Financial Times 15,956 by JULIUS

by

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”

That is the first line of Keats’ Endymion (see 1dn).

This puzzle is a thing of beauty – difficult but fair clues, excellent surfaces, a test of one’s general knowledge, and a pangram to boot.

Not one for the faint-hearted but one which will reward those who stick with it.

Thanks, Julius.

Across
8 IN TOTO Entirely independent new group getting platinum from Africa (2,4)
  I(ndependent) + N(ew) + TOTO (“group getting platinum from Africa”)

Released in 1982, Africa was a platinum-selling single by American band, Toto.
9 LACROSSE Sport embraced by all across Europe (8)
  Hidden in “alL ACROSS Europe”
10 BYRD Composer moving contents out of Brondesbury Road (4)
  B(rondesbur)Y R(oa)D

Refers to William Byrd, an English composer and organist who died in 1623.
11 NOBLEWOMAN Aristo breaking bread with old Madame Cholet after cycling? (10)
  NAN (“bread”) broken by O(ld) BLEWOM (“Madame Cholet” ie a WOMBLE, cycling)
12 DIME Julius is in Delaware a bit (4)
  I’M (“Julius is”) in De(laware)

I was going to cry foul on this, as a bit is 12 1/2 cents, and a dime is 10 cents, but “bit” can alos mean “small coin”, as in “threepenny bit”, so the clue is OK.
13 BILL POSTER It’s a stick-up job (4,6)
  Cryptic definition
17 SNAP Independence movement taking afternoon break (4)
  SNP (Scottish National Party, so “independence movement”) taking A(fternoon)
18 SINGE Royal beard treatment carried out by daughter, 19? (5)
  Francis DRAKE ((D(aughter) + RAKE (the solution to 19ac)) “singed the beard of the King of Spain” when he attacked the Spanish fleet in the bay of Cadiz in 1587.
19 RAKE Lothario found in belly of Nordic sea-monster (4)
  (k)RAKE(n) (“Nordic sea-monster”)
21 PROSPEROUS Rich American pursuing Miranda’s father (10)
  U.S. (“American”) pursuing PROSPERO (“Miranda’s father” in Shakespeare’s The Tempest)
23 AJAX Wasting a billion in two instalments, ruin Dutch football side (4)
  (b)A(n)JAX (“ruin” with BN (“billion”) wasted – the “two instalments” instructs us to remove the B and the N separately)
24 COMIC OPERA Patience? I manage recovery, initially being in non-responsive state (5,5)
  I COPE (“manage recovery”) + R(ecovery) in COMA (“non-responsive state”)
28 ALTO Get her away from 8’s falsetto (4)
  ALTO(gether) (ie in toto (see 8 across) with “get her” away)
29 VERANDAH Victoria (the Queen) & Albert (husband) gallery (8)
  V(ictoria) + ER (“the Queen”) AND A(lbert) + H(usband)

V & A are normally seen together as an abbreviation for the Victoria and Albert museum.
30 OPAQUE Pop a question that’s a bit unclear (6)
  Hidden in “pOP A QUEstion”
Down
1 ENDYMION Final year note about work by Keats (8)
  END (“final”) + Y(ear) + MI (“note”) + ON (“about”)

Endymion is a long poem by Keats, first published in 1818.
2 LORD HELP US Pray to God Herod pulls round (4,4,2)
  *(herod pulls)
3 COUNT BASIE Waving baton is cue for leader of orchestra (5,5)
  *(baton is cue)
4 GLIB Smooth, slippery rock enclosing lake (4)
  GIB(raltar) (“rock”) enclosing L(ake)
5 ACRE Old coins stripped from holy city in Israel (4)
  (s)ACRE(d) (“holy” with S & D (“old coins”) stripped)
6 BOZO Dickens “ordinary”? Idiot! (4)
  BOZ (pen-name of Charles “Dickens”) + O(rdinary)
7 ESCAPE Get away from it all on England’s southern headland (6)
  E(ngland) + S(outhern) + CAPE (“southern headland”)
14 LENTO Fast or, at first, slowly? (5)
  LENT (“fast”) + O(r)
15 PRESS BARON Like Lord Copper to continue to obstruct the legal profession (5,5)
  PRESS ON (“continue”) to obstruct BAR (“the legal profession”)

Lord Copper was the owner of The Daily Beast in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop.
16 SIR GALAHAD Knight making a dash, clutching precious grail (3,7)
  *(a dash) clutching *(grail)
20 KHARTOUM Running amok, Ruth Gordon bought it here (8)
  *(amok ruth)

Major-General Charles Gordon was killed in Khartoum in 1885.
22 ROOFER He gets up for work, often burdened by shingles (6)
  Cryptic definition
25 I SAY Goodness regularly seen in Miss Mary? (1,3)
  (m)I(s)S(m)A(r)Y
26 ODDS Probabilities of party upset gutted Democrats (4)
  <=DO (“party”, upset) + D(emocrat)S
27 ECHO City head office office office? (4)
  EC (the “city” of London) + H(ead) O(ffice)

*anagram

15 comments on “Financial Times 15,956 by JULIUS”

  1. A cultural offering from t’Sheffield lad.

    So long since I played that Toto album, Africa had slipped my mind.

