Financial Times 16,287 by MONK

13 comments on “Financial Times 16,287 by MONK”

1. Arachne and Monk in the same day was like a double A side from the Beatles(and thats not to discount the excellent Eccles)

   I failed to see nina or theme but I still loved the puzzle.

   Thanks PeeDee and Monk.

2. Great crossword.

   Don’t remember seeing “cueist” before. Was looking for a snooker player name until the penny dropped.

   Got the dance at 14a and then googled Django jazz guitarist to see who it was.

   Didn’t know BACTRIAN but easy to guess. Think I might have seen this in a previous crossword.

   Took far too long to see the MOVIE part of 8d.

   I know I said this about a previous Monk crossword but I never like clues such as 11a where it is not clear whether “over” goes with “Kick” or “fly” until you have a crosser. Fortunately, 1d was a write-in.

   Thanks to Monk for a great workout and to PeeDee for the blog.

3. From far, far distant Latin lessons, ‘AVE’ means not ‘goodbye’ but its opposite, ‘Hail! Well met!’. There’s confusion because of the phrase ‘Ave atque vale’, meaning literally, ‘Hello and goodbye’, i.e. ‘I’m in a bit of a dash’. Yeah, I know, picky, picky.
   And to Hovis: things have come to a pretty pass when we have to Google Django Reinhardt, the greatest jazz guitarist who ever lived or ever will, “And that”, as his disciple Diz Disley was wont to say, “Isn’t just my opinion. It’s a fact,” a phrase which I have adopted as my own in many a drunken argument in whatever context. You’re welcome.
   Good puzzle anyway. Thanks to both.

4. Grant @3. Sorry, but never got into jazz. My loss probably.

   On the topic of “ave”, this cropped up on fifteensquared some time ago. Certainly, Chambers backs you up on this. However, Collins has “welcome or farewell”. Maybe it was used for both? I’m not a Latin scholar but if it’s in Collins I think it’s fair game.

5. The usual enjoyable Monk challenge. AVE is an interesting one that has been discussed before as noted by Hovis @4.

   Plenty of ‘bung in now, parse later’ ones here and even with time I couldn’t parse a few such as TELESCOPIC SIGHT. My knowledge of jazz is very limited, but I had heard of D(J)ANGO Reinhardt – instant word association Stephane Grappelli.

   I liked CUEIST for ‘potter’ and found the def. as homophone device in 26a interesting.

   Thanks to PeeDee and Monk

    

6. Thanks Monk and PeeDee

   I wondered if the definition in 3D might be “In butterfly”, as the Painted Lady has appeared in huge numbers this year (and, I think, was the most common in a recent butterfly count). For that reason it could be said to be in, in the sense of popular.

7. Lovely crossword on a day of lovely crosswords perfect for crossword addicts – I agree with Simon @6 about 3d being the ‘in’ butterfly.

   Thanks to Monk for the fun and PeeDee for the blog.

8. Thanks Monk & PeeDee.

   Happy birthday, Sting (12 across), 68 today!

9. I have only one problem with Monk – he doesn’t appear often enough.

   Def in 3d is simply “butterfly”.

   The first two words might just as well been at the end of the clue, but Monk is doing things a little differently.

   Power to his elbow.

10. Just popping in to answer Hovis@2’s comment: “… clues such as 11a where it is not clear whether “over” goes with “Kick” or “fly” until you have a crosser”.

    This clue does indeed offer a unique solution since ‘over‘ cannot be an imp. or adj. for what follows it, only an adv. for what precedes it. Had the clue been ‘Kick backwards fly‘, then indeed the reversal indicator could act on the elements either side of it [but only because the adv. ‘backwards’ is defined by the adj. ‘backward‘]. Similarly, for an old Indie clue of mine, ‘Noises about European Union (6)‘ can only be an anag. of NOISES and not E + UNION. Basically, adj. anagrinds invite ambiguity when situated twixt wordplay and definition, but even then a link word or two can provide the right direction.

    Thanks to all so far for comments, and to PeeDee for his characteristically forensic blog. And, of course, there is a Nina, in a roundabout way, but you’d have to be on the setter’s wavelength to see it 😉

11. Thanks Monk and PeeDee

    Another very entertaining crossword from Monk which took over an hour across a number of sittings.  Even then there were a couple of clues that I couldn’t see the full parsing – at 2d (where I’m not familiar with ‘the other” as a term for sex (IT)) and at 14a (where the guitarist was unknown to me).

    As for the nina – all I could see were fragments in the across rows – JUMP TO IT AND GO EASY DOES IT IN MALTA!

    Lots of interesting clues to fill the grid in along the way.  Thought that the use of ‘prime positions’ for positions 1,3,5, and 7 at 18a was quite clever and can’t remember seeing this trick before.   Originally had written in HOME MOVIE at 8d and after getting the wordplay for MO VIE, could not figure out how the first bit came about.  This held up the stove in the NE corner, with UMPIRE being the last to go in.

12. Nina: starting from square ’11’ and going north-east, and ending by approaching square ’21’ from the south-east, a diagonally-oriented symmetric circuit spelling out GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE.

13. Thank you Monk, I have been looking for this Nina off and on since writing the blog. I would not have spotted that no matter how long I looked!

Comments are closed.