Sunday 15 August 2010

No 2598, Sunday 15 Aug 10

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

ACROSS
1 - German city providing meat (and food generally, upon reflection) (7) - {HAM}{BURG<-}
5 - Stake needed, unlimited (4) - wANTEd
9 - Festoon of flowers for US actress and singer (7) - GARLAND [DD]
10 - Mishandle wages at university (5,2) - {SCREW} {UP}
11 - Warder, no vegetarian? (9) - BEEFEATER [CD]
12/13 - Sort of insurance policy quite needed by school? (5,13) -  FULLY COMPREHENSIVE [CD] Connection with School not clear
16 - Rare eagle on silver tree (7,6) - SEVILLE ORANGE*
19 - Very bad, if legal, squandering capital (5) - lAWFUL
20 - Jupiter, say, the king sheltering below (9) - {TH{UNDER}E}{R}
22 - Tutor is itinerant holidaymaker (7) - TOURIST*
23 - Crow put him right off (7) - {T{R}IUMPH*}
24 - Monster consequently returned (4) - OGRE <-
25 - Train staff (7) - RETINUE [E]
DOWN
1   - Small house on top of Grasmoor's second ridge (4-4) - {HO}{G'S}-{BACK}
2   - Film return of famous racehorse - extremely unpleasant (6,4,4) - {MURDER<-} {MOST} {FOUL} Redrum appears again
3   - American needing time for practice (5) - {US}{AGE}
4   - Travel with wife, pay half each (2,5) - {GO} {DUTCH}


5   - Unplaced horse, a length ahead of second roan racing (4-3) - {A}{L}{S}{O RAN*}
6   - More frugal once their rift is sorted out (9) - THRIFTIER*
7   - Vandalised new gym, relevant in film (6,5,3) - TWELVE ANGRY MEN* Never heard of this movie.
8   - Agile, agent crossing river (4) - {SP{R}Y}19D in yesterday's THC
14 - Disgusting rioting (9) - REVOLTING [DD]
15 - I don't know what a customs officer may do (6,2) - SEARCH ME [DD]
17 - Beatles record - odd title, extremely bizarre (3,2,2) - {LET IT*} {BizarrE}

18 - What map line may show just short of lake and hill (7) - {EQUAl}{TOR}
19 - Singer - all things considered, get her off! (4) - ALTOgether Nice one
21 - Current doctor, fit for a change! (5) - {DR}{IFT*}

22 comments:

  1. Hello and Independence Day greetings to you all

    Deepak, first of all, congrats on crossing the 200,000 visitor landmark.

    Could solve HAMBURG, ANTE, GARLAND, SCREW UP, BEEFEATER, FULLY, COMPREHENSIVE, THUNDERER, TOURIST, OGRE, RETINUE, HIGH-BACK (?), USAGE, GO DUTCH, ALSO-RAN, THRIFTIER, TWELVE ANGRY MEN, SPRY, REVOLTING, LET IT BE (my favourite Beatles number - if there is anyone giving full marks to this clue, LET IT BE me!), EQUATOR (?), DRIFT. A few doubtful ones not mentioned.

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  2. In the UK there are what are called comprehensive schools that provide education for pupils at all levels of ability.

    If certain schools in Chennai boast of 100 per cent results in Std 12 with (say) 44 out of 45 in first class, it's because at Std 10 they give TC to all but the very bright pupils.

    I wonder what (or how much) credit can these schools really take for 100 per cent success when results may be largely due to innate skills of the pupils besides instruction at school.

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  3. I was going to ask if this is a possible explanation for COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL but Chaturvasi has answered the question.

    I have come across an institution called 'Ladies Finishing School'? What could be its curriculum?

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  4. @Colonel: Thanks for the Beatles number :)

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  5. Deepak
    Thanks for giving me a chance to hear Let It Be.
    Great.
    I must admit that I had not heard this before. I can reacll only songs like PS I Love You, Love Love Me Do and so on.
    Yeah, Let It Be!
    Richard
    To answer your query...
    We husbands are finished, aren't we?

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  6. I am going downstairs to attend the flag-hoisting ceremony in our apartment campus.

    Every year since we moved here, we have been doing this on the Republic Day and the Independence Day.

    Till recently we had an old flag whose heritage could probably have been traced to the 1940s. Now we have a new, bright flag.

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  7. C'vasi 08:49

    Not as yet, presumably, by the grace of you-know-who. Only getting finishing touches.

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  8. Chaturvasi 8:41

    When I 1st met my husband he told my father that he ranked 4th in his batch if IIT grads. My father was quick to ask if that batch had only 4 students ;-)

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  9. Gita 09:14

    What a high-brow, sophisticated joke, ever so gently pulling the leg of the person addressed.

    I am sure your husband would have guffawed instantly and a healthy bond would have delveloped immediately between the young man and your father.

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  10. Comprehensive schools are state schools that do not select their intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude.

    In the UK, non-selective or 'comprehensive' schools were introduced gradually, but comprehensive education became government policy in the 1960s. Now, 9 out of 10 pupils attend comprehensive schools.

