Financial Times 14,149 by Loroso

by

Sorry for the lateness of this post, I nearly forgot it is my blogging day.

We have not had a TV set in the house for years, so when I saw the theme I felt distinctly apprehensive.  Fortunately many of the TV references turned out to be quite old, so I managed to cope.  I found this hard, maybe those with more knowledge of TV will have found it easier.  Very enjoyable regardless, thank you Loroso.

Hold the mouse pointer over any clue number to read the clue.

Across
1 THE SULLIVANS (SLEUTH NAILS)* criminal going round (describing) V (very) – The Sullivans
10 ECLAIRS city types hide in EC (City of London postal district) LAIRS (hiding places)
11 ADMIRER (MARRIED)* engineer=anagram
12 OWING O (old) WING (branch)
13 SEINFELD sounds like “sign felled” a character struck down, reported=spoken – Seinfeld
15 CONTAGIOUS anagram of ACT USING and OO (two balls)
16 FAME FA (footballers, the Football Association) on ManagE (vacated=empty) – Fame
18 OGRE GO (trun) reversed and RE (regarding, on)
20 BLACKADDER LACK (need) interrupting BADDER (less pleasant, colloquial) – Blackadder
22 PRETTIFY reversed in unfussY FITTER Possibly
24 BRUTE R (the top of rock) in BUTE (Scottish island)
26 EQUINOX EQUINe (about horses, mostly) OX (cattle) – Equinox
27 LARAMIE LA (US city) and RAM (hit) in IE (that is) – Larime
28 KNOW THE SCORE bacK (back of) NOWT (nothing, love at tennis) HE (that man) SCORE (twenty) – I like the nod to “nowt” being something said by a resident of a back-to-back house in West Yorkshire
Down
2 HELLION I (one) appearing in HELLO (glossy magazine) and N (northern) – a troublemaker
3 STINGRAY ST (saint, good man) IN GRAY (drably dressed US spelling) – Stingray
4 LOST S (special) in LOT (part of film studio) – Lost
5 INADEQUACY EQUAl (match, shortened) outside (ICY AND)* slippery=anagram
6 AMMAN I’m an AM MAN (a morning person) – unfortunately not in my case. A city in Jordan.
7 SERIEMA (AIR SEEM)* anagram=fluid – south american bird
8 HEROIC COUPLET (OUR CHOICE)* editing=anagram then P (start of poem) and LET (check, obstruction) – lines of poetry
9 FRIDGE FREEZER F (forte, loud) RIDGE (band, as of rock) FREE (70s rockers) ZERo (love, mostly)
14 JIM’LL FIX IT M (mike, phonetic alphabet) in JILL (tumbler, a cart) X (by, times) I (one) in FIT (suitable) – Jim’ll Fix It. I presume this crossword was submitted a while ago, before Mr Saville made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. also: JILL=someone who tumbled down a hill with Jack, better than my rather prosaic explanation
17 BARBARIC BAR BAR (save, more than one) I (one) C (Conservative) – brutal. I presume ‘as it were’ indicates that saves could be viewed as a little cheeky.
19 ROEBUCK ROE sounds like “row” (bank) and BUCK (responsibility) – a wild being, a deer
21 DRUMMER D (dead) RUMMER (stranger)
23 TENKO OK (good) NET (overall) reversed (comimg up) – Tenko.  Thanks to Pelham Barton.  My first answer was TANGO: ON AT (coming up, time of next programme) reversed over G (good) – the IMDb has Tango as a Spanish TV series. Does anyone know of another?
25 GLEE L (line) in GEE (my, as an exclamation) – Glee

*anagram

12 comments on “Financial Times 14,149 by Loroso”

  1. Well done, PeeDee, and thanks for your blog.
    I certainly did not enjoy this at all. Full of obscure solutions and dodgy synonyms.

  2. Perhaps it helps if you are ‘more mature’ like me but I quite enjoyed revisiting old TV programmes. I did try quite hard to make Bonanza work for 26a 🙂

    Thanks to PeeDee and Loroso too.

  3. Many thanks PeeDee

    I’ve never watched much TV so I felt totally ill equipped to tackle this.

    Of course, I’ve heard of Jimmy Savile – who hasn’t? – so credit is due to Loroso for topicality.

  4. I wonder if an alternative explanation for Blackadder could be “add” (interrupt casually)surrounded by “blacker” (less pleasant). It’s one of the only 2 tv-linked answers I got (the other was Laramie) and that’s how I worked it out.

  6. Hi Susan, an ingenious suggestion! For it to work fully ‘need’ would have to indicate ‘going inside’ or ‘surrounding’, I can’t see how this would fit.

  7. Thanks Loroso for the crossword and PeeDee for the blog. I gave up still needing 13ac and 7dn. Seeing the answers I should have got 13ac, but 7dn was to me an obscure word and not the type where an anagram helps.

    I already had all the letters except V when the possibility of the pangram occurred to me with 12 clues still to solve – and I already knew there had to be a V in 1ac, I just had not worked it out fully at that stage, so the pangram did not help me on this occasion. Favourite clue 28ac.

    17dn: I agree with the inclusion of “as it were” for the device of “saves” = “two lots of save” = BAR BAR.

    23dn: I think this should be TENKO (OK net reversed).

  8. Hi Pelham, I am not very happy about TANGO, TENKO sounds more likely. Are you thinking of NET in the sense of ‘net profit’? In that case wouldn’t overall be GROSS rather than NET?

  9. PeeDee@8 re 23dn: I was certainly thinking of that general sense of “net”. Going to Chambers 2008, I can find net² “(of eg a result) final or conclusive”, which I think fits well enough to “overall”.

  10. One more from me. In 14dn, I took tumbler = JILL to be a reference to the Nursery Rhyme “and Jill came tumbling after”.

  11. I think this is the first Loroso I failed on completely.
    In a way it has to do with the common definition (TV show). I have a TV, but do not use it for watching these kind of programmes, unfortunately. Some I knew (Laramie, Fame, Glee and the inimitable Blackadder (my all-time British comedy hero)) but Lost, or Equinox? Tenko?

    While the clueing was good as ever, I fear I didn’t like it that much today.
    But I did like the non-thematic DRUMMER (21d). And FRIDGE-FREEZER. And a few more, including the ingenious thematic GLEE and 1ac.

    Thanks, PeeDee, for the blog.
    I think in 3d ‘in gray’ should be seen as ‘drably dressed for American’.

  12. Thanks PeeDee and Loroso. I found this difficult: it took several goes, finishing this morning, to get there – and I was still unsure about some of the parsing. Although I did enjoy it, I think “TV show” is such a broad theme that it makes for rather unhelpful definitions. Very ingenious, as usual, nonetheless – and of course I completely failed to spot the pangram!

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