Financial Times 13,862 – Crux
Posted by Sil van den Hoek on December 8th, 2011
Monday Prize Crossword/28 Nov
A Crux crossword that most certainly will not cause a storm of comments here. It’s a nice enough puzzle, but it is like Cincinnus recently said to me: ”You really are at one of the loneliest places @ Fifteensquared, aren’t you?”. Yes I am. And does it bother me? Not really.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BACK TO FRONT | In disorder, like soldiers returned from leave |
| Double definition | ||
| 7, 28 | TEE OFF | Rich man takes drugs to get started |
| TOFF (rich man) around EE (two E’s, each meaning ‘drug’) | ||
| 9 | RERUN | Insurer unable to cover race again |
| Hidden solution: [insu] RER UN [able] | ||
| 10 | ON THE SPOT | Where cream may go straight away |
| Cryptic definition plus, as PaulB says @1, a ‘normal’ definition | ||
| 11 | NEBULISER | Blue rinse, restyle then spray |
| (BLUE RINSE)* | ||
| 12 | ABORT | Jack or Tom’s first to pull the plug |
| AB (Jack, a sailor) OR T[om] | ||
| 13 | SEABIRD | A bride’s crazy one might follow a wake |
| (A BRIDE’S)* | ||
| 15 | YARD | Cart backs up a few feet |
| Reversal of DRAY (cart) | ||
| I am not very happy with the use of ‘up’ here, while I also think the clue is ambiguous and might lead to DRAY just as easily. | ||
| 18 | MOOT | Low investment finally up for discussion |
| MOO (low) + [investmen]T | ||
| 20 | CASCADE | Scoundrel, boxed in, falls in the river |
| CAD (scoundrel) in CASE – ‘in case’ being clued by ‘boxed in’ | ||
| 23 | IDEAS | Theories said to be mistaken about energy |
| (SAID)* around E (energy) | ||
| 24 | ALL SQUARE | Quits everything conservative |
| ALL (everything) + SQUARE (conservative) | ||
| 26 | ALUMINIUM | Alloy’s 40% metal |
| 40% of the word ‘alloy’ is AL, which represents ALUMINIUM, a metal | ||
| 27 | ISLET | Scrabble tiles spelling “inch” |
| (TILES)* | ||
| 29 | HEAVY ROLLER | One should ensure a level playingfield |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BARONESS | One’s found in pubs, a proper lady! |
| ONE’S inside BARS (pubs) | ||
| 2 | CEREBRAL | Rice, for example, entertains British intellectual |
| CEREAL (rice, for example) around BR (British) | ||
| 3 | TONAL | Some put on a lesson of sound quality |
| Hidden solution: [pu] T ON A L [esson] | ||
| 4 | FLOSSED | Fluorine untraceable, it’s said, in treated teeth |
| F (fluorine) + LOSSED (homophone of ‘lost’) | ||
| 5 | OUT-TRAY | Finished work at the office, here |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 6 | THESAURUS | The brontosaurus, half ruined, in old storehouse |
| THE [bronto] SAURUS | ||
| Initially I thought this had to be an anagram of ‘the+bronto’ or ‘the+saurus’, ruling out THESAURUS as something far too obvious. | ||
| 7 | TIPTOE | Go carefully with advice to egghead |
| TIP (advice) TO E (egghead, ie the first letter of ‘egg’) | ||
| 8 | ESTATE | A car for the Italian summer |
| ESTATE (a car) is the Italian word for ‘summer’ | ||
| Learned something today! | ||
| 14 | IRONSMITH | Master forger identified in press: a well-known name |
| IRON (press) + SMITH (a well-known name) | ||
| 16 | PARALLEL | Rainbow’s colours are all seen in pearl, strangely |
| ALL inside (PEARL)* | ||
| So, the colours of the rainbow are parallel?? | ||
| 17 | DESERTER | Did he refuse to go 1 across? |
| Someone who doesn’t want to go ‘back to front’ (1ac) – cryptic? | ||
| 19 | TSARINA | Empress’s soldiers guarding nerve gas |
| TA (soldiers, Territorial Army) around SARIN (nerve gas) | ||
| 20 | CALUMNY | Many pointless clues need editing – that’s insulting! |
| (MANY CLU[es])*, E and S being the points (East and South) to be deleted | ||
| 21 | MIKADO | Emperor Michael’s brief song and dance |
| MIK[e] (Michael’s brief ) + ADO (song and dance) | ||
| Actually it is ‘Michael’s brief, brief’, isn’t it? | ||
| 22 | REBUFF | Turn away Polish – again! |
| Double/cryptic definition | ||
| 25 | QUITO | Leave nothing as capital |
| QUIT (leave) + O (nothing) | ||
December 8th, 2011 at 11:24 am
Good blog and good puzzle with some great ideas, though agree 15A probably not the tightest. 6D, well, yeah all right then. Just one thing, ON THE SPOT is cd&d.
December 8th, 2011 at 6:49 pm
Hi Sil – thanks for the blog.
I think 16d is ok – in a rainbow the colours are arranged in circles with a common centre. Though ‘parallel’ in geometry usually applies to straight lines, it is also used of curved lines with a common centre, so it is correct to describe the colours of the rainbow as parallel.
cf. OED (on-line edition):
[Parallel]In Geom. applied to straight lines in the same plane, or to planes, which never meet however far produced in either (or any) direction;[...] more rarely applied to curved lines or surfaces which are continuously equidistant, i.e. which have common normals at all points (e.g. concentric circles or spheres)…
December 10th, 2011 at 7:45 am
Even with solvers couldn’t get the last word of 10a, 7d, 8d & 19d .
Don’t think I would ever have got estate. I know French words and some German words are fair game but where does it all end?