Every Friday at 1300 hours, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. Don’t be shy. All are welcome to participate.
The ‘cluster foxer’ is regarded by some as the most demanding form. Solving one involves identifying 25 pictures and five hidden themes. The enlargeable mosaic below consists of five interlocked picture clusters (some possible cluster arrangements are shown above) each with its own theme. Themes have nothing in common with each other. Don’t be surprised to find, for example, “Crocodiles”, “The Spanish Armada”, “Words beginning with “ter””, “1948” and “Fictional policemen” sharing a puzzle. A picture’s connection to a particular theme won’t always be literal. An image of the Brandenburg Gate is just as likely to be part of a “Bach” cluster as a “Berlin” one.
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SOLUTIONS
Last week’s geofoxer theme: 2003 (defoxed by ylla)
a. Congestion charge introduced in London (gusdownnup, alison)
b. Mumbai bombings (gusdownnup, ylla)
c. Space Shuttle Columbia disaster (ylla)
d. Spire of Dublin completed (Nutfield)
e. Staten Island Ferry crash (gusdownnup, ylla)
f. Bam earthquake (Phlebas)
g. Concorde’s final flight (gusdownnup, ylla)
h. Antwerp diamond heist (gusdownnup, ylla)
i. SpaceShipOne’s first flight (Nutfield, ylla)
j. Assassination of Serbian PM (gusdownnup)
k. Death of Johnny Cash (Electric Dragon)
l. Toppling of Saddam statue in Baghdad (ylla)
C2: Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis”.
https://www.elizabethi.org/contents/shakespeare/poems/venusadonis/pagefive.html
Bah.
C4 is the crew of Vengeur de Peuple apocryphally nailing their colours to their mast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Vengeur_du_Peuple#/media/File:Vengeur_nails_the_flag.jpg
A friend who declines to comment for himself tells me that D4 is Diana Rigg as Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones.
D2: Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851 painting)
E4: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
B2: Churchill’s 80th birthday
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw257512/Winston-Churchill-giving-his-80th-birthday-speech-at-Westminster-Hall
B3: A rather lovely cover for Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
https://theaoi.com/wia/melissa-castrillon-philip-pullmans-his-dark-materials/
B5 is Dixie from the Dukes of Hazzard https://www.thedukesofhazzard.nl/the-cars/
A3 – doomed B-17 Flying Fortress “Miss Donna Mae II” https://ww2db.com/photo.php?list=sp&sp=series&image_id=17714
A3: Friendly fire during a bombing run on May 19, 1944 over Berlin.
B1 – USS Missouri under kamikaze attack https://owlcation.com/humanities/World-War-II-History-Kamikaze-Attack-on-the-Battleship-USS-Missouri-and-Controversy
Can we make a line of states to D2? 🙂
C1 seems to be No Question of Surrender: The Battle for Bir Hacheim
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36297/no-question-surrender-battle-bir-hacheim
drat it, I spent ages going cross-eyed looking at loads of very similiar North African campaign wargames on BGG and completely missed this one!
Much more diligent than me – I decided one of the pieces said ‘Susan Travers’, googled for someone mentioning her in a game, and decided the pieces did look like that!
C3: Paul Newman (I’m not sure if there’s something more specific about the picture)
C3: Paul Newman sitting in a racing car – https://www.theoutlierman.com/blogs/blog/racing-legends-paul-newman-between-hollywood-and-daytona
D1: The cover of a Chemical Brothers album… Surrender, if I remember right.
With C1, there’s a clear surrender theme there
And maybe to C4 too
B1: Four months after the kamikaze attack, the Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of USS Missouri on September 2, 1945.
If E1 should happen to be HMS Seal, that was the only British vessel to surrender during the war.
Ooh, good thinking!
In fact it’s the HMS Graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Graph
Surrendered by the Germans to the Brits, rather than the other way around, but I wouldn’t have got it without the hint!
Stupid work getting in the way again, right, where are we?
Well, from the deafening silence, you’ll see the 4-5 i knew are already taken!
