Comments on: Financial Times 14100 Neo

By: rowland

rowland — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:45:19 +0000

Best of yesterday’s three non-Times puzzles for me. I don’t do DT at the moment, apart from the occasional Toughie.

Got the joke about Mr Left, while my CoDs were the AYN Rand one and the clever Iscariot with the SCAR dropped in. I tittered at JORDAN too, so I must be far less mature than Sil above!

Thanks all,
Rpwly.

By: verbose

verbose — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:59:33 +0000

Thanks for the excellent blog, scchua. One small correction to the information provided for 22d: the name Punjab is Persian, not Sanskrit, in origin. (“panch” is the Sanskrit word for five, but then “punj” is the Persian; “ab” is Persian and definitely not Sanskrit for water.) Not that it makes the slightest difference to a wonderful clue.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:22:23 +0000

We decided (or was it me? ) to tackle Neo today and leave Bonxie (who is generally not on my wavelength, or the other way around of course)) on a shelf.
But was I Mister Right?
Don’t know, haven’t solved the Bonxie yet.

We thought this was an OK puzzle, but certainly not the best of Neos. The Amis/Amish combination is a bit chestnutty, the Jordan clue was a bit cheapish and Austria/Australia has been done many times before. And we weren’t that enthusiastic about 5d, in which both definitions were too close.

On the other side of it all, there were the elegant 3d (ARROW MAKER), our friend (??) Cameron enjoying Le Côte d’Azur and its wonders, the playful Barclays references and the neat 22d (PUNJAB). The first of the across clues is very well constructed too.

In our favourite Cambridge café, far away from resources, we failed on NYALA (although I was almost sure that it had to be answer – never heard of Ayn Rand, clever nonetheless) and our swimming Norwegian at 17d. Btw, here, in finding the explanation afterwards, I was wrongfooted by seeing the Scandinavian name NILS going upward.

Many thanks, scchua, for the blog.
Only your parsing of 2d does not make much sense, am I right?
I/We think it is: SCAR (mark) taking the place of D (daughter) in IDIOT (dunce).

By: Neo

Neo — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:58:11 +0000

Solving a puzzle with no clues: now that is going to be a hard, or at least very zen-like experience.

Many thanks S. C. Chua for your excellent bloggingness, and to commenters. At 14ac I wouldn’t like to say whether or not you spotted the dread pun on ‘left’.

Kind regards,
Neo.

By: flashling

flashling — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 14:50:35 +0000

Well this was extra hard for me as my copy was badly printed and had to guess what the clues were let alone the answers.

Liked the misdirection in NYALA of Rand (I think! my copy says “R??d given back to ??ench ??r the a???lope). The other clues were equally as bad for me

Somehow got there in the end, felt more like an Inquistor than than the FT today.

Thanks Neo and scchua

By: scchua

scchua — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:11:34 +0000

Thanks malc95, typo now corrected. Didn’t mean to promote those chunky vehicles.

By: malc95

malc95 — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:28:22 +0000

Thanks Neo & scchua.

15d I think it’s now Volgograd, not Volvograd – that would be Gothenburg.