Comments on: Financial Times 13,565 / Bradman

By: Jan

Jan — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:07:04 +0000

Thank you, shuchi and also Bradman. It’s always nice when a setter takes time to pop-in.

I found this a fairly quick solve, but had to use the dictionary to check ARGALI and AGNATION. I knew agnate but couldn’t remember what it was. A ‘line for men’ could have been new undies in M&S!

By: shuchi

shuchi — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:06:44 +0000

@Bradman: Thank you for the entertaining puzzle. It’s a pity FT doesn’t have too many solvers, it surely deserves a bigger audience.

@Sil van den Hoek: Thanks, you’ve set me thinking about ARMENIAN too. When blogging I took “ethnic group in Asia” as the definition but can’t get it to substitute ARMENIAN in a sentence.

And yes, I did mean “uncomplicated” for the crossword…it helped restore some of my shaken self-confidence after yesterday’s fiendish Times crossword!

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:15:17 +0000

Yes, shuchi, as you say this was relatively uncomplicated (or are just talking about the grid), but very well clued.
As always, I do like the precision of Bradman very much.
Some nice special effects (like the ‘Boxed ring’ in 17ac) and an fair amount of fine surfaces (my favourite possibly being APLOMB (6d)).

SOLIDI was the last one to go in (in a corner that gave me some trouble), and a word that crosses ARMENIAN (20d).
I am still asking myself here what is part of the ARIAN wordplay and what is the actual definition.
One cóuld, for example, read ‘heretical ethnic’ for ARIAN and ‘group in Asian’ for ARMENIAN. But one could also do what you do, which is taking ‘ethnic’ as part of the definition’. I was even playing with the idea of making ‘group’ part of the ARIAN bit. Maybe it is because my feeling tells me that the definition (whichever it is, probably the one you suggested), doesn’t fully match the word ARMENIAN.
It’s not very important, I just kept on wondering.

Nice puzzle.

By: Bradman

Bradman — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:05:33 +0000

Thanks! Always particularly glad to have Bradman blogged because I have no friends or neighbours who are regular FT solvers.