I thought this was a lot of fun. Some of the tricky parsing will be wasted on speedsters like the Australian Magoo, because many of such clues are eminently biffable, but for all that this covered a broad spectrum of knowledge. Thanks, setter!
22:06
| Across | |
| 1 | Start to concentrate before bishop leads meeting in intellectual manner (10) |
| CEREBRALLY – C~ ERE (before) B before (leads) RALLY (meeting) | |
| 6 | Bird lives on Irish beaches primarily (4) |
| IBIS – I (Irish) B~ followed by (on) IS (lives) | |
| 9 | Actress to feel bad about taking off a dress — nothing to finish with! (5,5) |
| GRETA GARBO – |
|
| 10 | Trick rogue, quietly departing (4) |
| SCAM – SCAM |
|
| 12 | A small number helping almost everyone having high hopes (12) |
| ASPIRATIONAL – A S PI (number) RATION (helping) AL |
|
| 15 | Poet Edmund eats soft food that comes in rolls (9) |
| WALLPAPER – PAP (soft food) in [Edmund] WALLER (17th C English poet and politician) | |
| 17 | Restrict learner with self-aggrandizing boast (5) |
| LIMIT – L (learner) ‘I’M IT!’ | |
| 18 | Examinations of small vessel within bigger one (5) |
| SCANS – CAN (small vessel) in SS (steam ship) | |
| 19 | City halved effort to stop protection (9) |
| SHEFFIELD – EFF |
|
| 20 | Human replica evolved like characters in Fahrenheit 451? (12) |
| ALPHANUMERIC – anagram* of HUMAN REPLICA; in the quiz last week, we had the question, ‘In this novel, what burns at 451F?’ I told the team, who were clueless, though not, as it turned out, much more so than me, that it might be human flesh. It is in fact paper; though, in fact, paper doesn’t actually burn at that temperature, we were told. Maybe some paper somewhere does… | |
| 24 | English lord failing to keep right sword (4) |
| EPEE – E PEE |
|
| 25 | Foreign capital quietly blocking raised matter of only local interest (6-4) |
| PARISH-PUMP – PARIS P in HUMP; not used much in these digital days, where X and IG are the parish pump, but you can have parish-pump newspapers, politics etc | |
| 26 | Killed a large number (4) |
| SLEW – double definition | |
| 27 | Ditched plane caught side on in crash (10) |
| JETTISONED – JETT (sounds like JET – well, yes…) SIDE ON* | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Composer using four notes — or none! (4) |
| CAGE – C A G and E are all musical notes; my dear friend John Cage once composed a piano piece lasting 4 and a half minutes or so with no notes. I played it once. Does that make me a concert pianist? | |
| 2 | Money that is held by opposing sides (4) |
| RIEL – i.e. in RL; the monetary unit of Cambodia, though they’d prefer US dollars | |
| 3 | French mathematician developed basis with Laplace (6,6) |
| BLAISE PASCAL – BASIS LAPLACE*; Pierre-Simon Laplace was a revolutionary period French mathematician | |
| 4 | Fine instrument used in dramatisation (5) |
| AMATI – hidden; if not a Strad, then an Amati | |
| 5 | Story about female underwear I start to read in bookshop abroad (9) |
| LIBRAIRIE – BRA I R~ in LIE (story – pretty much anything President Trump says, according to the Guardian, those fine arbiters of Truth); a French, ‘ow you zay, bookshop; [update] in fact, an unaccounted for ‘I’ means this clue doesn’t parse. The crossword editor informs us that he will be replacing ‘start to’ with ‘originally.’ | |
| 7 | For instance, net something no longer deemed fashionable? (4-6) |
| BACK-NUMBER – net reversed is TEN, so a number backwards, or [drum roll] ‘back number!’ | |
| 8 | Parable I utilised in original way to convey meaning primarily (10) |
| SIMILITUDE – M~ (M |
|
| 11 | Legislation brought by British, bad old folk not looking good (4,2,6) |
| BILL OF RIGHTS – B ILL O FRIGHTS (people not looking good; by analogy with ‘Ooh! He looked a real fright, Mavis!’ you could have ‘Ooh! They looked real frights, Colin!’ Okay, doesn’t quite have the same ring, but this is Crosswordland.) | |
| 13 | At rest, so we abandoned cars (3-7) |
| TWO-SEATERS – AT REST SO WE* | |
| 14 | Change still perceived as feature of church (10) |
| ALTARPIECE – homophones of ALTER and PEACE | |
| 16 | Right to graze cattle in former city once upon a time (9) |
| PASTURAGE – has the setter managed to craft a nice clue using dear old UR of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abra[ha]m? I think so. PAST (former) UR (city once – you’d be hard pressed to find it now) followed by (upon) AGE (a time). We’ll allow him/her the stray A. Bravo/a! | |
| 21 | One apprehended by journalist with court order (5) |
| EDICT – I in ED CT | |
| 22 | Particle of meat, not dry (4) |
| MUON – MU |
|
| 23 | Party’s set up something to eat (4) |
| SPUD – reversal of DUP’s (Democratic Unionist Party, from ‘Nrn Irn’) | |
35 minutes as far as I went, but this was a DNF because after an extensive alphabet search I failed to come up with the unknown MUON which I suppose on reflection I should have been able to find via wordplay. Its one previous appearance here in a Jumbo 5 years ago passed without comment from me although I did make a contribution to the discussion that day.
