Comments on: Financial Times 14070 Neo

By: jmac

jmac — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:46:50 +0000

Effervescent brilliance from Neo – When I see that he is the setter I always look forward to my train journey! I thought that this was a little on the tough side but very rewarding.

By: Neo

Neo — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 16:37:15 +0000

Political bias? Moi? Mais non Flash: c’est all to do with the way the word breaks down, honest. And anyway, the City boyz ‘n’ girlz probably hate Gideon at least as much as anyone else does. I love him though. He’s cuddly. And richer than a slab of brownie cheesecake.

Many thanks to scchua for his usual amazing, colourful and witty blog, and to all commenters.

By: rowland

rowland — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:17:24 +0000

It looks above as if I’d meant that Guardian and Indy puzzles do not have clues that parse well! I did not mean that at all, so apologies.

Rowly.

By: flashling

flashling — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 14:26:00 +0000

I’ll try again as first attempt somehow ended up in Big Dave’s quiptic for yesterday, wierd.

Fine stuff Neo, raced through most of this before hitting a dead stop, then crawled to the end.

As ever some clever stuff even if a political bias does creep in, not that I mind.

Thanks SC one of these days I’ll recognise some of your images.

By: rowland

rowland — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 12:40:24 +0000

Thanks Scchua, and Eileen too, for an excellent commentary on a very nice piece by Neo. This felt like an Indy or Guardian puzzle to me, quite tough, but with clues that parsed economically and well. I found the definition for FINANCIAL TIMES clever in avoiding while NOT avoiding PR for the paper!

Best,
Rowly.

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 12:17:28 +0000

Thanks for the blog, scchua. I didn’t do very well with this on my own in my 40 min lunch break in the pub.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 10:46:50 +0000

Hi scchua

Yes, of course, that works, too – I just couldn’t see it! I had only looked in Collins and Chambers but I see now that my old SOED has ‘at = by’.

By: scchua

scchua — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 10:36:10 +0000

Thanks Eileen, blog corrected. I had AT=”by” when I solved it, but, with all the bits in the parsing of this clue, completely forgot about it. My interpretation at that time was as a positional preposition – “he was standing by/at the door”.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 10:21:21 +0000

Thanks for the blog, scchua, and Neo for an entertaining puzzle.

In the parsing of 13dn, the final AT is missing from the wordplay. I puzzled over this myself and then remembered, I think, having seen AT clued by ‘by’ in a puzzle some time ago, which would give AT ED – by Milliband. I struggled rather to equate the two but Collins gives the example of ‘shocked at his behaviour’, where ‘by’ could be substituted and have the same sense.