Financial Times 16,542 by PETO

9 comments on “Financial Times 16,542 by PETO”

1. This grid from Peto involved more inspired guesswork than I care to admit though most of it checked out thanks to Loonapick’s blog. I had more luck working across than down.
   Think I’ll have to go back to the drawing board if ‘Loire’ is a homophone for ‘law’. 7d’s answer made me sure it was ‘edict’ but then it wouldn’t fit subsequently with 6d, which I did like, along with 13ac, 14d and 25d.
   ‘A abnormal’ put me on edge too. Still, I can’t blame that for my DNF today.
   Thanks to Peto.

2. Thanks Peto and loonapick

   Found this a little testing, taking four sittings across the day to get it completed.  Started off with RECOLLECT and things just fell steadily but not all that fast after that.  Did raise the eyebrows with the homophone clue – don’t think that it is supposed to be of LOIRE though Diane, it is a two step process as loonapick has – ‘statute’ = LAW which sounds like LORE that is then put around I (‘India’s principal).

   ECTOPIC and DISCUS (as a fish) were new terms and didn’t know the Duke of Illyria’s attendant at 27a.  I liked the insertions in AT ONE and ALL THERE to give the answers at 19a and 6d.

   Finished in the SW corner three of the above – AT ONCE, DISCUS and CURIO.

3. Bruce @2, yes, I see that now. I read too hastily.

4. The moment I saw the ‘law/lore’ homophone, I knew hackles would rise north of the border this morning. I’m guessing the American contingent would feel the same.
   Didn’t know or had forgotten ‘Curio’ and hadn’t heard this sense of ‘facile’ before, though Chambers confirms.
   Have to confess I missed the misprint.
   Still, good medium-strength puzzle. Thanks to both.

5. Thanks to Peto and loonapick. I knew CURIO (Twelfth Night is one of my favorites) but was surprised to find such a minor figure invoked. Yes, the law-lore homophone was a stretch, but I came here to get the parsing for MILL which eluded me, though after a struggle I did figure out CASEMENT.

6. Pleasant enough for a warm afternoon sitting in the garden, but it didn’t tax us too much.

   Had it come to it we would have got CURIO from crossing letters and wordplay but as it was we guessed it was a Twelfth Night character and confirmed it from our complete Shakespeare.  Anyway, we thought it was an original way to clue it, rather than as an item of bric-à-brac.

   We weren’t sure why ‘principal’ was included in the clue for LOIRE – ‘India’ would have done on its own as it stands for I in the so-called phonetic alphabet.  Maybe it was intended as a bit of misdirection to the Ganges or the Indus – or whatever you consider is India’s principal river?  And we thought ‘reinforce’ a bit vague for ‘cement’, except possibly in the abstract sense of cementing a friendship.

   Plenty to like, though; RELAPSED, FIGMENT and ECTOPIC among our favourites.

   Thanks, Peto and loonapick.

    

    

7. This was slow going for me and I did not complete the SW corner — DISCUS as a fish was new to me and I didn’t expect a cryptic definition for 29ac so I wasted time with alternate parsings that led nowhere. Favorites were ILL AT EASE, PRETTY, and ALL THE RAGE. Thanks to both.

8. Many thanks to both. That odd “a” in 5d caused me (well, that’s my excuse) to enter the answer as ECTOPIA, even though I knew what it should be.  The result was I spent time looking for some strangely named forests to fit 16a until the penny did the drop trick. As I was doing this mid-afternoon sitting in the sun, I found a snooze in the middle sharpened the brain up nicely and I could rattle the rest off easily.

9. I had only heard ectopic in relation to an ectopic pregnancy. I didn’t know that it referred generically to an abnormal position. Did anyone else have this (pregnancy) as the only understanding of ectopic?

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