I got CEREB at 1ac from wordplay quite early on but lost time coming up with the rest of the answer. This was not helped by its crossing with a French word which to my mind has no business in an English crossword or dictionary, but Collins and Chambers (though not the Oxfords) apparently disagree and that allows the setter to include it.
23 minutes with LOI MUON. You wouldn’t know I was a physicist. COD to PARISH-PUMP. A nice start to the week. Thank you U and setter.
One thing that held me up: “BRA I R~ in LIE” only gets you two of the three Is in LIBRAIRIE — are we missing one? I did this while half-asleep and I’m still a quarter asleep so I could easily be wrong…
“in” contributes the other I. LIE about BRA I R I.
Thank you, I was wondering that (I had LIBRAIREE, based on …REad being the start to read, drat)
Not a typical Monday puzzle by any means, and I was held up for nearly three minutes by having to alpha trawl both SPUD and my. NHO LOI. At least I avoided further addition to my outrageously high typo count!
FOI IBIS
LOI MUON
COD SHEFFIELD
TIME 10:50
LOI Muon and I’m a physicist too…if only theoretical
Jeremyb
I didn’t get it. (Theoretically I’m an accountant, so I excuse myself.)
17:27
DNK WALLER’s first name, tried for a bit to do something with SPENSER. I didn’t know where to get the other T for JETTISON, not knowing JETT. Still don’t. We had PARISH-PUMP recently, maybe in a Jumbo, when it was new to me; once I had he PUMP, I finally recalled it. I liked GRETA GARBO & LOI ALPHANUMERIC, but COD to MUON.
‘Caught’ indicates the homophone, JETT / “jet” (plane)
Hi Kevin, I think the word ‘caught’, referring to what one might catch, or hear, accounts for the spelling of jett 🙂
Around 30 minutes which is my fastest ever. LOI CAGE only possibility. Only understood “or none” when I looked it up.
Thanks U.
The Muse’s friend, tea does our fancy aid,
Repress those vapors which the head invade
(On Tea, E Waller. As you can see, he ain’t Pope)
25 mins pre-brekker, some of it spent trying to justify the extra ‘I’ in Librairie. I don’t think ‘start’ allows the I to come from ‘in’. But what would have worked is “…ONE startS to read in…”.
Ta setter and U
I for in comes up often in Mephisto and such, and I think I ‘ve seen it in the daily. I’ve certainly seen it in the Scottish Play:
Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’
Like the poor cat i’ the adage?
I’m going to disagree with you there – can’t ever remember seeing I for IN in the daily. I was with Myrtillus in seeing I as the very unsatisfactory start for IN.
Kind of hard to check that! It m8ght well have been better to have (somehow) indicated that you needed the two “starts”.
Agreed he was no Pope, but anyone who praises tea can’t be all bad.
Not on the wavelength at all today. The long ones gave me trouble especially GRETA GARBO, which I got but parsing was another thing. SIMILITUDE another fail. Managed to see what was happening with MU(TT)ON but never heard of the particle, or had forgotten. Sort of parsed BILL OF RIGHTS but thought it very convoluted. Managed LIBRAIRIE from the wordplay. NHO the mathematician. Got WALLPAPER from the ‘roll’ in the clue but never heard of ‘WALLER’. Oh, that kind on ‘no notes’!
Thanks ulaca.
