Financial Times 14,943 by GOZO

13 comments on “Financial Times 14,943 by GOZO”

1. This tested my knowledge of our feathered friends – and found me wanting. Having ‘got’ the theme early through Flamingo and Cockatoo, I had to work hard with the word play to make creatures out of 12a, 21a. and 18d. I did get there in the end, however. Too-wit, too-woo.

   In 23a ‘onset cryptically’ tells us to turn the letters of ‘onset’ into ‘stone’ giving us the light.

2. Thanks Turbolegs
   There is no inclusion indicator in 25ac so I think the parsing is FIN[is] (the end is missing) CH (check {in chess}).

3. Thanks for the comments folks.

   Steven@1 – I missed blogging 23a although my parsing was the same as yours.
   Gaufrid@2 – I wasnt sure about my original parsing so had “?” at the end in my draft version which somehow disappeared. Whats your take on 16ac?

   Cheers
   TL

4. Thanks, Turbolegs, for the blog and Gozo for an interesting and informative puzzle.

   I thought I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this – I tackle the clues in numerical order and I’d got all the way to 29ac before any bird flew out. After that, it all began to fall out quite nicely, except for 12ac, which I’d never heard of and didn’t get.

   I parsed 25ac as Gaufrid did – both Collins and Chambers give ch, rather than c for check.

5. Sorry, Turbolegs – we crossed.

6. Turbolegs
   “Whats your take on 16ac?”

   d=deserted is in Chambers so I parsed the clue as you have indicated.

7. Hi Gaufrid

   I found d=deserted in Chambers [but not Collins] but can’t think of a possible context – military records, do you think? Googling has produced nothing.

8. Got the theme early and pretty much a write-in – until the NE corner, where I stopped dead in the water for 30 minutes. Not entirely happy with 10ac – there does not appear to be any indication that we should take the centre of both the following words.
   But very enjoyable and some lovely cluing and surfaces especially on the acrosses where the setter is freed from having to include the definition.
   Thanks to Gozo and TL.

9. Hi Eileen @7
   I wondered if it could be used in cartography but the only confirmation I have been able to find is that DMV is an abbreviation for Deserted Mediæval Village.

   I’ve not had much luck trying to confirm the military usage either as ‘d’ is usually ‘died’. The Royal Marines use ‘r’ for ran, deserted but there is a reference to D=deserted here though this goes back to the American civil war.

10. Thanks, Gaufrid!

11. Re 6,7 and 9, one of my least favourite things in crosswords is the use of one-letter acronyms or abbreviations as makeweights, especially when there are several. I shouldn’t have thought it would be beyond the compiler’s wit to come up with something covering all the letters concerned more elegantly – for example, in this case, “a road”.

12. Thanks Gozo and Turbolegs

    Only got to his one on the weekend and also finished up in the NE with ORIOLE (which I thought was quite clever – think that it was well enough indicated without being spoon-fed it), FIELDFARE (which I had seen before, but did have to be reminded by a dictionary!) and GOOD FUN (after finally remembering the game of GO – must really have a crack at that one day).

    A couple of little niggles – the D=deserted, which has been discussed and just referring to RHO as a letter. All very minor in what was a very enjoyable solve.

13. Going through this puzzle on a 3-week delay, so not sure anyone will check back…
    But I parsed 16ac as MALL + A + RD (ReD river deserted)

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