Comments on: Financial Times no.14,201 by Alberich

By: Robi

Robi — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 09:12:15 +0000

Thanks Sil for the clarification. Apologies to Andrew @1 for not reading his post properly.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 23:24:39 +0000

Robi, MASSACRE is just as Ringo said in his blog:
MASS (a great deal – like: a mass of letters) + A (are, as Andrew explained, a measure of area) + indeed the reversal of [m]ERC[y].
I have to admit that I parsed it as MASS + [s]ACRE[d] – don’t know why, perhaps connecting ‘mercy’ with ‘sacred’.
Completely wrong, but I got the right answer!

By: Robi

Robi — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:33:51 +0000

Good puzzle with some excellent clues.

Thanks Ringo; I didn’t see the problem with ‘in’ in 18 – fruitless=infertile, (Task IN RELIEF)* anag with ‘work’ as the anagrind. I can’t see the double duty myself.

I particularly liked UPPERCUT, AUTOPILOT, PAPRIKA and several others. I’m not sure that I fully understand MASSACRE, but I think it may be: MASSA=master=predominant[Chambers]=the greater part, plus your mERCy reversed.

By: fearsome

fearsome — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:11:19 +0000

Thanks Ringo and Alberich
Anode defeated me but many enjoyable clues,
could see Paul/Mudd cluing Barf and I liked platypus

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:32:40 +0000

Sil @3: I think I prefer your explanation of 3dn. I had it Ringo’s way, but thought NODE = “set of lines” was a bit of a stretch.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:18:24 +0000

Thanks Ringo.
Andrew is right about “are”, although I completely overlooked it myself.
Some superb clueing today, nothing to quibble about.
Even PLATYPUS, a word that I had never heard of, was clued in such a way that it was no problem finding it.
Among my favourites 1ac, 11ac and many more.

Of course, the parsing of ANODE (3d) is right, but I took “a set of lines” as AN ODE. And why not?

ALONGSIDE (27ac) was similar to a clue I saw a couple of years ago at a maths conference – very nice, but a write-in. And surely ‘hypoteneuse’ should be ‘hypothenuse’. Typo.

Many thanks to Alberich, with best wishes for 2013.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:11:26 +0000

Thanks Alberich for an enjoyable puzzle and Ringo for the blog. 13ac: Yes I was looking at a pdf, but it is still part of the FT in its origins, so a perfectly good clue. 24ac: A = are as noted by Andrew@1. Some people have objected to this, but I cannot see any problem with it. 27ac: Nice clue, but Chambers 2008 only gives the spellings hypotenuse or hypothenuse. Ringo has copied the spelling from the crossword, which is at worst a harmless typo. 7dn: Yesterday we had chap cluing BO (which was something of a crossword cliche around 1980 when I started taking crosswords seriously). Today we have chap = BOD. Any chance of chap = BODY tomorrow? 18dn: No double duty here. The wordplay is simply an anagram of t(ask) in relief.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:50:54 +0000

Thanks Ringo – I agree this was quite tricky, though gettable eventually.

In 24, a=are as an abbreviation of the metric unit of area (1/100th of a hectare).