Comments on: Financial Times 13,849 by Mudd

By: Pete Maclean

Pete Maclean — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:27:34 +0000

Hi Wil, I debated at length with myself about whether or not to discuss ‘reversed’ in the blog and decided not to. You are right, of course, that adjacency is a commutative relationship so ‘reversed’ is redundant. One could argue that its presence either makes the clue a little easier by tipping one off the the letters may be reversed from alphabetic order or makes it more difficult because one does not know what to do with it!

I was also less than thrilled with blunted.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:49:13 +0000

But n and m are adjacent letters, so what is the point of having ‘reversed’ in 12ac?

And I was less than sure about ‘blunted’ for removing the first letter, in 4ac.

Excellent 6dn I thought.

By: Pete Maclean

Pete Maclean — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 01:45:43 +0000

Hi Sil, The truth of 12A actually occurred to me after I wrote the blog. But I was unable to get back to fix my explanation before publication time and I guessed you would be here with the fix already. And so you are! Thanks.

I have added 23A.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:28:48 +0000

Thanks Pete for another fine blog of a good Mudd.
We especially liked CAMEL (27ac).

We thought 12ac (NORM) works like this: “choice of two adjacent letters” = M or N. When “reversed”, you’ll get N OR M. Definition: “standard”.
Oh, and btw, 23ac (PACESETTER) is missing.