I wondered if Newman-Haas and Tyrell (Not spelt Tyrrell!) might be a motor racing link.
It does feel hard today, but I thought it might be my brain…
C5 is Checkpoint Charlie https://goo.gl/maps/irJVFkRWJmZ5FYwk6
E4 is Abu Bakr Al Bagdadi in his 2019 proof of life video
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48098528.amp
D3: AN/TWQ-1 AVENGER air defense missile system.
possibly associates itself with C4 Vengeur du Peuple (“Avenger of the People”)
D5 makes me think of Vince Cable, who must’ve looked youngish at some point.
Re: A3. There was a racing driver by the name of Donna Mae Mims, who, like C3 Paul Newman, competed in Sports Car Club of America races.
Re: B3. “Northern Lights” is/was the name of a SCCA race series, and probably many other things besides.
I’ve can make five Avengers:
B4: Road Avenger for Sega CD (1993)
C4: Vengeur du Peuple (“Avenger of the People”)
D4: Diana Rigg = Emma Peel from the only Avengers worthy of consideration
D3: AN/TWQ-1 Avenger
C3: Paul Newman flew as a turret gunner in an Avenger torpedo bomber.
D5: Sir Keith Joseph. Prominent Tory politician of the 1970’s and 80’s. https://images.app.goo.gl/hDnxPCFGUW9qqZC69
There might be someone going on with (some of) Daisy Duke, Checkpoint Charlie, Philip Pullman, Flying Fortress, but it’s a bit vague – when we did double initials before it was a full set of the same initial…
For A2: Le Moulin de la Galette, at Montmartre, Paris. It’s at 83 Rue Lepic.
https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.8872469,2.337369,3a,70.1y,309.95h,89.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sY0kUS2LhZx_EPro9c9BlTQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
“Moulin” is Windmill in French
For A1: its the 18th Infantry Division (United Kingdom) insignia.
In Wiki, I have : According to the historian Michael Chappell, “the map-reading conventional sign for a windmill—an apt device for an East Anglian formation” was only worn on uniforms in Britain.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_Infantry_Division_(United_Kingdom)
Or Here: https://military.wikia.org/wiki/18th_Infantry_Division_(United_Kingdom)
I would suggest a Windmill theme with A2.
For the Surrender theme, I would suggest:
B2: Churchill speech “We shall fight on the beaches”, in which he said: “we shall never surrender”
B1: the Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of USS Missouri.
C1: No Question of Surrender
D1: Chemical Brothers album Surrender
E1: HMS Graph Surrendered by the Germans to the Brits
Well actually, it is more :
A1: 18th Infantry Division (United Kingdom) surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February 1942
B1: the Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of USS Missouri.
C1: No Question of Surrender
D1: Chemical Brothers album Surrender
E1: HMS Graph Surrendered by the Germans to the Brits
Two clusters IDed so far (surrender – A1, B1, C1, D1, E1 – and avenger – C3, D3, B4, C4, D4).
Enriching B5’s caption may help you get a third.
More specifically B5 is a 1980 Jeep CJ-7 “Golden Eagle”.
E2: the Necker Nymph three-person submersible
https://wordlesstech.com/necker-nymph-three-person-submersible/
E3: The Monumento a los caídos en Malvinas (Monument to the Fallen in the Falklands)
Located in Plaza San Martín (Buenos Aires)
Behind, on the left is the Kavanagh Building
Here: https://www.google.fr/maps/@-34.5938081,-58.3750452,2a,75y,209.91h,107.32t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1s8uef540N8eJUz7YBveGKZg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i39
I found a possible cluster: Tin Box
A2: Le Moulin de la Galette tin box
B2: Churchill’s tin box
C2: Shakespeare’s tin box
D2: Washington tin box
B3: Northern Lights tin box
I’ve never been good with the cluster theme, so I may be wrong
I think going for tin boxes is a bit of a leap, when they’re going to be based on pre-existing (and hopefully out of copyright) artwork.