16’39”, with some time spent on the ALTARPIECE / ALPHANUMERIC crosser.
I do think LIBRAIRIE is fair game, being a well known ‘false friend’ (faux ami). MUON went in pretty quickly, as did SHEFFIELD, which was unparsed.
I don’t read the Guardian; the markets are crashing.
Thanks ulaca and setter.
DNF in about 25
PARISH PUMP (or at least the second word) was very hard for me with the MUON crosser, but what did for me was fruitlessly alpha-trawling S_E_S for a word meaning “examinations”. Oh dear.
Not the easiest Monday but enjoyed it
PS I am happy with pretty much anything in a puzzle but there was a pretty massive eyebrow raise at LIBRAIRIE – it’s just a foreign word isn’t it?
Yes, but it’s a foreign word *I knew,* which makes all the difference 🙂
Many foreign words have been incorporated to English because they add a meaning or nuance we don’t have or express something more succinctly. I’ve no objection for instance to all the imported words for restaurants because they suggest different types of cuisine, ambience etc. But unless I’m missing something a librairie is just a bookshop / book store, so why would we need a foreign word for it?
I’m glad I’m not the only one slightly puzzled by this (not in the sense of being confused; I got it straight away).
Being bi-lingual, I’m happy for the crossword to include random French words, but shouldn’t they have some kind of currency in English, which I don’t think ‘librairie’ has?
No real trouble with what I thought was on the whole an enjoyable crossword, but I dallied for ages over SPUD (my LOI) took an age to come, basically because I couldn’t see where the ‘S’ came from. Just a mental block; no excuse.
Not that I disagree with you, but it’s because it’s in Chambers that’s why.
However, I’ve been banging on about the use of the eccentric Chambers for a long long while on here, and it’s nonsense like this entry that simply adds grist to my mill. It reminds me of ‘Schnell’ (in the championships?) a few years ago where the dictionary definition is helpfully given as ‘German word meaning quick’. Or maybe that was Collins? Which can also be a bit iffy. And quite what Merriam-Webster is doing as a source for an English crossword is simply beyond me.
I would say shame on The Times for using them all, but it’s our own fault for indulging the unholy alliance, and we ‘reap what we sow’ and all that.
We should stick to the Oxfords only.
C’mon, you’re right across la Manche, surely you must have popped over to Paris more than once in your life. It would be a shock to think there were so many libraries in that city, before you realized that the French word for “library” is bibliothèque.
Painfully hard work at 43 mins only to have the effort wasted by a typo in AGATI, a simple concealed.
Lots of very long-winded constructions, a few NHO in Waller, RIEL and AMATI. Found it hard to appreciate the clever stuff amongst the slog. Not my bag this one.
Thanks both.
Quick but pleasant today. No problems with the fundamental particle; nho riels but it had to be .. nice to see my birthplace get a mention, too ..
Was that Ur?
🙂
😂
19.50 at the breakfast table with chatty company so a fair start to the week. CEREBRALLY and CAGE went in straight away, a reasonably smooth journey from then on, culminating like some others here with MUON. I dare say that I will not be the only one who spent fruitless minutes thinking that “poet Edmund” must be Spenser until Waller popped into my mind, a nice piece of guile.
Thanks U and setter.
I thought “Spencer” at first, but clearly it could not be given the checkers. NHO the poet Edmund Waller, but I put WALLPAPER in as a semi-biff (a) because it comes in rolls and (b) because I could at least parse PAP. Given that WALLER is a common enough surname, I assumed there must be a poet called Edmund Waller, even if I’ve never heard of him. I shall now do a quick internet search to see what I have been missing.
Edit: Having looked him up and read his best known poem, ‘Go, Lovely Rose’, I now know what I had been missing: not a lot. A contemporary of Donne and Marvell, but not in the same league.
Chatty company at breakfast while I’m doing the crossword is usually enough to ruin my morning.
18:24. Funny you should say that U as I was thinking of you during the solve. There were small fragments of science and maths (you know, actual knowledge) that might not have been covered in your classical education. Come to think of it we haven’t had an oread for a while, at least not since I took Stephen Fry’s crash course in Greek mythology.
Anyway there was no speediness today despite the obvious write-ins for BLAISE PASCAL and ALPHANUMERIC. Just picked my way slowly through the rest, with SPUD and PARISH-PUMP the last to fall I think.
All good fun, thanks setter and U.
