Comments on: Financial Times 14,140 by Cincinnus

By: Keeper

Keeper — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:45:17 +0000

Like Bamberger, I quickly wrote in RICH at 11a, which made for some struggles in the NW corner. Fortunately, I got 1a, which led to 2d and 3d and forced me to give 11a another look.

Wil @4: I don’t see what political persuasion has to do with RICH being a solution to 11a. “The idle rich” seems a common enough (and politically neutral) expression to me (and, as it turns out, the title of a 1929 film).

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 23:21:28 +0000

I wasn’t sure about 6ac: perhaps it’s OK to define an escudo as simply currency, which is what it has to be here, since ‘old’ is used in the wordplay, but I can’t help feeling that the solver is being expected to regard an escudo as old currency. And in 18ac I found ‘oddly enough’ a bit odd.

I think that 11ac could only be RICH if you’re of a certain political persuasion. In 20dn it seems that Cincinnus has made a slip.

Otherwise excellent as always from Cincinnus. For some reason I was faster on this than usual.

By: Bamberger

Bamberger — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 08:56:44 +0000

Having guessed 27a and not really believing that there was a basset horn or a legerdemain, I was left with the first word of 5d p?a?r?e but couldn’t make the connection with a grassy thing.
I also confidently wrote in rich for 11a .

By: Pete Maclean

Pete Maclean — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:48:46 +0000

Hi Sil, This is very interesting about 28A! I was thinking of SO meaning ‘about’ in the sense of “a dozen or so”. So there may be two distinct workable interpretations of the wordplay. But I think yours is the better one since ON and AN go together in REST while SO and AN have to go separately into RENT. Thanks!

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:36:02 +0000

For the third time in a row a Cincinnus puzzle that I found harder than usual.

In my notes, I put a question mark to 3d. Cincinnus hardly ever does a cryptic definition, and this particular one was wasted on me.

In the same notes I put pluses to 14ac (BARBECUE), 21ac (BASSET HORN) and 4d (DENOUNCE).

Pete, I agree with you about 20d (STRUCK).
I even thought of S/TRAIN, but unfortunately it does not equate ‘hit’.

My parsing of 28ac (RESONANT) is different from yours:
{ON (about) + AN (article)} inside REST (break).