Financial Times 15,661 by WANDERER

11 comments on “Financial Times 15,661 by WANDERER”

1. I really enjoyed solving this – so thank you to Wanderer and Turbolegs too

   Lots to enjoy but the d’oh moment with the brilliant 14a makes this my Clue of the Day or possibly Week

2. Thanks both.

   Like crypticsue, I absolutely loved 14ac – happy memories of the TV adaptation, with Penelope Wilton, one of my favourites. I’ve just found this interesting article: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/aug/26/how-we-made-the-borrowers-tv .
   [I don’t really get the ‘one claiming’: I read it as Pod claiming, ‘I Pod’!]

3. I also read 14a as Eileen. Held up a little by entering DEERSKIN for 16d. A cleverer clue than I gave it credit. Had to cheat on 9,10 since Geography is not a strength of mine. Thanks to S&B.

4. Trouble was that RUST is contained in crustacean. That held me up in the SE.Thanks for parsing, especially BORROWER.

5. Me too, for a while, copmus.

6. Thanks Wanderer, Turbolegs
   Lots of clever clues – I liked WAFFLES, TAIL END, HILLOCK, HAPPINESS best. BORROWER too, which I probably would have liked more if it had taken longer, and if I had got the Pod reference. On the other hand, ALPES MARITIMES was first in, and seems rather weak – apart from ‘Nice here’, it’s basically translation.

7. Thanks all for stopping by. I too, spent some excruciating moments trying to figure out why DEERSKIN and RUST were both not working – always like it when crosswords do this to you as they should attempt to do!!

   20d – I also briefly considered SWITCH, with Colliers giving ‘Jerk’ as one of many meanings although the parsing was a bit of a stretch of imagination.

   Regards,
   TL

8. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs

   Was able to complete this in a couple of sessions yesterday and enjoyed it a lot. There are very few clues that are given to you for nothing from this guy – they need to be worked all of the way through to slowly reveal an answer.

   I thought that I was starting to improve my literary knowledge by immediately recognising the Noel Coward play at 27a, but was brought back to earth with “The BORROWERS’ – it’s amazing what one discovers what one doesn’t know (that obviously a lot of others do) – a deprived childhood with this one it appears.

   Was another who couldn’t make the DEERSKIN / RUST combination work and a hastily written but unparsed NOGGIN didn’t help the cause at 28a until the final parsing roundup.

   Finished the grid with HILLOCK in what was a very entertaining crossword.

9. Thank you for the blog, Turbolegs.

   Please could somebody explain 5dn for me? I don’t understand how ‘split in gateway’ works.

   Thankfully my knowledge of France is sufficient to know that ‘Nice here’ must be ‘Alpes Maritimes’ but I can’t parse it. Surrounded by mountains gives ‘Alp__ ________s’ but I don’t see how ‘in quarters near the sea’ defines ‘es maritime’.

   14ac is unforgivably obscure. Dreadful.

   I’d never heard of a play called ‘Hay Fever’

10. BarryB
    In 5dn, the ‘split in’ is indicating that you need to split ‘gateway’ into gate (=BARRIER) and way (=METHOD) to form the wordplay.

    Turbolegs has given the parsing for 9,10 in his blog above, i.e. E S (quarters {points of the compass}) MARITIME (near the sea).

11. BarryB @ 9

    “Obscure’ just means you didnt know it. And you didn’t need the Pod reference to solve the clue once you had a crosser or two.

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