Financial Times 16,406 by ARTEXLEN

12 comments on “Financial Times 16,406 by ARTEXLEN”

1. I enjoyed this a lot but failed to finish without cheating on my last two, PRETENDER & DRAMATISE. I was fixated on 16d ending with ATIVE (EVITA< = “play up”) leading to my downfall. Never seen GUN for “expert” before but easy to guess. Thanks to S&B.

2. thanks turbo/len! — I too was unfamiliar with GUN=expert (Chambers says it’s Aus/NZ slang — so perhaps such an indicator would have been in order?) but as Hovis notes it was guessable.  My embarrassing admission is that I didn’t see the PEDESTRIAN anagrind/fodder though “novel” is not a very novel indicator.

3. Thanks to Artexlen and Turbolegs. Lots of fun. An unusual solve for me. Normally I start with shorter clues to get some crossers but had little luck. Then I spotted most of the longer ones, though CEREBRALLY and DIVISIONAL were LOI. As for GUN  I thought of Top Gun.

4. In parsing 14d, I think  you meant RALLY for “meeting”. I parsed 2d as ZERO INK for oink. Thanks to both Turbolegs and Artexlen.

    

5. Thanks Turbolegs.

   I didn’t enjoy this much. It was a bit of a slog, with no really smooth surfaces to provoke a smile.

   That said, the only clue I really didn’t like was 17ac.

6. A steady solve for me with only needing to cheat once for 11d. Favorites were 20a and 16d. Guessed SKIER and ENTER so thanks Turbolegs for explaining. I saw expert = gun in the sense of “hired gun,” a consultant brought on board to help solve a tough problem. Thanks Artexlen.

7. I agree with Grumpy on 17ac, but after staring at a mostly empty grid for the best part of an hour (7d and 8d being my LOI’s ironically) it came together and I found quite a few to enjoy and smile at.  11ac my favourite.

8. 11d even…

9. Thanks all for stopping by.

   John@4: Thanks for spotting the typo. Our parsing is the same for 2d.

   Regards,

   TL

10. On 17ac I did not see how lodge could be ENTER; but when i entered it, it occurred to me that to lodge a complaint mught be like to enter a complaint.

    I enjoyed 1ac and 20ac

    Thanks to all

11. Very late to the party as we’re not regular FT solvers but we downloaded this one for our Sunday solve in preference to a “full frontal” offering elsewhere.  Quite a challenge but we got it all in the end.  Like Hovis we ended up with PRETENDER and DRAMATISE as our last two but a last minute inspiration saved us having to use a wordfinder.  Favourite was OINK.

    Thanks, Artexlen and Turbolegs.

12. Thanks Artexlen and Turbolegs

    Only got to print this off on Sunday when got back from being away.  All went pretty smoothly, albeit not as fast as usual.  Think that one of the things that did make this a little trickier than usual was having to disassociate a word-component adjective from the actual definition in a number of clues – e.g.  ‘Italy’s theatres’, ‘with another’, ‘one place to study’, etc.

    Thought that SMOKING GUN (where gun-expert was not a problem for me) and SKIER were the best of a pretty good lot.

    Finished with STEP (took a while to equate steep=bathe), then the quirky ENTER and finally with CEREBRALLY as the last one in.

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