Comments on: Financial Times 13,593 / Crux

By: bamberger

bamberger — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:04:25 +0000

I got most of this out but the top lh corner stumped me -though the answers don’t seem too hard.
Enjoyable and very fair.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:28:00 +0000

Good to see more and more solvers discovering this excellent setter – in my opinion, one of the best the FT has in store.

I didn’t fully understand RODEO (3d), so thanks for that, Agentzero.

26ac (ISLE) is what you might call, adventurous clueing – even though I’m personally not so keen on the use of ‘Partway’ (or for that matter ‘backstage’ in 20ac).
A ‘plus’ for the ‘in pain’ device in PALADIN (21d) though. I know (from experience) some people don’t like it, but I do.

BORDELLO (18d) was only recently clued by Paul, also as an anagram of ‘doorbell’ – but then, great minds think alike.

I’m not so certain that ‘unknown’ is doing double duty in the YESMAN clue of 22ac. It is not really an anagrind , I think, and I’m more inclined to take that little word ‘of’ as the (not very satisfying) indicator, in a sense of ‘… by using …’.
BTW, I first thought of X + (MEANS)* leading to SEXMAN ….

Nice crossword!

By: jmac

jmac — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:10:12 +0000

Thanks for the heads up on this Agentzero. A little gem of a puzzle. Re 22 down, I took “of” as the anagram indicator, in the sense of from, constituted by, etc.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:58:27 +0000

Pleasing puzzle from Crux, thanks for the blog Agentzero. Re some of the points raised, I agree with you re 7D, RODE O is what is intended, I would think, ie rode nothing = perform only on foot. Re Rishi’s point, it would seem logically correct, as ORD is as much ‘most of word’ as WOR is, but one does not see it too often maybe because that reading left to right instinctively might give WOR but it’s not wrong to look the other way. In YESMAN (nice clue), I thought the definition was “A most agreeable chap” with ‘unknown’ part of the wordplay, indicating the anagram as you say.

By: Rishi

Rishi — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:26:28 +0000

Agent0 – Thanks very much for your recommendation. I enjoyed solving this puzzle. I might have missed it but for your preamble.
Though the words are not unusual and even word breakups are not unfamiliar, the clues are appealingly written.

Re 3d: Can “most of WORD” suggest -ORD rather than WOR-?