24:36
I found that a bit of a slog but there were some lovely clues therein. I slowed myself in the SE by typing in PARISH NEWS when I saw the first bit and only corrected my ways when I couldn’t make head nor tail of the rest.
PARISH-PUMP, MUON and RIEL were total unknowns, along with WALLER and BLAISE.
For once I took my time to review as last week was a catalogue of errors.
Thanks to both.
Just under 20 minutes.
– Like Kevin, I thought of Edmund Spenser for 15a before the checkers forced a rethink, though I hadn’t heard of Edmund Waller
– Relied on the wordplay for the unknown RIEL
– Never remember AMATI so I was glad it was generously clued
– Not familiar with BACK-NUMBER meaning something that’s out of date, but the checkers helped a lot and I eventually figured out the wordplay
– Didn’t parse the ‘frights’ part of BILL OF RIGHTS
Thanks ulaca and setter.
FOI Cerebrally
LOI Muon
COD Blaise Pascal
The only example I know of BACK NUMBER in general use refers to previous editions of periodicals.
Collins says it’s also ‘a person or thing considered to be old-fashioned’. News to me too.
“Who wants yesterday’s paper?”
Me for one. I usually like to do the crossword first thing in the morning but don’t get today’s Times until lunchtime, and I’m not keen on the e-version. Of course by then it’s pointless commenting, everything has already been said, but I still enjoy reading “yesterday’s” blog.
I’m a treeware solver in Australia, so the blog is relevant five weeks later, an I’m not the only one. Also I think the booger’s read late comments, as do those to whom you reply. So please have your say.
Doing this on a commute so won’t comment on time but I found this hard going but it always felt achievable. A bit above the usual Monday fare.
LOI MUON which I pulled from the long abandoned science part of my brain. I wasn’t 100% sure until I saw the wordplay. Took an age on SHEFFIELD as well despite living there for 4 years.
PARISH-PUMP was half in for a while until SPUD fell. I think I’ve heard of it but it’s not a phrase I come across often.
PASCAL was biffed but his first name was escaping me.
WALLPAPER I couldn’t parse but the crossing letters were as kind as could be.
FOI: IBIS
LOI: MUON
COD: ALPHANUMERIC
Thanks setter and blogger.
Darn, had parish news instead of pump, and argued myself out of muon as a result, because i did not really know what that was! Could not arrive at spud either because i thought party wd be Do! Just a mess in that corner, but good fun! Thanks, Cx
Beaten by MUON, got nowhere near it and gave up after about 35. I found a number of the other clues much more challenging than others here and am indebted to Ulaca for explaining several where the WP eluded me.
From Highlands:
Windows were shaking all night in my dreams
Everything was exactly the way that it seems
Woke up this morning and I looked at the same old page
Same old rat race, life in the same old CAGE
The weirdness of PARISH-PUMP, RIEL, LIBRAIRIE (which clue contains an error) and PASTURAGE was a little disturbing for me today, though most except the goofer offered a reasonable way to the solution. The PASTURAGE clue however, while nice, was a pretty tough route to the answer, in this not-very-Mondayish puzzle.
Thanks Ulaca.
11 minutes, disregarding a foolish typo. I particularly appreciated the roundness of BLAISE PASCAL, using the connected Laplace.
Fahrenheit 451 was one of the three SF books we read for O-level – their rather lurid covers dismayed our parents at the time, but I think we were rather lucky. I’ve never personally verified it, but I’m happy to believe that bookpaper ignites at 451°F especially if encouraged by a liberal dose of kerosene. Curious, is it not, that Fahrenheit 451 has sometimes been banned in certain States? All that, of course, put me off the actual answer to the clue.
Entertaining blog, U, for an entertaining puzzle. Thanks!
Well, I enjoyed this. No idea how long I took because I failed to pause it while off doing other things. Best guess, 45 minutes. No aids used either.
NHO RIEL but no alternative was credible.
On reflection, not sure why it took so long as all clues seem very fair.
Thanks to setter and Ulaca.
7:54. RIEL was my only unknown in the answers. I knew MUON but thought that NUON might also be a particle so took time to figure out the rather tricky wordplay. Apparently the NUON is a theoretical particle necessary for the theory of Infinite Hierarchical Nesting of Matter. Fair enough.
In spite of being in possession of an English degree I don’t remember coming across Edmund WALLER but I didn’t really need him.
