Comments on: Financial Times 13,684 by Cinephile

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:02:35 +0000

Thanks smiffy, slippage of the brain really rather than the pen… …but you are kind not to mention that.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 04 May 2011 19:20:20 +0000

Smiffy @ 8

Yes, of course, 3d should be ROMAN WALL.

By: smiffy

smiffy — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:11:17 +0000

Thanks Peedee.

I appear to have enjoyed this one more than most. Thought that it was par for the course, in terms of Cinephiliac jiggery-pokery and amusement. I was one of those who didn’t fathom the wordplay for 23A. My only quibbles are 8D (a little too indirect, I felt) and 9D (pedantically on the def’n, I think it’s a ‘paradox’ rather than a ‘dilemma’).

PS: There’s a slip of the pen in the answer at 3D.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:06:35 +0000

Re 23a -
I liked this clue. Another way of looking at it is that “e” is in Italian, “rica” in Spanish – “changing languages” in between. I thought it was just Italian at first, but I see that would strictly be “e ricca”.

By: Abu Amaal

Abu Amaal — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:52:48 +0000

23ac works in Italian

By: Robi

Robi — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:36:27 +0000

Good blog and puzzle, which I didn’t have time to finish.

RICA is also the feminine version of rich in Spanish, so maybe as the clue states ‘says,’ it is similar to your parsing, but “‘ER RICA” with elision.

By: walruss

walruss — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:19:57 +0000

I think you are right PeeDee – I followed Lord JG here after yesterday’s great effort, but this was not as good. I would go along with Bryan re RABBIT WARREN, my best of batch. Thanks for your excellent blog.

By: lenny

lenny — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:04:54 +0000

I enjoyed found this very enjoyable despite the sloppy clueing that PeeDee points out. I particularly liked the simple elegance of the clues to Road Map and Airport for example.

I know the definition of a Spoonerism is a bit variable, but, in my book Ashcroft is not a Spoonerism of Crash Oft because there is no transposition of initial sounds.

I would put Dotted down as a DD, with “i may be…” as the first definition

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Wed, 04 May 2011 12:05:04 +0000

Hi Bryan, my problem with 1,9 is that the ‘Primrose League’, whether defined literally (Tories) or cryptically (3 miles of a path) is a noun expression. Adding the verb ‘took’ makes one part or the other into a verb expression, which then doesn’t match the sense of the remaining part.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 04 May 2011 11:46:00 +0000

Many thanks PeeDee and Cinephile.

This was very enjoyable but, I thought, rather easier than some others of his.

Re 1,9 across: The Primrose League was a Tory group. Hence ‘took’ is OK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primrose_League

Re 9 down: The book’s title is Catch-22 so another hyphen would be appropriate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22

My COD was RABBIT WARREN where I spent far too long trying to work IAN – our usual suspect – into the answer.