Financial Times 13,276 / Cinephile

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On the first pass through the clues, with only a few entries in the grid, I thought this one was going to be difficult.

On the contrary, it turned out to be quite E. 7dn fell during the first pass, which gave E as being ‘easy’, and this helped considerably with the themed clues. An enjoyable puzzle, with only a few anagrams (not a bad thing in my opinion), and some clues that are difficult to categorise in the usual way, due to the theme, so I have resorted to dd in several cases (which is close enough).

Across
1 SLIPPAGE SLIP (mistake) PAGE (attendant)
5 ANGELO AN (article) GEL (somewhat wobbly) O (love)
9 SIDE ARMS DEAR (beloved) in *(MISS)
10 SPIRIT dd
12 MONEY ONE in MY (setter’s)
13 PHAGOCYTE *(CAP THEY GO)
14 PSYCHE hidden in ‘tiPSY CHEers’
16 YELLOWY YELL (cry) [p]OWY[s] (most of Welsh county)
19 DRAGNET *(GRANTED)
21 SIMPLE dd
23 AIR POCKET AI (very good) P[arty] in ROCKET (firework)
25 STAND dd
26 CUDGEL LEG (walker) DUC[k] (tailless bird) reversed
27 SUPERIOR dd
28 STREET dd
29 BACK STUD BACK (support) STUD (breeders)

Down
1 SESAME dd
2 INDONESIA ONE in INDIA
4 GAME PIE {easy} GAME (sucker) {easy as} PIE
6 NO PROBLEM PRO (expert) in NOBLE (aristocratic) M (master)
7 EARLY EAsY with RL (both sides) replacing s (second)
8 ON THE EYE ON (continuing) THEE (you) YE (you)
11,3 EASY-PEASY cd
15 CANTONESE TONES (tongue sounds) in CANE (punishment)
17 ORLEANIST OR (gold) LEAN (incline) I (one) ST (way)
18 ADVANCES d&cd
20 TAKE dd
21 SATSUMA SATS (exams) U (turn) MA (degree) – two definitions, fruit and pottery
22 ADORED ADO (trouble) RED (left)
24 RIDER dd
25 SPEAK dd

6 comments on “Financial Times 13,276 / Cinephile”

  1. Thanks, Gaufrid.

    I did finish this but took rather longer than I should have, as I made several mistakes along the way.

    The first answer I put in, with complete confidence [and justification, I think] was 10ac: BOTTLE – easy! That was that corner off to a bad start.

    The bottom half was delayed by the insertion of DOORMAT at 19ac – not quite so plausible but possible, I think.

    And then I’d pencilled in LIST [incline] as the ending of 17dn – not really justifiable at all, as it ignores ‘one way’.

    However, one by one the pennies dropped.

    [In 15dn, I read ‘Oriental tongue’ as the definition: ‘tongue sounds’ doesn’t really mean anything to me.]

  2. Hi Eileen
    I don’t know why I typed ‘tongue’ in 15dn as I interpreted the clue in the same way as you. Must have been another of those senior moments 😳

  3. Thanks very much for the blog, Gaufrid.

    This puzzle was enjoyable and not too E-pE!
    The word ‘somewhat’ in 5ac held me back a bit though. From your parsing of the clue, am I right in assuming that the word is being used here as a noun?

  4. Hi Mike04
    Initially I thought that, in typical Cinephile style, ‘somewhat’ indicated the first part of a word meaning ‘wobbly’, but I couldn’t find one other than gelly (a variant spelling of jelly) which, though ‘wobbly’, doesn’t mean ‘wobbly’.

    In the end I decided that ‘somewhat wobbly’ was similar to ‘slightly wobbly’ which would describe a gel.

  5. Hello again, Gaufrid.

    Thank you for your reply. I’ve just noticed that Chambers defines the word ‘somewhat’ as ‘something’. I can’t think of any common usage myself. However, I’m now wondering if ‘somewhat wobbly’ is the same as ‘something wobbly’ = GEL!

  6. I know you meant “ONE’S” and not “ONE” for 2dn.

    Like you I found 7dn the key to this fun puzzle.

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