Comments on: Financial Times 13,663 / Jason

By: Dreadnought

Dreadnought — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:44:53 +0000

Yes thank you to Jason and Gaufrid.
I enjoyed this because I thought it was medium hard, but a little perspiration cracked it. But irritated that I couldn’t get 25 without help, and tennis is my main game, how could I have missed 21? Aargh!
Quibble with 18: surely men and bunch are the same I.e. Crew so it doesn’t really work for me.
But loved 17 definition, reminds me of trad corporate speak “focus like a laser”, “line up our ducks in a row” etc..almost makes me miss my cubicle. Not.

By: bamberger

bamberger — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:35:09 +0000

I made steady progress for 30 mins , completing the NE and making some headway in the SW but then ground to a complete halt and 30 mins further effort yielded nothing.
9a While I know lear is a poet there are hundreds of others so that didn’t really help and without checking letters from 1,2&4 d I couldn’t get this.
11a I didn’t know what to make of k-king. I’ll know for the next time.
24a If you’d asked me what moon meant, I would have said it was what certain groups of men do out of the back of coaches on motorways -and that doesn’t involve staring vacantly.
25a I think the reference to Bob Hope is a bit dated.
2d I would never have got that -of course Cyclops in Private Eye would have another meaning for Scandanavian brass. Danish tart, perhaps?
17d v=v(ide) I think is very hard

As usual thanks for making it all clear.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:56:56 +0000

Thank you, Gaufrid.

An enjoyable puzzle, as you say, with many good clues, especially, I thought, 1,9 and 14ac and 7 and 13 dn.

I’m afraid I ground to a halt in the bottom right corner – this is one of those grids which don’t give much of an entry from the other parts of the puzzle and I only had the A from CINEMAGOER!

I don’t think I would ever have seen through ‘nap perhaps’, nor trained horses as trotters.

I was very impressed with the economical wordplay of 21dn [once I saw the answer!] with the two reversal indicators combining in such a smooth surface and the reference to ‘fault’.