    And thanks loonapick for parsing AJAX, who, like TOTO used to be huge.

    Nice to see Waugh ,Shakespeare and “Boz” mixing with the Count.

    Reet gradely lad!

  2. I agree with every single word of loonapick’s preamble and what copmus said, apart from the bit about the album, which I didn’t know, so put in the answer without parsing.

    As so often, I started giving ticks but that quickly proved invidious.

    Sheer delight – many thanks to Julius, as ever, and to loonapick for a great blog.

  3. Couldn’t get AJAX. Don’t know football teams and never heard of BANJAX, so I learned something. Thought SINGE must be the answer to 18a and thought Drake was linked but had to come here for the details.

    Remember TOTO and Africa now that you mention it, but didn’t cotton on to it at the time. Also, didn’t know Lord Copper.

    I assume the anagram indicators in 16d are ‘making’ and ‘precious’ but these both seem uncharacteristically weak? Looked up KHARTOUM to see who Gordon was.

    Loved the humour in 27d. Didn’t spot the pangram – been a few of these lately.

    Thanks to Julius and thanks to loonapick for an illuminating blog.

  4. Anyone who hasnt read Scoop should make amends, Its hilarious.

    A recent puzzle focussed in Rebecca which I hadnt read. That is being given attention.

    Thats one of the great things about puzzles.

  5. Very hard with 6 answers guessed or unparsed, though ended up only failing on the ‘Royal beard treatment’. Plenty of stuff I didn’t know eg ‘Lord Copper’, ENDYMION, (b)A(n)JAX and the ‘group getting platinum from Africa’.

    A bit out of my league, but a ‘learning experience’ and a few words to file away for future use. ‘Scoop’ added to the reading list as well

    Thanks to Julius and loonapick

  6. I meant to mention before that my first answer to 13a was FLAG BEARER, which I felt fit the clue (and the enumeration). Fortunately, I wasn’t confident enough to pen it in at that stage.

  7. One of Julius’s harder crosswords, I think.

    Some answers went in unparsed (RAKE, KHARTOUM, AJAX and SINGE (which I assumed was the right answer)).

    I still find ‘falsetto’ defining ALTO a bit odd but it’s technically all right.

    All very enjoyable.

    That said, last time I said something about this setter’s puzzles, I didn’t agree with E = Europe.  Here we have E = England, which again is not an established abbreviation.  Also, not so long ago,  he used a containment indicator just the other way round compared to how setters usually do it. Today, I had a similar feeling with ‘to obstruct’ (but it can probably work either way, so fair enough).

    Many thanks Loonapick & Julius.

  9. Thanks loonapick for the blog and thanks to those who have commented. Best wishes especially to Chalmie for a continued recovery to rude health. Aristo/noblewoman/sir/count/lord/baron were chucked in when I filled the grid but scarcely a theme.

    After we’d done Endymion at school, I remember our English master walking into our unheated Sheffield classroom in the middle of a brutal February with the next one: “St Agnes’ Eve..ah, bitter chill it was! The owl – for all his feathers – was a-cold” I’ve hated Keats ever since.

    best wishes to all, Rob/Julius

  10. Almost had enough to finish this in my lunch break, but failed to see ALTO. Another enjoyable puzzle.

    Thanks to Julius and loonapick

  13. Thanks Julius and loonapick

    Crikey, this was hard, taking numerous sittings, a lot of referential looking up and still coming here with a lot more than usual clues with full or partial parsing incomplete!!

    I didn’t know and/or couldn’t find ‘banjax’, the Womble – ‘Madame Cholet’ nor the “Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard” as a reference to Sir Francis Drake’s battle at Cadiz.   The closest I got to a singed beard of a royal was with Dionysius of Syracuse who would get his daughters to singe his beard because he didn’t trust anyone with a razor that close to him – obviously couldn’t relate that back to 19 though.

    More general knowledge required than I can remember from a lot of crosswords for a long time – not only knowing the particular item, but in the case of 11a knowing that Madame Cholet was a WOMBLE and then to jumble it up as a part of the wordplay into the final answer.  Was able to determine that it must have been NOBLEWOMAN, but had no clue as to what the rest of the clue had to do with it.

    Finished with PRESS BARON (after Google helped me locate the reference to Scoop (a book that I have a first edition Penguin copy of but have not yet read)), BOZO (with a penny drop moment when Dicken’s pen name came) and SINGE (where I was confident enough that it was right but didn’t have the right reference in the parsing).

    A very enjoyable, but slow burning, solve that as you suggested was not for the faint-hearted !

  14. Just got round to this today. I’d finished the Inquisitor last night so I was looking for something to do this afternoon.
    Couldn’t parse INTOTO and AJAX, and needed Google for Madame Cholet, the sea-monster, and the Keats poem.
    Thanks, Rob.

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