I didn’t realise Le Moulin de la Galette was a Van Gogh painting (also part of the title of one by Renoir) – I was distracted by galettes, and was wondering what sort of dessert might be named in honour of Churchill.
The two I reckoned had the closest connection were:
B2: Churchill’s 80th – he got presented with a portrait by Sutherland (?) which he hated and his wife had burned
B4: Washington – Mrs Madison saved his portrait from being burned in the White House in 1814
Plenty of people, for instance Botticelli, have made paintings titled “Venus and Adonis”, which isn’t helpful for narrowing down a link.
I agree that the link is faint.
I think you’re on to something. According to this a “Venus and Adonis” painting by Velasquez also went up in flames:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-art-filled-spanish-palace-that-went-up-in-flames-on-christmas-eve
And Van Gogh’s Windmill on Montmartre was destroyed in a fire. I don’t know, it seems like a remarkably tenuous link, but on the other hand it is quite the coincidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Moulin_de_la_Galette_(Van_Gogh_series)#Other_paintings_titled_Le_Moulin_de_la_Galette
“Destroyed art” gets the thumbs up from Roman. The first version of Washington Crossing the Delaware was torched by the RAF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_(1851_painting)#History
I found a destroyed Northern Lights, by Caspar David Friedrich. It was lost during Friedrichshain flak tower fire.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_artworks
So the cluster could be: A2, B2, C2, D2 and B3
“So the cluster could be: A2, B2, C2, D2 and B3”
It would indeed. IDing the dog in a5 might help unlock one of the two remaining cluster themes.
Potential Eagle link between B5 (golden eagle) and C5 (Cafe Adler – Eagle Cafe)
It’s not as clear cut as one would like but…
the aircraft involved in A3 belonged to the ’94th Bombardment Group, Heavy’, which, after a number of inactivations and redesignations, is now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/94th_Operations_Group
and has an eagle as part of its emblem.
What we seem to think is Eagle group covers: A3, A4, A5, B5 & C5
which leaves the final, so-far clueless group as: E2, E3, E4, E5 & D5
Roman says there’s nothing aquiline about the cluster incorporating the Donna Mae II and Daisy Duke’s Jeep CJ.
Finally found the tank in A4: Leopard 1
It’s in Canada, at Base Borden
Here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Leopard1_cfb_borden_2.JPG/800px-Leopard1_cfb_borden_2.JPG
Gail Borden devised a way of making condensed milk and sold it as “Eagle Brand”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Borden
A5: Toby the dog, with Holmes & Watson from ‘The Sign of Four’ (Jeremy Brett version)
E5: Petroglyph Games (founded in Las Vegas by some refugees from Westwood)
Thus, not eagles group:
A3 – Miss Donna Mae / B-17 Flying Fortress
A4 – Leopard / (CFB)(Base) Borden / Milner
A5 – Toby / Holmes & Watson / The Sign of Four
B5 – Dixie / Jeep CJ-7 / “Golden Eagle” / Daisy Duke
C5 – Checkpoint Charlie
Group No Idea, formerly “islands, huh?”
E2 – Necker island / Nymph / Virgin / DeepFlight Merlin
E3 – Monument to the Fallen in the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) / Plaza San Martín (Buenos Aires) / Kavanagh
E4 – Abu Bakr Al Bagdadi / ISIS / ISIL
E5 – Petroglyph / Las Vegas
D5 – Keith Joseph / Monetarism
Not eagles but ‘The West Wing’ characters?
A3 – DONNA ! = Janel Moloney
A4 – Congressman Borden(?) apparently, I don’t recall
A5 – Toby = Richard Schiff
B5 – CJ = Allison Janney
C5 – Charlie = Dulé Hill
Leo(pard)?
Words ending -PH
E2 – Nymph
E3 – Cenotaph to the Fallen of the Malvinas War
E4 – 1st Caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
E5 – Petroglyph
D5 – Keith Joseph
Oh dear, it was staring me in the face the whole time… excellent work Colonel_K and the whole defoxing crew… felt like a real team effort this time.