    The main arguments for comprehensives are they reduce the likelihood of discrimination or disadvantage on the basis of class , and that they improve the prospects of children of middling ability.

    The main argument against is that the selective system may be more consistent with the idea of equality of opportunity. Working class children who went to grammar schools did better than those who go now to comprehensive schools.

    For details, pl refer
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_school

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  11. Didn't like some of the clues today. HOGS BACK and MURDER MOST FOUL were obscure - or rather very british, don't know. Could get EQUATOR only from the crossings and first part of the clue.

    I think this setter must be in his 90s. MURDER MOST FOUL??? TWELVE ANGRY MEN??? Judy Garland????

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  12. I've always wondered, what's so great about The Beatles. I just like a couple of their songs, like here comes the sun, twist and shout, I wanna hold your hand etc. The Rolling stones made better music in the 60s IMO.

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  13. The Madras Week celebrations begin in Chennai today. The Sunday Magazine section of The Hindu carries a well researched article by Dr Stephen Putnam Hughes on the evolution of theatres in Madras.

    Prof Gopalan Ravindran, Head of the Department of Mass Media and Communication Studies, University of Madras had collaborated with him in this research on early Indian cinema history.

    S Muthiah and Randor Guy are historians of Indian cinema who have provided valuable insights. Much still needs to be done in film historiography in India.

    Last February, the University of Madras had organized a seminar entitled “Searching for the Origins of Cinema in Colonial Madras” when the damage caused by the wrong “chronology of firsts” in Indian cinema’s history was deliberated upon.

    Here are some interesting facts that also weave into the history of Chennai:

    Mrs. Klug operated the Bioscope, on Popham's Broadway; started in 1911, it closed in a few months. The Electric, owned by Warwick Major and Reginald Eyre, started screening silent films in 1913. It is in this place, which the Postal Department bought in 1915 for the Mount Road Main Post Office, that the Philatelic Bureau and the Philatelic Exhibition Hall function.

    Cohen, who took over Misquith's Building, (adjacent to the old Hindu building at the junction of Ellis Road and Wallajah Road) in 1907, established the Lyric on the first floor. It began screening films in 1913, as the Empire Cinema. A fire in March 1914 closed it down. JF Madan of Calcutta, proprietor of the biggest cinema chain in the country at the time, took over the Empire in late 1914, renaming it the Elphinstone. He bought the Misquith Building in 1915, and made it a permanent cinema theatre, the biggest and the first with a balcony in Madras.

    Gaiety was the first Madrasi-owned theatre. Raghupathy Venkaiah opened it in 1914.

    Sohrab Modi opened the New Elphinstone in 1932, a posh theatre that screened Hollywood hits. One of the star attractions for the cinegoers was the Elphinstone Soda Foundation which has a long history dating back to around 1910 as the ‘Barney Dorai's soda fountain, one of the attractions of the Lycaeum that preceded the theatre. After Barney left for England, it became Jafar's Icecream Parlour. Jafar's 23 icecreams and numerous sundaes were the talk of the city in those days. With the theatre’s popularity nosediving in the late 1970s, it was curtains for the icecream parlour and Jafar moved on. The theatre was pulled down in 1979; the Raheja Complex came up in 1981.

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  14. This evening I am attending a lecture by Sivasankari that is part of the Madras Week celebrations.

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  15. I think I have mentioned before that as a college student I used to visit Jafar's ice cream parlour.

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  16. After some years Jafar's did reopen the ice cream parlour in a bylane not far from its previous locale but it was never the same. It seems that an ambience lost is an ambience lost forever. They shut up shop soon.

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  17. The Hindi version of 'Twelve angry men' was Ek rua Faisla' made in 1986.

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  18. @CV 8:41

    This trend of weeding out seems to have become widespread among schools not only in Chennai, but in other metros too.

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  19. I remember the Basu Chatterjee movie "Ek Ruka Hua Faisla" in which Annu Kapoor acts as one of the twelve jurors.

    Google's opening screen today was lovely with the depiction of our national flag. This is a nice way Google commemorates national days of various countries.

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  20. @VJ 10:42

    Is it your contrariness showing up again? :-)

    The popularity of Beatles is amazing so many decades later.

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  21. Giridhar, LOL! I don't know, I never really liked their music. I'm sure there would be many around who don't like them either. Of course, tastes differ and it's totally subjective.

    I like the rockabilly sounds of 50s and metal/ hard rock of late 60s, 70s and 80s. What happened in between (the so-called British invasion) doesn't do it for me.

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  22. HOG'S BACK is a new entrant into my books of phrases.One never stops learning. That's the beauty of cryptics.

    I liked BEEFEATER & SEVILLE ORANGE.

    Looks like crossword compilers are becoming an endangered species, as mostly, i find them using names of old films and film stars. My memory only brings back a picture of Judy Garland wearing a full shirt reaching upto her knees in of those film glossies.!!

    Raju Umamaheswar

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