Financial Times 15,869 by CRUX

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A bank holiday Monday offering from Crux

Mostly straightforward and enjoyable. 20d was quite tricky, and we’re not at all sure how 28a works (help?)
19d was particularly satisfying.

Otherwise a nice balance of types of clues. Thanks to Crux!
Apologies, but due to a minor technical glitch 3d does not appear in the grid below.

completed grid

Across

1 High cost of restoring the monarchy? (5,6)
KING’S RANSOM
Cryptic definition

7 Precipitate a mid-week revolution (3)
DEW
WED< (mid-week, revolution)

9 What we do with beef, reportedly, cows do! (5)
CALVE
“CALVE” (sounds like carve, what we do with beef)

10 Soldiers surprisingly armed with guns (9)
GUARDSMEN
(ARMED GUNS)* (*surprisingly)

11 Pile up an expensive car – finances required! (9)
BANKROLLS
BANK (pile up) + ROLLS (expensive car)

12 It can mean windmill folk regularly feel sick (5)
FLAIL
F[o]L[k] (regularly) AIL (feel sick)

13 Correct paints needed oddly to depict these islanders (7)
CRETANS
C[o]R[r]E[c]T [p]A[i]N[t]S (oddly)

15 A team’s centre-line (4)
AXIS
A XI (team, eleven players in cricket) ‘S

18 Some poetry does somehow (4)
ODES
(DOES)* (*somehow)

20 A little girl’s favourite paper model (7)
RAGDOLL
RAG (paper) + DOLL (model)

23 Old money starts to return high interest – nice one! (5)
RHINO
(starts to) R[eturn] H[igh] I[nterest] N[ice] O[ne]

24 Very keen on backing knock-out at a boxing match (4,5)
NUTS ABOUT
STUN< (knock-out, backing) + A BOUT (a boxing match)

26 Safe volume emitting uranium, can be dangerous defusing bomb (5,4)
FALSE MOVE
(SAFE VOL[u]ME (emitting uranium))* (*dangerous)

27 Farmers blocked in as a joke (2,3)
IN FUN
NFU (National Farmer’s Union) blocked IN

28 Can appear briefly in Snowdonia (3)
TIN
Not sure how this one works

Thanks to Steven and Nila – TIN = SN (chemical symbol for tin, appearing briefly in SN[owdonia])

29 Compare this with change of air (11)
ATMOSPHERIC
(COMPARE THIS*) *(with change)

Down

1 Pass to goalkeeper, perhaps, displays a special gift (8)
KICKBACK
Double definition
KICK BACK (pass to goalkeeper)

2 Refusal by unsociable type to embrace golf – not any more! (2,6)
NO LONGER
NO (refusal) + (LONER (unsociable type) to embrace G (golf))

3 Promise made by listener in Cornwall? (5)
SWEAR
SW (Cornwall, South West) EAR (listener)

4 Daily prayer the Spanish held in part of Scotland (7)
ANGELUS
EL (the in Spanish) held in ANGUS (part of Scotland)

5 Port – answer appears in 3 right away (7)
SWANSEA
ANS (answer) appears in SWEA[r] (3 down, right away)

6 Changing one in modern aviation wastes fuel ultimately (9)
MODIFYING
I (one) in MOD (modern) F[l]YING (aviation, wasting L, fuel ultimately)

7 Humble clergyman takes me to his heart (6)
DEMEAN
DEAN (clergyman) takes ME to his heart

8 Engineer with western perspective (6)
WANGLE
W (western) + ANGLE (perspective)

14 Dead Roman represented as Perseus’ lover (9)
ANDROMEDA
(DEAD ROMAN)* (*represented)

16 Display lack of tact and overcompensate, perhaps (2,3,3)
GO TOO FAR
Double definition

17 Spiritual refresher after climbing mountain (8)
PLATONIC
TONIC (refresher) after ALP< (climbing, mountain)

19 Runs badly with low turnover yet the outlook’s bright! (7)
SUNROOM
(RUNS)* (*badly) + MOO< (low, turnover)

20 Tinkers turn into rogues with Rex as leader (7)
ROTTERS
R (Rex) as leader of [p]OTTERS (tinkers)

21 Make money as a fortune-teller, say (6)
PROFIT
(sounds like, say) “PROPHET” (fortune teller)

22 Substitute not quite satisfying hunger (4-2)
FILL-IN
FILLIN[g] (satisfying hunger, not quite)

25 Religious sect created by Abraham is here (5)
AMISH
[abrah]AM IS H[ere] (created by)

11 comments on “Financial Times 15,869 by CRUX”

