Moving Picture

Moving Picture appeared in the Magpie edition of September 2018 (Issue 189)

Interim Grid

Final Grid

The theme is the Pixar animated feature, “UP”.  The five clashes provide AEROSTAT, SONDE, SWELLING, BAG and SWELL all indicating BALLOONS, to which a HOUSE can be linked by straight lines spelling the five colours HOAR, ORANGE, ECRU, SIENNA and ROSE.   The gaps are five cells vertically above the balloons, indicating that the HOUSE should be raised five cells to replace SHEAD (of GATESHEAD, to form GATEHOUSE).  In order to maintain ECRU, “UP” must be inserted from the middle cell of the bottom row onwards. (A SIP and A DAY being the two-word combinations).

Solvers' Comments I spent some time looking for an alternative solution because I wasn't very happy that TULAN was a real word. I can see on Wikipedia that it is a small village in Iran and the name of a Khagan of the Turkic Khaganate among other things, but they all seemed too obscure for my liking. I was a little bothered by the proper names TONIA and BIC and the word SITU that I think can only appear in English as part of a phrase, but I felt they were common enough not to worry too much about. I'm probably being a little harsh in the last paragraph because the HOUSE moving up and balloons moving up the same distance to fill the blank cells is the only thing that could happen.

Original grid complete but cannot see theme so no further progress. == Completely stuck on this, until I Googled 'film' and 'balloon'. Very clever how the maneouvre in the grid fitted the story-line. == Nervous about my solution partly because I don't have hoar, ecru or sienna pencils, partly because my eyesight is very poor, but also because I don't like '-tonia' and 'Tu Lan' as 'real words', and combining forms and proper names weren't mentioned in the preamble; I don't see what else they could be, though, unless we were supposed too move something other than the house and the balloons.

Couldnt get any inspiration to locate the theme on this. C seems fair

Not too happy with this one. Interesting idea but the 'balloons' weren't very balloon-like and the colours were difficult. Have you ever tried to colour a white square so that it finished up as ecru? And are BIC, TONIA and TULAN really real words ? The last does appear "Urban dictionary" on Google - but not in my vocabulary!

Great stuff - I enjoyed this!

Took a while, this one. Unless I have made a mistake, however, and that is always likely, I have some qualms about all the final grid entries being acceptable words. I must also trust to some leniency with the colours.

Hope the editors are being fairly kind with the colours - ecru, sienna are outwit my coloured pencils!

Something of a curate's egg for me, this one (apologies if that's not quite the right figure of speech). The concept was certainly excellent, and I felt as though there were aspirations towards the mighty Kea Listener with the cherry tree, or Elgin's recent Doing A Sort, and certainly the alterations were impressive. I just felt as though the decision to keep symmetry in the grid was one constraint too many, leading to so many short answers (I know not as many as I might think, because of the 'clashes', but even so), and the indefinite articles. That being said, I absolutely admire the ambition here, and it's a fitting tribute to a fine film.

A delightful puzzle. It was difficult to spot the colours even knowing where they must be. It seemed appropriate for a cartoon to forgo the easy option of using ecru, sienna, rose and hoar highlighters so I used crayon instead. I particularly liked the title as I found the film surprisingly moving.

Great idea. My OCD/perfectionist mind didn't quite like the slight non-symmetrical positioning of the balloons. I was also mildly distressed that the "straight lines passing through cells" either had to accidentally pass through other cells, or had to be drawn so they *didn't* start and end at the middle of cells - I chose the latter ! And a shame that UP couldn't be centralised - mind you HOUSE was well-centralised. And TONIA as a valid word vexed me. And also I was ever so slightly troubled by the use of some indeterminate colours, viz ECRU and HOAR. I would have preferred well-known colours like BLUE or GREY. Oh, and by the way, may I please have the moon on a stick ? :-)

Is it intentional that some of the final entries is for real?

Had me stumped for quite a while. I am always wrong, of course, but I fail to see how the final entries 19D and 39A are 'real words'.

I haven't seen the film but I've heard about the opening, so no complaints with the theme. This was a pretty fiddly puzzle but quite doable, with a higher than normal quota of obscure words and plenty of possibilities for errors. My set of coloured pencils is unaccountably lacking in ecru and sienna, so I hope the marking will be reasonably lenient.

Quite a bit of time spent in working out the film title. With hindsight I think I should have been quicker at that despite never having heard of it: I did spot the house move but didn’t translate thematic objects into balloons for far too long. Once sorted, was able to admire a neat bit of construction and all real words appreciated. Favourite clues 34, 49 and 37 down.