In 9ac for the grammar to work I don’t think we are ‘taking off’ RE: I think RE is ‘taking off’, i.e. scarpering.
1a Cerebrally; took a while finding the rally. Pleased we didn’t get the bra from the usual support chestnut.
COD 9a Greta Garbo, took a long time to parse after an initial biff from ????a ????o.
15a Wallpaper; I NHO Edmund Waller, so why did I add him to Cheating Machine sometime after 22 Jan but before today?
2d Riel; NHO but not hard. I’ve not been to Cambodia.
Thanks ulaca & setter.
Apologies, there is indeed an error in the clue for LIBRAIRIE, with one I unaccounted for in the wordplay. (Using “in” to indicate I is fair game in advanced cryptics, such as the Listener, but not here.) We will be replacing “start to” with “originally”.
Tripped over in the bookshop and arrived in the LIBRAIRRE. 23,41 WOE. Thanks setter and U.
Not a blinking clue for about half of this. A mix of lacking the GK/vocab and piss poor crosswording skills. Gave up after 20 mins, and SNITCH says it’s not even that difficult.
On to tomorrow!
DNF
I think there are some problematic solves in the SNITCH. At the very least, drginacoco should be kicked out.
Half totally easy, half not. Funny, as an engineer I have no trouble with some technical bods – B_A________ was obviously Blaise Pascal 2 words into the clue; know well of Laplace and his transforms as well. Yet “Physicist” or “Scientist” is always so much harder. Odd. A bit dubious about the extra i in the non-English-dictionary word (bugger! it’s in Chambers!). Real trouble in the bottom right for a DNF – not the well-known MUON, but PARISH PUMP and SPUD. Yeah, heard of both DUP and the other one hereabouts, but plumped for OF DO (party’s) somehow transmogrifying into FOOD, and the capital being a completely unparsed Danish Euro – Dane’s are normal, aren’t they? They didn’t have a Dexit and keep the Krone and green passports, they went to the Euro and red?
27:05
Mostly OK – didn’t know the poet but fairly easy to guess from checkers. NHO PARISH-PUMP nor MUON both of which I checked before committing. Missed the FRIGHTS as well.
Thanks U and setter
Because of my earlier life teaching maths I was well aware of Pascal’s Triangle, but it wasn’t until I looked at his Wikipedia entry that I realised how much he did. Seems to have been a true great. 35 minutes, with a few slight doubts along the way but nothing too bad. For LIBRAIRIE with its three Is I thought that one of them was probably the ‘in’, which elicited a MER but no more. Good to read Jason’s honest post. A bit uncomfortable with ‘perceived’ as a homophone indicator in 14dn, but OK I suppose.
I agree this is harder than the average Monday. I biffed a quite a few answers, such as Greta Garbo, Bill of Rights, and aspirational. Like everyone else, muon was my LOI, but at least the parsing was clear. I did somehow manage to parse the unparsable librairie, but I am a Mephisto blogger.
Time: 33:15
Does anyone ever bother to “play” the noteless piece by Cage? Being a French speaking former lawyer helped with librairie and pasturage.
I’ve played it several times but have never finished in 4’33”. My mind starts to wander and I go ten or twenty seconds over before I remember to wind it up.
😂
I thought I was headed for a fast time, biffing left and right. But I was immensely slowed down by putting in GEENA DAVIS (quite a modern reference, I thought!), which prevented me from getting LIBRAIRIE until I could fix that mess. Couldn’t find PARISH-PUMP; my inability to piece it together from the wordplay probably reflects poor sleep more than anything else.
As for 4’33”, the particulars of the composition aside (which feel a bit dated now), the concept of the piece I think is quite extraordinary and transformed my conception of what we should call music. Specifically, the idea is that music is nothing more than intentionally organized sound. I have heard several performances of 4’33”, some boring (where the audience sits there in total obedient silence — although there is some dramatic tension in wondering when the first cough will come), some quite comical. What’s interesting is that there is inevitably some sort of arc to the sound within those 4 minutes and 33 seconds, confirming that the human way is to create narrative and structure, even when none seemingly exists. Sound exists; by gathering it and organizing it, it becomes inextricably human, and therefore music.
If you’re still rolling your eyes, ask a classroom of pre-teens to sit in silence for even two minutes, and record what happens. I guarantee you will capture a story in sound!
Thank you for that Jeremy. You have changed my whole perception of Cage’s work.
