Financial Times 12991 / Neo
Posted by C G Rishikesh on February 3rd, 2009
This puzzle has four 14-letter phrases, each of which are in two slots in the grid. I generally don’t like this kind of splitting but to the credit of the composer I must say that each of these four phrases are in the same column, the words divided only a single block. Only the parts of a 15-letter phrase are put in an across slot and a down slot.
I have not solved some three clues, answers to which are names. (On edit: These are provided by Persephone in the Comments section.)
Below, phrasal answers are given first.
1, 17 BANANA REPUBLIC – play on “hand” which is the term for a bunch of bananas.
4, 15 BEAT GENERATION – managed to solve with the crossings but I must confess that I have not heard of these personalities.
5, 27 BEHIND ONE’S BACK – CD
6, 14 MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE – anag. of ‘mind is ego’ in ‘mad’ (crazy) and ‘age’ (times) – His = God’s, “His like” being the def. – I am not sure if the def is perfect as the ans. is MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE and not just ‘God’s image’
8, 24 – CHINLESS WONDER – anag. of ‘swindler he cons’
Across
9 AHOY THERE – definitive – I got the first word of the phrase immediately but the second one took time.
10 ABASH – AB, ash (“little hASHish”, this device seems to be original and unusual)
11 AGAINST- Aga, in, st.
12 IBERIAN – I, be, r, Ian
13 ASS – A (very good), SS (bodyguard, short for Secret Service? Or Schutzstaffel, Ger.?)
17 RUING – ruin, G
18 NAN – two def. – short for nanny; Indian bread, also spelt ‘naan’.
19 TIMES – again two def. – X as in 8 x 4 are 32. I think x in the sense of ‘times’ is usually in lower case.
21 PUT IN PRISON – cha. of anag. of “turnip pi” (after deleting e from pie), son
23 NOW – read ‘regained’ as ‘re gained’; but is ‘re’ OK as rev. ind.?
25 Not solved
27 Not solved
28 IDAHO – rev. of had in Io (moon)
29 OSCILLATE – anag. of lost and Alice, “at sea” being the anagrind.
Down
2 Not solved
3 STANDING IN – stand-in(g) in – stand (“run-making partnership”), in (“at the crease”), g (“edge to groundsman”), “on as substitute” is the def., “broken by” is c/c ind. Surface reading is rather involved.
7 LA-DI-DA – Di in lad, A
16 INTANGIBLE – anag. of “iningtable” deleting D from “dining table”
20 MINUTIAE – I haven’t fully worked out the wordplay. Of course it is “nut” tucked between two institutions. “West” because the abbreviations are reversed?
22 TRIBAL – rib (“joke playfully”) in Tal (“chess champion”, Mikhail Tal)
28 GOON – two def. – thug, talk too much (go on)
February 3rd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Still not there at 4pm GMT!
February 4th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Hello!
For the record:
25a BRIDGET (bridge + t), the lead character in the book/film Bridget Jones Diary;
27a BRITTEN (bitten around r), Benjamin Britten, famous 20th century composer and pianist;
2d KOWALSKI (ok, law reversed over ski), Stanley Kowalski, a character in Tennessee Williams “Streetcar Named Desire”
Like you, overall I thought it was a nice puzzle!
February 4th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Hi Rishi
In 20dn, ‘west’ wouldn’t work to indicate reversal in a down clue. I thought it was I NUT I in MAE [West] but could find ‘I’ as an abbreviation only for ‘institute’, not ‘institution’.
February 4th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Thanks, Eileen.
Chambers XWD: A Dictionary of Crossword Abbreviations does not give I = institution.
And I can’t think of an abbreviation where I = institution, while I can think of many where I = institute, such as the famous IITs in my country.
While Chambers Crossword Dictionary gives many abbreviations/acronyms where I = institute, there is none where I = institution.
The setter seems to have used an abbr. for the nonce.
February 4th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Phrasal answers were split to give access to different areas of the grid, hopefully to aid rather than hinder solvers. Whether that was successful or not …
I = ‘institute or institution’ according to Chambers Online (the everyday usage one). I can’t remember exactly where I sourced it, but it was a standard abbrev in either Collins Lite or Chambers fat.
6/14 ac definition as in ‘we are His like’.
10 is AB/ AS/ H (little hashish).
13 (Hitler’s) bodyguard = SS
23 NOW regained as in ‘won back’.
All other queries as parsed by the contributors.