Financial Times 13,704 / Sleuth
Posted by Gaufrid on May 27th, 2011
Half of the answers went in very quickly during my first pass through the clues, the other half took somewhat longer due to some intricate wordplay in places. I am unable to fully explain 6dn so I am hoping that someone will be able to help me out with this one.
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| Across | ||
| 1 | FACTOTUM | AC (account) in FT (newspaper) TU (trade union) in OM (award) |
| 6 | RAKISH | K (knight) I (one) in RASH (unwelcome spots) |
| 9 | JAILER | mAILER (US author) with J (judge) replacing m (Frenchman) – Norman Mailer. |
| 10 | ROUND OFF | d&cd |
| 11 | ASTI | hidden in ‘toAST Imbibed’ |
| 12 | EXHILARATE | LARA (noted batsman) in HIT (success) in EXE (banker {river}) – Brian Lara. |
| 14 | TANGIERS | *(TRAINS GE[t]) – a port in Morocco that, according to my references, is more correctly called Tangier. |
| 16 | GAPE | G[r]APE (fruit right away) |
| 18 | BUSH | hidden reversal in ‘mucH SUBtlety’ – as in George W. |
| 19 | INCITING | IN (fashionable) TIN (element) in CIG (thing that could be drawn) – it took me a while to see ‘cig’ even though I have smoked for the best part of half a century. |
| 21 | SLIPSTREAM | S (second) *(MALE TRIPS) |
| 22 | SAGE | S[t]AGE (platform short of time) |
| 24 | EGOMANIA | OMANI (Arab) in AGE (era) reversed |
| 26 | TEABAG | TE (note) A B[owler] A G (good) |
| 27 | WAGGLE | WAG (joker) *(LEG) |
| 28 | DERANGED | *(D[ivin]E GARDEN |
| Down | ||
| 2 | AMASS | A MAS[on]’S (builder’s not working) |
| 3 | TALKING SHOP | A L (liberal) KINGS (college) H (hotel) in TOP |
| 4 | TURGENEV | URGE (drive) in VENT opening) reversed – Ivan Turgenev |
| 5 | MARTHA’S VINEYARD | A in *(A DRY MAN THRIVES) – the island that received international notoriety in 1969 due to the Chappaquiddick incident. |
| 6 | ROUBLE | homophone of ‘rue’ (regret) ‘bull’ (rubbish) Edit: Thanks Eileen for providing the rubbish=bull explanation. |
| 7 | KID | KI[n]D (sort with no end of variation) |
| 8 | SAFETY PIN | SAFE (peter) TYPIN[g] (a lot of activity in pool) |
| 13 | RIGHT AS RAIN | *(HIRING A STAR) |
| 15 | AQUILEGIA | EG (say) I (island) in AQUILA (stellar group) – “a plant of the columbine genus Aquilegia, native to Europe, N Africa and Asia” (Chambers). Aquila is a constellation. |
| 17 | SCIMITAR | MIC (Mike) reversed in SITAR (instrument) – mic and mike are both abbreviations of microphone, the capitalisation was intended to mislead. |
| 20 | STANCE | hidden in ‘oldeST ANCEstors’ |
| 23 | GRAZE | homophone of ‘greys’ (horses) |
| 25 | MUG | dd |
May 27th, 2011 at 9:57 am
Thanks for the blog, Gaufrid, especially for 9ac, which I just couldn’t see.
I was puzzled by 6dn, too, then concluded that it must be ‘bull’. Not good, I know, but …
May 27th, 2011 at 10:03 am
Thanks Eileen
I knew I had to be missing something obvious! I just did not think of rubbish = bull, both in the sense of nonsense.
May 27th, 2011 at 10:33 am
Sorry but I can’t let Sleuth get away with defining Turgenev as ‘dramatist’. Writer would be better, and even novelist would not be wrong. but not dramtist. Nobody thinks of Turgenev primarily as a dramatist. Fortunately the wordplay was unambiguous. All the same I’m miffed.
May 27th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Solving FT after quite sometime, yet managed to finish this pretty fast. Loved most of the clues, though I felt some were quite wordy.
I do have a quibble on 2D: Gather a builder’s not working AMASS – An ‘s’ in the apostrophe cannot easily become a part of the answer, I thought. Plain reading only gets me to ‘A MASON has not ON’, which in turn gets me ‘AMAS’.
May 27th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
And yeah, with the numerous Gs and Ks floating around, to go with a J and Q, I thought Sleuth had a pangram sealed. And am not I right?
May 27th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Hi Joe
I appreciate your concern regarding 2dn but it is a device that has been used before and no doubt we will see it again.
You are right about the pangram. I hadn’t noticed it because I was preoccupied with trying to think of something to fit the second half of 6dn.
May 27th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
Many thanks Gaufrid & Sleuth, this was very enjoyable even though I gave up on 2d AMASS and 9a JAILER.
I wonder if Sleuth resembles Humphrey Bogart?
May 28th, 2011 at 12:02 am
Many thanks to Gaufrid for his blog and all for comments.
Re Conrad Cork @3, I defer to your superior knowledge of Turgenev but he is defined in major biographical
reference works as a novelist and dramatist so don’t think the latter is misleading
Re Joe @5, thanks for spotting the pangram
Re Bryan @7, no but I do enjoy wearing a trench coat