Financial Times 15,138 by WANDERER

14 comments on “Financial Times 15,138 by WANDERER”

1. Thanks, Turbolegs – I heartily agree with the whole of your preamble!

   I had TICK for 12ac, too, to begin with, but wasn’t happy with it and eventually decided it was TUCK.

   And for 25ac I have UREA – URE [river] + A’

   20,21 took ages to parse but became one of my favourites, along with 24 and 2dn – but there wasn’t a dud clue to be seen.

   Many thanks to Wanderer for a whole lot of fun.

2. Thanks Turbolegs and Wanderer.

   Lots of nice things to eat (although you can keep salade nicoise).

   I had (s)TUCK at 12 ac – I think stuck = in a jam but stick does not quite.

   I had spermacite at 24 ac, which didn’t really quite work – your correct answer is cool.

   I had UREA at 25 ac, which works well for the wordplay and at a stretch for the definition. Is ARIA a blossom or a river?

3. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs.

   12ac: I also had TUCK here for the reasons explained in the two earlier comments.

   25ac: I guessed ARIA from the wordplay but have not been able to find a satisfactory definition – possibly a song that flows?

   2dn: I do not think “lands” is necessary for the containment indicator, so I would acquit Wanderer of double duty here.

   5dn/23dn: I took “That’s right” as the indicator for TICK.

4. Yes, a very enjoyable puzzle, thank you Wanderer. Especially liked the long down clues.

   Thanks too to Turbolegs. I agree with Eileen & Muffyword as to the parsing of 12 & 25ac by the way.

5. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs

   I too had TUCK (as in tuck shop) and UREA (a component/bit of one’s urine/water).

   Must say I certainly think the first works better than TICK and can’t find a definition of ARIA that would fit ‘flower’.

6. I don’t know if it’s riqht, but I went for UREA (River Urea + A) for 25a.

7. I don’t know if it’s riqht, but I went for UREA (River Urea + A) for 25a.

8. Hi Loonapick @6 [and 7 😉 ]

   I think you must mean URE [the river that runs through my beloved Wensleydale] + A – as suggested in comments 1,2,4 and 5?

9. So nice to see this puzzle getting the attention it deserves! Thanks to all for stopping by. I have made the edits for 12ac.

   Regarding 25ac – I can honestly say that I had a long think on this and even after I thought I’d solved it, wasn’t entirely sure. First up, “UREA” as a plausible answer did cross my mind but I couldn’t convince myself that the definition worked. As I did some research on Google (quite hastily might I add), I did find out that the Common Whitebeam is also referred to as the Sorbus Aria. See http://www.wildlifeinsight.com/448/common-whitebeam-sorbus-aria/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitebeam . I have no idea whether name refers to both the tree and the flower. My general take is if something has to be researched so much to parse a solution, usually the solution needs a second look.

   Cheers
   TL

10. As someone who finds Wanderer one of the more exciting setters of the FT, I decided to post a comment to get into double figures.

    Once more, Wanderer uses multiple entries that are symmetrical within the grid, one of his trademarks (and very nice).
    Did I say ‘his’? Perhaps, it’s a she.

    I failed on 20,21 but I do not like sweets very much anyway.
    Until today, Wanderer was a rather Ximenean setter but today he walked the Guardian way (in 1ac).

    Great stuff with (only) two clues that didn’t work 100% for me.

    2d:
    As Muffyword said, the construction doesn’t need ‘lands’ and therefore I saw ‘lands’ as part of the definition.
    But then we have ‘lands work’ which should be ‘land’s work’ – or am I wrong?
    Sometimes punctuation does matter.

    3d:
    Has this clue really a ‘hidden’ indicator?

    Fine puzzle.

    Thanks turbolegs for another enthusiastic blog.

11. Sil@10 re 3dn: I think the hidden indicator is “‘s” = “has” in the sense of “contains”.

    Now that it is past midnight, the official solution is available, showing TUCK at 12ac and UREA at 25ac.

12. Thanks for the crossword puzzle, let me try this.

13. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs.

    Thanks especially for parsing NIACIN and SPERMACETI which were beyond me – very clever.

    I too had UREA at 25ac and see from the published solution that that is indeed the answer.

    So Wanderer wasn’t taking the p….

14. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs

    Did this one well after publication and only just finished my final parsing run and check tonight. As has been said – a wonderful puzzle that gave as much joy in the parsing as in the actual solving of the solutions. The only one that I missed the full parsing of … was the second bit of NIACIN – a very hard but clever homophonic clue.

    It took an age to finally see what was going on with CURRANT LOAVES … and a real aha when I did !!

    Finished all over the shop with SADDLE, UREA (which gave me a real agggghhh moment on intially reading the blog – TL you might update to not give any other stragglers a shock! 🙂 ) and the ‘tricksy’ CURRANT LOAVES as the last one in.

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