Comments on: Financial Times 14,121 by Alberich

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 13:48:00 +0000

Unfortunately, due to a new job, I have somewhat less time to do more than one cryptic nowadays. For that reason, I decided to start each day (ie before having a shower and, after that, while having my breakfast) with one of the non-Guardian puzzles. That is, if time allows.

Flimsy’s very neat Thursday crossword was an easy victim, but Alberich’s offering left me with only 5 solutions before I went to work.
So, this morning, I gave it a follow-up.
This time I was more successful, although some words were unknown to me (ADIT, ANOSMIC, KISHINEV), but luckily clearly signposted.

I think we all agree that this was once more a beauty.
Indeed, a beauty!

Many thanks to everyone involved (slogger and better)!

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 08:54:22 +0000

Thanks Jed for the recommendation, I saw your summary on the 152 home page so decided to give it a go, very pleased I did!

Thanks too for explaining KISHINEV, I thought of kiev, but coulnd’t make any likely sounding answers from that. Having seen the solution I’m not sure that I would have thought it promising enough to look up anyway!

Thanks to Alberich too.

By: flashling

flashling — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:13:45 +0000

Great stuff from the old boy (see Anax a few days ago), found this a pig to complete so thanks Jed for explaining some bits I just couldn’t see.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:30:40 +0000

Thanks Alberich @4. I am completely happy to be put right about 20ac. It works perfectly if the omission is made before the anagram and I really should have seen that. I think it works equally well on both surface and cryptic reading with or without the “off”.

By: Alberich

Alberich — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:10:07 +0000

I’m off out soon so an early thanks for the blog and comments so far. 20 is meant to imply that “ring off” from mountaineer, i.e. MUNTAINEER, is mobile, and the rest is definition. I think that does work though I can’t for the life of me remember why I felt it necessary to include the “off”. A good weekend to all.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:53:25 +0000

Correction to 2 re 20ac: "I cannot quite get the cryptic grammar" etc. I cannot get the grammar to work correctly in my own comment otherwise. Apologies.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:52:12 +0000

Thanks Alberich for a very enjoyable puzzle and Jed for the blog. As Eileen, has already said, large numbers of excellent clues. My favourite was 8dn.

20ac: I cannot quite the cryptic grammar to work in this one. I would be happy with either “mountaineer mobile” (noun phrase) or “mountaineer’s mobile” (complete clause) as an indication for the anagram, but to me “Ring off from” only works with the former.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:28:25 +0000

Thanks, Jed.

A smasher indeed – it would be much quicker to list the clues that I didn’t tick!

Some stunningly good constructions and surfaces, notably 20, 24,26,27 [as a former teacher, I really laughed at this one] ac and 2,7,8,9,17, and 21 dn. [I could go on!]

Huge thanks, Alberich – I loved it!