Financial Times 13,732 by Cinephile

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Classic fare from Cinephile – inventive, witty and good fun.

There are the usual vagueries, I have pointed out the ones that annoyed me.  These seem as though they would easy to fix for a compiler of Cinephile’s standing, so I wonder why he puts them in?  Either my mind works on a lower plane than his and I fail to spot his meaning (quite possible), or else he enjoys his reputation and slips them in just to tease the pedants and dull-witted among us.

Update: I omitted to mention the ‘F’ in the special instructions stands for ‘fat’.

Hold mouse over clue number to read the clue.

Across
1 DAYDREAM DAM (mother) about READY*
6 BECOME Double definition – as in ‘moonlight becomes you..’
9 FLOWER Definition and cryptic definition- a river is something that flows, sunflower oil is reputedly healthy
10 NOT A WORD Definition and cryptic definition
11 LARD River inside LAD
12 HOUSE ORGAN HOUSE (as a verb, to find a place to keep something) and ORGAN (large instrument) – an internal company publication. I can’t quite get ‘place’ to fit in. A house could be a place to keep things, or ‘to keep’ could mean ‘joined to’, but neither really work for me.  thanks to Thomas99 for the better explanation
14 SAVANNAS VAN (vehicle) inside SAuNAS (baths without U=upper class, one of us)
16 PAIL sounds like “pale”
18 AGOG A GO (shot) and Goal (first letter of) – where does ‘as they say’ fit in?
19 THRESHER (THREE RS Hard)* – its function now done by a combine harvester
21 RATTLETRAP Sir Simon RATTLE and TRAP (catch) – a rickety vehicle
22 ELSE ChELSEa
24 ESCARGOT CARGO (luggage) inside SET* – the French are known for eating snails
26 ISOBAR SOB (weep) inside AIR*
27 WALLER West ALLER (French ‘to go’) – pianist Fats Waller. Aller = ‘to go in Paris’ would make sense, but ‘to go to Paris’ just doesn’t suggest a change of language to me.
28 DOGS LIFE FILS (French ‘son’) reversed inside DOGE (Italian magistrate)
Down
2 ALLOA ALL (completely) O (something round) A (indefinite article) – Scottish town
3 DOWNDRAUGHT DOWN (swallow) DRAUGHT (a drink) – wind feature on lee side of a mountain top or ridge
4 EARTHING EAR (something that listens) has THING (object) – ‘to be earthed’ means to have no illusions.
5 MONOUNSATURATED U RATED (considered upper class) following NOUNS (parts of speech) inside MOAT (trench)
6 BUTTER B (second) UTTER to say – fat obtained from cow
7 COW Double definition
8 MARGARINE RAG* (anagram = ‘rag out’) inside MARINE (of the sea)
13 RAPESEED OIL (IDEAL REPOSE)* – reputedly a healthy type of fat
15 AEGEAN SEA (AN AGE with EASE)*
17 DRIPPING Double definition – condensed molten beef fat
20 BEGGAR EGG (food) inside BAR (somewhere to drink) – a beggar asks you for something
23 STAFF FATS reversed and F (note of the musical scale)
25 AWL sounds like “all” (lot) – a pointed instrument for boring. ‘awl’ is not a definition of ‘boring’ to me. An awl is a tool, ‘boring’ is either a verb or else the activity of making holes, being dull etc.

*anagram

9 comments on “Financial Times 13,732 by Cinephile”

  2. Thank you Thomas99. I’ve been re-reading The Rattle Bag by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney recently, it seems to have lodged itself in my brain!

  3. Great fun thank you Cinephile. My favourites have to be the ‘long time for the penny to drop’ or is that ‘fat to fall’ 27a and 17d. Thanks to PeeDee too.

  4. …but thanks for the blog too of course.

    I did wonder if that was the source of “Rattlebag”. I’ve also just been reading about Heaney in the London Review of Books.

    Re AGOG (18): I think someone’s “agog” if they might say “I can’t wait”, because they’re so excited, but not if they are actually incapable of waiting. That’s how I read the “as they say”.

    Also for 12a I think it’s the verb “house”, meaning “to find place to keep”.

    Awl is still a little mysterious.

  5. Thanks for the blog, PeeDee

    This was good fun, but I agree with most of your quibbles today.
    In 12ac, I thought he was using ‘house’ as the verb ‘to store’ = ‘to find place to keep’.
    In 04dn, I thought maybe he was referring to the phrase ‘down to earth’.
    In 18ac, I can’t see how ‘(as they say)’ fits in.

    Until the SUNFLOWER penny dropped I was really struggling with DOWNDRAUGHT and RATTLETRAP!
    I liked the Fs touch in the clue for WALLER, but I wonder why F was not used for FOOD in 24ac and 20 dn?

  6. Hi Thaomas99, You are right of course in your thinking on AGOG, but “agog” and “can’t wait” are pretty much synonymous, the clue makes just as much sense without the extra words.

  7. Well I enjoyed this – and the blog. I started with 27a and then it fell into place. Agree with quibbles. And a mouth organ doesn’t take up too much space. Wondered why he (she?) didn’t use fatwah. Then thought again. sigh. Sad innit?

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