Comments on: Financial Times 13,657 / Alberich

By: Tony Welsh

Tony Welsh — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 02:12:31 +0000

Thanks, Shuchi. I found this puzzle too hard. By far my worst effort for many years, with only about half done. I completed the NW corner and about half the bottom half, but had nothing at all in NE, which Shuchi found the easiest!

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:15:16 +0000

I enjoyed “Silly Mid-off” to indicate an anagram with the middle letter missing from “Batsmen”; that was almost as good as 18a.

By: shuchi

shuchi — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 18:16:53 +0000

Thanks for your comments everyone. Couldn’t have got TONTO without help though 9ac was a “doh!” moment. Blog updated.

By: bamberger

bamberger — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:18:45 +0000

After an hour I only had 18a,26a ,22d & 24d. I did actually think of Tonto for 3d but dismissed it as it didn’t refer to Lone and I couldn’t think of any connection with an American National Forest.
Way out of my league -well done to anyone who finished or nearly finished that monster of a xword unaided

By: Geoff

Geoff — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:55:48 +0000

Thanks, shuchi.

Good fun, as others have said, with plenty of clever misdirection, parrticularly around the definitions (‘one sets off bang’, ‘close gathering of elders’, ‘lady-killer’ etc).

BTW, the ‘vocative’ case (25a) is alive and well in several of the modern Slavic languages.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:36:59 +0000

Many thanks Shuchi

However, you have forgotten 23d.

By: Lenny

Lenny — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:09:23 +0000

This was a brilliant effort from Alberich and I thoroughly enjoyed the torture of solving it. I had to guess that Myshkin was the protagonist of The Idiot, that there was a Tonto national park and a place of beauty called Tempe. There was some brilliant wordplay, frequently featuring subtractions, such as Perse(cute), (A)dept and Bat(s)men. After sorting all this out I managed to spell Ayckbourn with an H instead of a K. Misspelling homophone answers is my Achilles heel.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:50:03 +0000

Some readers may remember the first four words of 18ac as a Paul [I think] clue [it works perfectly well by itself] and Chifonie once clued the word as ‘married man who later rued arrangement’, both great &lits.

As has been said here before, we need hardly be surprised if the same clue occurs to more than one setter. Here, the combination, plus the addition of ‘foul’ is a nice new twist.

By: deke

deke — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:34:50 +0000

I think 5a is PERSECUTE-CUTE + US.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:20:38 +0000

Many thanks for the blog, shuchi.

As you say, a lovely puzzle, with too many excellent clues to pick out the best – but I agree with all of your choices!

9ac is S in anagram of PECAN minus C [opening for cocktail].

3dn is TONTO: double definition: The Lone Ranger’s companion

http://www.lonerangerfanclub.com/tonto.html

and the National Forest in Arizona