Financial Times no. 12,821 Set by DOGBERRY

by

ACROSS

Much of this puzzle was ‘instant’ but I had some problems with 24a and 26a, and would welcome
comments.

1.    TEMPLE –  (dd – Shirley Temple, adored child star of the Thirties, later an Ambassador for her country)
4.    ALARUM – (< m-ural-a)
8.    BARRAGE – ( bar-ra-ge)
9.    PROVIDE  – ( pr-ovid-e – PR for public relations of course)
11.  DERMATITIS – (* tardis time)
12.  LOUT –  C(lout) – having some clout is to have influence.
13.  omitted
14.  MEANTIME- ( me-anti-me – or me against myself.   The other Dogberry was from Shakespeare’s Much    Ado.  He was noted for his Malapropisms)
16.  CAROUSEL – (carouse-l)
18.  STEER – (dd)
20.  ALMA – (Alma was the beautiful  wife of  Mahler – he had psychological hang-ups about his love for his mother, which plagued their relationship)
21.  MAGISTRATE – *megistar it)
23.  INDIANA -(in-<aid-na)
24.  PARODIC – (<c-i do-rap- this held me up for a while, as I think of ‘crap’ as a dice game, not cards)
25.  EASTER – (e- aster)
26   STREET  – (st-reet – ‘reet’ the Northern word for right, and reference to street-wise?)
DOWN

1.    omitted  
2.    MARIMBA – (ma-ri-mba – RI abbreviation for Republic of Indonesia – marimba an African instrument,
                              adopted and much loved by Central America)
3.    LIGHTNESS -(*hit singles)
5.    LARKS  -( Bevy is the collective noun for larks – and also quails and beauties!)
6.    RIVULET – (riv-ul-et)
7.    MIDSUMMER – ( m-ids -ummer – I suppose December is mid-summer in the Southern Hemisphere.)
10.  ETYMOLOGY ( *gloomy yet – the linguistic study of word derivation, not to be confused with  entymology , study of insects.)
13.  AT A GLANCE ((a-tag-lance)
15.  ASSISTANT (dd)
17.  OVARIES-(o-varies – the female  reproductive glands)
19.  EARHOLE – (ear-ho-l-e – the slightly less inelegant version of ‘lughole’ as in ‘pin back your-‘
21.  MANGE – (mange-(R) – usually used for animals when they have a skin complaint allied to human
                          dermatitis)
22.  TWIST – dd

10 comments on “Financial Times no. 12,821 Set by DOGBERRY”

  1. 24a I agree. ‘Crap’ (or more usually ‘craps’) is a game played with two dice. Chambers, COD and Collins make no mention of cards. A slightly deficient clue in that ‘card’ shouldn’t have been included.

    26a I too started off by thinking that ‘throughfare’ (a Shakespearian spelling of ‘thoroughfare’) was an indicator for the initial ‘st’ but I now believe that it is the definition, with the wordplay ‘leading to …..’ giving the fact that it is the start of street-credibility (or street-cred) and streetwise.

  2. Octofem. Sorry to be pedantic but all your FT blogs are ‘uncategorized’. Could you please recategorize them to ‘FT’ so that they are easier to find when they have disappeared off the home page. Thanks.

  3. Whoops, sorry Geoff. I wondered why I couldn’t find them easily.
    Will check to see where I do that. Still a novice, I’m afraid.
    Thanks for other comments.

  8. That was me.

    Octofem: on the page where you write your posts, scroll down a bit and you’ll see a section called Categories. Untick “Uncategorized”, tick “FT” and then Save.

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