Comments on: Financial Times 12962 / Jason

By: C.G. Rishikesh

C.G. Rishikesh — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:37:30 +0000

Agent0,
Your response is highly appreciated.

By: smiffy

smiffy — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:35:55 +0000

I thought that 17D was a nifty treatment of a relatively setter-unfriendly word.

Does 28A work? It seems to me that “playing” is doing double-duty; as anagrind and part of the definition.

By: Agentzero

Agentzero — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:19:05 +0000

Rishi,

6d I think the explanation is that a boxer’s assistant outside the ring (his “second”) would throw his towel into the ring to concede the match. Hence “retire by the second” — I don’t think the clue is referring to the seconds counted off by the referee.

15a Yes, in the US to “send up” or to “send up the river” means to sentence to imprisonment. Generally thought to be derived from sending someone from NYC up the Hudson River to Sing Sing prison, in Ossining, New York.

3d I wondered whether the point was that cosmetic surgery is optional surgery that may be done not to resolve any medical “problem” (hence “no problem”) but simply to enhance appearance?

By: C.G. Rishikesh

C.G. Rishikesh — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:24:10 +0000

Thanks, Geoff!

I too would have appreciated ‘spare tyre’ as the result of excessive food.

By: Geoff Moss

Geoff Moss — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:11:46 +0000

Rishi
24a is an andlit (I won’t use the ampersand character because it screws up the RSS feed, at least it does in IE7 and Firefox). Hidden word, and shallots could be grown in an allotment.

27a Zeph is the abbreviation for the book in the Old Testament attributed to the prophet Zephaniah.

16d If you were in a situation where no food was available you would survive by resorting to living off your body fat so a spare tyre around the stomach would be an indirect source of sustenance. Personally I think this should have been clued as the result of too much food rather than a source of food.

By: C G Rishikesh

C G Rishikesh — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:50:59 +0000

Shuchi,
Re your comment:
16d: Spare tyre, as in what gets one going when the car has a flat tyre!
Yes, that is the second def. What I don’t get is the import of “A source of food?”, the first part of the clue.

By: Shuchi

Shuchi — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:38:08 +0000

15a: double-definition. To “send up” is to ridicule, and also (in American English?) to send to jail.
1d: leader of Harrods = H, no abbreviation there.
16d: Spare tyre, as in what gets one going when the car has a flat tyre!

3d: I’m guessing this could mean that cosmetic surgery leaves the face with “no problem”, but there’s probably a better explanation. The clue looked like an anagram on first reading…