The Cage title doesn’t really work with quotation marks. It needs prime markings, from math(!), and to get them here without having them turned into curved quotes, you have to use html.
Like so:
4′ 33″
35′ for a DNF on MUON, which I know but deceived by the (fair) clueing. Like others I’m not a fan of foreign words that haven’t made it into the English lexicon. Pity SHEFFIELD wasn’t kept back for the Wednesday puzzle! Enjoyed the Pascal/Laplace combo, I never did get my head round the latter’s transforms. Thanks Ulaca and setter
18 mins but I had spans instead of scans. Really annoying after finally parsing muon.
20:33
A very nice puzzle but a pink square for SPANS, which are, apparently, Short Parallel Assessments of Neuropsychological Status and sound like examinations to me. Meh! Lots of fun to be had elsewhere; PASTURAGE, LIBRAIRIE and COD PARIISH PUMP.
Thanks to ulaca and the setter.
23 mins. Pretty straightforward, NHO RIEL but had to be. Last clues to fall were in the SE, some trickier ones there, esp MUON and JETTISONED.
Estimated time of 45 minutes for a two session solve. When I say solve, not quite as it turned into a DNF. No it wasn’t MUON, as I worked it out cryptically and kept my fingers crossed, it was a simple spelling mistake that did for me, when ALTAR PIECE was spelt as an ALTER when I knew the correct spelling well enough. Knowing the answer to the clue was correct was my downfall as I didn’t check the spelling. S-E-S for my LOI became unsolvable, and I put in SKEGS in the hope it was some obscure examination.
35:44
An enjoyable challenge.
LOI was SHEFFIELD, which needed all the checkers, despite it being a city I have visited more than once.
I was slowed down in ALPHANUMERIC by having recently read Fahrenheit 451, so ended up spending time wondering whether there was a word to describe people who memorise books.
COD to MUON.
Thanks Ulaca and setter
I had SHOT instead of SLEW, which mucked things up, and FOOD instead of SPUD, so the bottom corners were all wrong. Never mind. I liked BACK NuMBER
[Moved here by TfTT Admin as posted in the QC thread in error]
Rosédeprovencesays:
7 April 2025 at 5:19 PM Edit
Back to the party after an absence due to upheaval at home (stepson arrived from US!)
Not quick and a DNF as MUON beat me. I am also bilingual but I can’t see the use of LIBRAIRIE in English.
I liked GRETA GARBO.
Thanks U and setter.
Thank you Jack. My brain is on another planet obviously.
No problem. I do it quite regularly.
44.27. Absolutely smashed the top half and then the rest took a really long time! I loved this puzzle even though it took me twice long as I thought it would. thank you both!
A DNF here, at the end of an exhausting day. I post here only to mention that I parsed 16d differently from U:
former city = UR
once upon a time = IN A PAST AGE
former city once upon a time = Ur in a past age = past-ur-age
Raced ahead at the start, but bottom half slowed me down. Wife wanting to talk didn’t help either. It had to be ALTARPIECE, but couldn’t see why. I was being too narrow in my understanding of PERCEIVED. Sympathise with people who think LIBRAIRIE is a bit OTT. What next? Quincaillerie? 21’10”. Would have been quicker with pen and paper for the anagrams.
I was doing all right until the end, when I got stuck for ages on MUON and the cleverly misdirectedALPHANUMERIC.
****I hate the new app!!****
Thanks setter and blogger
All bar three clues took me seven mins and pb was on. Twenty! Mins later the penny (riel) dropped. So frustrating. Enjoyed neanamois.
What, Ulaca, you knew John Cage?!
I crossed his path a few times (twice on one lunch break). Got his autograph on a book about Brian Eno that mentions him, when I approached to ask a question for a friend, during the two-week series of retrospective concerts he died in the middle of.
I’ve known a few people who knew him better. I knew a musician who once slapped him too hard on the back and knocked him over (and a dancer, who weirdly had the same birthday as said musician , who accidentally knocked down his partner, Merce Cunningham, during a class).
Couple of look-ups, and a couple of NHOs – but those tended to be more generously clued. Didn’t get SPUD ( and still don’t, tbh) or MUON – which I think a little unfair to we Arts people. Very nearly biffed in Frida Khalo , but then realised she wasn’t an actress, and CAGE didn’t ring any bells at all, ( no pun intended). Good puzzle, just a little too clever for me, but enjoyable nonetheless.