  1. I couldn’t work out TIN either, apart from the chemical symbol Sn at the beginning of Snowdonia. But it can’t just be that, surely.

    A fairly straightforward Monday puzzle. RHINO was a gimme, but I really liked the surface.

  2. 28 across. SN appears at the beginning of the word Snowdonai and is  the chemical element symbol  for Tin = Can.  It comes form the Latin ‘Stannum’.

  4. I wasn’t totally convinced by that because of the awkward grammar used to fit the surface, specifically ‘appear’.

  5. Bit of a mixed bag for me. In 26a, I took ‘can be’ as the anagram indicator but ‘dangerous defusing bomb’ seems a weird definition to me although, clearly, it follows reasonably from the first part. ROTTERS was my last one in and least favourite. Putting the definition in the middle is unusual (but not unprecedented) but I feel a clue needs to be a lot better to merit this.

    Despite the above, I still enjoyed the puzzle even though no clue stood out to me. Thanks to Crux and Teacow.

  6. Thanks, Teacow.

    I had ROTTERS at 20d but couldn’t fully see why.

    The Sn-trick is something that another FT setter, Wanderer, does very often and therefore I got the idea rightaway. However, I agree with Nila Palin @4 that in 28ac ‘appear’ is  crypto-grammatically wrong [should be a singular form of the verb].  But, nowadays, a lot of these things slip through the net, have even become sort of acceptable, it seems.  Another example of that is ‘blocked’ in 27ac (IN FUN). In the surface it is used as a past participle but in the cryptic grammar as the past tense of ‘to block’ which, imho (and others), should ideally be the present tense or the -ing form of the verb. Of course, that doesn’t make sense here. So, I can see why Crux did it. Yet, my credo has become: if you cannot get the cryptic grammar right, then write a different clue that does work.  Meanwhile, I am not stupid and I have noticed that many solvers can’t be bothered: rules are there to be broken, sometimes even the more the better. To each their own.

    All in all this was a typical Crux puzzle, not very difficult, but also with less ‘inventiveness’ than usual.

    I particularly liked the anagams of 10ac and 29ac but put a question mark against ‘created by’ as a hidden indicator (25d). Perhaps, just about. I also think that in 7ac (DEW) ‘a’ stands in the way. To make clear what I mean: ‘a mid-week revolution’ = ‘revolution (reversal) of a mid-week’, which suggest ‘a mid-week’ = ‘Wednesday’. Not sure.

  7. I withdraw my DEW comment. If you see ‘a mid-week revolution’ as ‘a revolution of mid-week’, then it’s fine.

  9. Thanks to Crux and Teacow. I did get ROTTERS but was held up in the SW corner until I finally got FALSE MOVE so that the rest fell into place – and with the crossers TIN was the obvious answer though I could not parse it. With IN FUN I assumed that NFU was farmer-related. In fun indeed for a puzzle on Memorial Day in the US.

  10. Thanks, Teacow. I agree with Hovis.

    Also it is both presumptuous & gender stereotyping to say that a ragdoll is ‘a little girl’s favourite’.

  11. Thanks Crux and Teacow
    Enjoyed this a lot, taking a couple of sittings to get most of it out and one final one to mop up the SE corner with RAGDOLL, NUTS ABOUT (couldn’t get KO out of my thinking and for the life of me couldn’t get NOOK ABOUT to work) and ROTTERS (tougher than it should have been because of the ambiguity around not being specifically told to get rid of the P) the last few in.
    Made for a more challenging than usual start to the solving week.

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