The winner of the July puzzle is Ray Gallantree of Chelmsford.
Curmudgeon, who also sets crosswords as Chalicea, whence the grid, (and Gnomie) is in something of a minority as a female setter. In a Guardian interview of 2017, she says she chose the alternative pseudonym Curmudgeon ‘as an irritated reaction to comments from bloggers and editors such as “Chalicea writes such sweet, ladylike things”. Nobody makes patronising comments about Curmudgeon puzzles.’ I have been warned!
To quote Big Dave’s Crossword Blog Curmudgeon/Chalicea 'is one of the most prolific of crossword compilers, appearing regularly in the Magpie, the Listener, the Inquisitor series, and the Enigmatic Variations, as well as in Crossword magazine. Her puzzles are popular because they usually contain lots of thematic material and are not too difficult'. This July offering fits right into that description and was met with some relief, following what proved to be a major challenge last month.
I tend to assess the difficulty of a puzzle by the number of clues I can solve cold, using only the alphabetical order as my guide. Here I managed about three-quarters, helped in no small measure by the setter’s generosity in virtually ‘spelling out’ the more obscure solutions: ATHANOR, FLOKATI, KENDO, OCEANOG, TEMSE. The first of these enabled me to solve Frank Paul’s drawing (I am 6 out of 7 so far this year), taking a wrecking ball to a headless marathon — brilliant! Overall, the clueing was sound, straightforward, concise, fair and varied in the range of cryptic devices used — seeing the classic 'number' as a synonym of ETHER also raised a smile.
From such a helpful start, the multi-faceted theme (1924 Olympic Games, Paris, Chariots of Fire, Blake, Liddell and Abrahams — phew!) emerged rapidly. It is skilfully and richly woven into all four main tiers of the 7x7x5 grid with only a single small snake amongst the clues. This is quite an achievement. I doubt many solvers even noticed, but I can imagine Curmudgeon’s frustration that she was unable to fit the blue shaded Y in Tier 7 into Tier 3 with the others — ah, the curse of perfectionism.
As I write this review, the 2024 Paris Olympics are in full flow and are dominating the BBC TV channels, with no hint of anyone refusing to race on a Sunday. Chariots of Fire is a favourite film — I love Vangelis’s score [you can also listen to his haunting soundtrack for Blade Runner (1982) on YouTube] and Sir David Puttnam is a personal hero, not just for his outstanding filmography but also for everything he has done for education across the UK and Ireland.
To sum up, this was an accessible, fun puzzle with a broad, interesting and highly topical theme — from one former modern language teacher to another, chapeau et merci, Curmudgeon.
