Comments on: Financial Times 13743 Redshank

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:03:40 +0000

Oh, and scchua, many many thanks for as nmsindy says your “incredibly detailed blog”.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:02:09 +0000

We haven’t done today’s Guardian yet, but Brummie must come up with an incredibly good puzzle to beat Redshank.

Very inventive cluing along the way.
Hard to single out the clues we liked most, but eg 12ac (WEFT) [our first entry], 23ac (AFTER HOURS), 28ac (FIFTH TEST) and 20d (SCOFF AT) are exemplary for this puzzle.

Probably just like others we saw the FT thing only just before we finished the crossword. It helped us immediately to find the last two: FENDER (30ac) and 22d (WAFTED).

Yes, what a lot of F’s and T’s.
In fact, every single row and every single column (the ones with words, so the odd ones) have F & T in it, sometimes even more than once. And in total there are 14 FT (as a whole).

Much more important though: the excellent cluing, sometimes nicely interwoven.
Lovely puzzle!

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:44:34 +0000

Thanks for the incredibly detailed blog, scchua. I too found this a fairly tough puzzle and saw the FT element only very near the end, triggered I think by the rather unusual, tho totally fair, use of the abbrev EFTA. Seeing that helped me finish the puzzle, which I originally thought might have been themed for the day, the Twelfth of July, with TWELFTH being the first clue I solved and which of course also has a FT. I’d give latitude to FIFTH TEST, I’ve not researched it but I think test series got a little longer as the game developed and settled down at a certain point where five was the usual number, tho this may have changed a little in more recent times. My favourite clue was THIEF, also esp liked SCOFF AT (v good surface).

By: Bracoman

Bracoman — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:44:46 +0000

Sorry for the duplicaion!

By: Bracoman

Bracoman — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:43:11 +0000

Thanks for the clear blog. I,too,enjoyed this puzzle.

In this FT crossword there are lots of occurrences of consecutive letters “FT”.

By: Bracoman

Bracoman — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:43:11 +0000

Thanks for the clear blog. I,too,enjoyed this puzzle.

In this FT crossword there are lots of occurrences of consecutive letters “FT”.

By: scchua

scchua — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:03:50 +0000

Thanks Pelham Barton, typo corrected.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:58:17 +0000

Thanks Redshank for an enjoyable puzzle and scchua for the detailed blog.

I agree that 9dn would be better without “after”. In my view, and fitting with your comments, 28ac needs a question mark on the end.

One typo in 16ac: this is an anagram of FILTER (of course, there is anagram of FITTER at 9dn.