Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of August 18, 2018
I found most of Goliath’s puzzle easy but a couple of clues, notably 8,19, took me a while. My clue of the week is 2dn (NOTICING).
| Across | ||
| 1, 4 | CANNED LAUGHTER | Thain’s mirthful soundtrack? (6,8) |
| HA in TIN (thain). “Ha ha” would have been better. In Tolkien’s fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Thain was the traditional military leader of the Hobbits of the Shire. | ||
| 9 | NOTION | Tiny slice of tomato in fried onion: there’s an idea (6) |
| T[omato] in anagram (fried) of ONION | ||
| 10 | DECREPIT | Briefly order colliery to be run down (8) |
| DECRE[e] (briefly order) + PIT (colliery) | ||
| 12 | RECOVERY | So, after the end of winter, green improvement (8) |
| [winte]R + ECO (green) + VERY (so) | ||
| 13 | MOROSE | Blue instant bloomer (6) |
| MO (instant) + ROSE (bloomer) | ||
| 15 | TANG | Bite biter back (4) |
| GNAT (biter) backwards | ||
| 16 | OTHELLO | Labour leader in hotel, upset after love tragedy (7) |
| O (love) + L[abour] in anagram (upset) of HOTEL | ||
| 20 | FAUX PAS | Dad’s following message about you, said in error (4,3) |
| U (you, said) in FAX (message) + PAS (dad’s) | ||
| 21 | See 27 | |
| 25 | UNWIND | Relax with Macron’s one victory finally reversed (6) |
| UN (Macron’s one) + WIN (victory) + [reverse]D | ||
| 26 | MOSQUITO | Parasite’s work pattern very much includes leave (8) |
| MO (work pattern, i.e. modus operandi) + QUIT (leave) in SO (very much). I believe that Goliath’s definition here is wrong. A mosquito is certainly a carrier of parasites but it is not a parasite itself. | ||
| 28 | GREMLINS | Problems from men cavorting with girls (8) |
| Anagram (cavorting) of MEN GIRLS | ||
| 29 | LAPDOG | Almighty ally turns into a docile creature (6) |
| GOD (almighty) + PAL (ally) all backwards (turns) | ||
| 30, 31 | ELECTRIC SHOCKS | Playing slick soccer, the current results? (8,6) |
| Anagram (playing) of SLICK SOCCER THE | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 , 22 | CONCRETE JUNGLE | Without compiler rejecting clue on troubled city (8,6) |
| Anagram (troubled) of REJECT[i]NG CLUE ON | ||
| 2 | NOTICING | Seeing only cake? (8) |
| NOT ICING (only cake?) | ||
| 3 | EVOLVE | Corrected heart valve using nothing for a change (6) |
| [corr]E[cted] + VOLVE (valve using nothing for A) | ||
| 5 | AXES | Cuts neckbones (4) |
| Double definition | ||
| 6 | GARGOYLE | Large organisation preserves gentile carving (8) |
| GOY (gentile) in anagram (organization) of LARGE | ||
| 7 | TIPTOE | It upset poet terribly to move with discretion (6) |
| Anagram (upset) of IT + anagram (terribly) of POET | ||
| 8, 19 | ROTTEN BOROUGHS | Endless prose about naturalist wiping out a corrupt group of constituencies (6,8) |
| [a]TTENBOROUGH (naturalist wiping out a) in (about) [p]ROS[e]. This was a tough one for me as I was unfamiliar with the term ‘rotten borough’. Wikipedia tells us that a rotten borough was a parliamentary borough or constituency in England before the Reform Act 1832, which had a very small electorate and could be used by a patron to gain unrepresentative influence within the unreformed House of Commons. | ||
| 11 | PRETEXT | Excuse for telegram, presumably? (7) |
| Double/cryptic definition | ||
| 14 | LEBANON | Large banks prohibit working in this country (7) |
| L[arg]E + BAN (prohibit) + ON (working) | ||
| 17 | GAUNTLET | Glove challenge (8) |
| Double definition | ||
| 18 | PERIODIC | Peril of dice curtailed on this kind of table (8) |
| PERI[l] O[f] DIC[e] | ||
| 19 | See 8 | |
| 22 | See 1 down | |
| 23 | TWEEZE | Pluck of delicate zone ongoing (6) |
| TWEE (delicate) + Z[on]E | ||
| 24 | SQUASH | Sport drink (6) |
| Double definition | ||
| 27, 21 | ANTIHERO | Role model he ain’t, or otherwise (8) |
| Anagram (otherwise) of HE AINT OR | ||
Thanks Pete and Goliath.
Even with crossers didn’t get CANNED…still Thain ref (other than ha in Tin) is not clear…yes 8/19 required research, and I parsed it too.
Thanks Goliath and Pete
Found this quite tough caused by not being able to get any of the long ones until late in the solve. Thought that they were all very good when I did get them though, with CANNED LAUGHTER being my favourite.
ilippu – think of ha (laughter) being in tin (or a can), it could then be regarded as tinned or canned laughter 🙂
Reckon that a mosquito could be regarded at least as half parasitic, after all it (or at least the female anyway) does feed off the blood of other animals.
Finished in the SE corner with ROTTEN BOROUGHS (new to me as well), that MOSQUITO and SQUASH (so simple looking back) as my last few in.
@2brucew: thanks, I got that.
What is the connection to Tolkien’s Thain? I am not into that stuff….does he laugh like that?! If nothing, then it is just a misdirection?!
I think I should point out that this is also a pangram.
Thanks Goliath and Pete.
7dn: I took the first part as a reversal not an anagram, but it works either way in a down clue.
8a. William Hogarth the brilliant English satirist has some wonderful piictures on rotten boroughs and some can be seen in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humours_of_an_Election.
I thought this a lovely and clever puzzle. Thank you both.
Many thanks to Goliath and Pete for another great puzzle and blog.
It didn’t occur to me to question whether a mosquito was a parasite but I’ve just found quite a bit of discussion about it through Google.
I was lucky to remember ROTTEN BOROUGHS from O Level History – also known as pocket boroughs but the lovely ‘naturalist’ wordplay ruled that out. Thanks for the link, trenodia.
Great surfaces throughout, as usual: I particularly liked OTHELLO, GREMLINS, UNWIND and PERIODIC.
ilippu @3 – ‘thain’ is simply the clever wordplay and has nothing to do with the solution.
Well noticed, Hovis! It struck me that this crossword included several of the less commonly used letters but I did not see that it is actually a pangram. (That is, that it contains every letter of the alphabet.)
Thanks Eileen. Thain led me to Tolkien and didn’t see the wordplay :-(.
I’m weeks late and few if at all will read this apart from Pete, but why does the FT go on using this appalling grid? Quite apart from the four answers with <50% checking you very quickly find yourself doing a little crossword of its own. If you were to get the four bad ones in the centre of the grid you’d have have four separate crosswords to do.