of 20d’ and you can scroll across to your ‘gorgeous picture’.

18. Managed to complete without actually opening any answers in Dutch’s entertaining blog..
    liked 27A ” dirt from end of shoe found in lounge by son (6) “

19. I have spent most of today wrestling with 1d. I have never heard of the place and I gave up when I realised the answer must be some Irish name. I should have got there from the clue which you have expertly explained but I was held up because I could not parse 11a and I still do not get it from your explanation what is the recorded movie referred to? I also failed to parse 19d and still do not see what the answer has to do with anything male or female.
    Never the less a very enjoyable crossword and I particularly liked 12d,14d and18a which I thought was a masterpiece.
    I started in the SE corner so I realised that a double pangram was on the cards almost immediately though that was no help with the Irish .Thanks to Osmosis for an entertaining puzzle and to you Dutch for your explanations though I think that you should stick to cricket for the solution to 2d.

    1. 11a The recorded movie is a video, abbreviated as vid.
       19d The chemical symbol for iron is FE. To get from the word FEmale to the word male you have to remove the FE i.e it’s “non-iron” which is a property of fabric.

20. Excellent puzzle overall, just let down by the dodgy class in 22a, but fair enough in a Friday Toughie! Definitely value for money.

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