Financial Times 16,579 by BRADMAN

16 comments on “Financial Times 16,579 by BRADMAN”

1. Very much a mixed bag for me. Failed on the unknown SCRIPTORIUM. ASWARM seems a bit poetic but maybe not. I’ve always used the THAI spelling so TAI looked odd but checked it was ok.

   Parsed ROIL as in blog but this doesn’t work for me not even as a homophone mind you the tense.

   Thanks to S&B.

2. Re 16A – I am more concerned with the pronunciation of both words. To me “royal” has two syllables; “roil: has only one.

   I think that the definition is “be agitated” not “agitated”, thus “roil” is the correct answer and your concern about the tense is unfounded.

    

3. Sorry if that sounded abrupt. I meant to thank you for the great work in posting your solution.

4. Besides the king ‘railing’ and the queen ‘roiling’, there were a few other clues that stymied or puzzled me. As Hovis @1 says, Tai checks out as a common language spoken by, among others, the more familiar Thais. And then ‘tonk’ – easily parsed but not a word I’ve heard before for ‘hit’. Clang, yes, and a host of other onomatopaeic words but tonk’? The ball tonked the dustbin, hmmm…
   Again,’sitter-in’ was unexpected. Sitter/babysitter, sure. I even wondered about ‘tucker-in’ early on (tuck up in bed/exhausted). Ah well, back to the drawing board, then.
   Even so, I enjoyed a number of clues here like BEMOAN, IN MY BOOK, GOYA and BANANA SKIN. Found the right side of the grid generally easier and was pleased to at least have got further with this Bradman puzzle than is usual for me.
   Thanks to Bradman and to Turbolegs for the much-needed write-up.

5. Mort @2, more accurately the definition is “to be agitated”.

   I agree with you that royal has two syllables, but the second syllable starts with a schwa – it’s not pronounced like royale – so the difference in speech is surely negligible.

   I thought 25d was TIE and wondered if the Don had accidentally jumbled the clue components. I should have known better.

   Lots of goodies, but best was the clever and amusing IN MY BOOK. (You don’t hear Nimby much these days – I suppose now it would stand for No-one In My Back Yard.)

6. Yes, harder than average for Bradman, but I really enjoyed this. Less common words like ROIL and SCRIPTORIUM were possible from wordplay and crossers. There were some v. good clues eg  BANANA SKIN and I liked seeing CRACKERJACK and TONK make an appearance.

   Almost tripped up at the end by the unfamiliar spelling of TAI – like Blorenge @5 I initially wondered if there may have been a setting/editing boo-boo, but it just seemed too unlikely.

   Thanks to Turbolegs and Bradman.

7. “Tai” is used by linguists to denote the language family that includes Thai, the official language of Thailand.

8. Gave in after about 50mins with 3 unfilled; SCRIPTORIUM, EQUIPAGE and ROIL, after the rest went in quite steadily.  Guessed and didn’t manage to parse GET ONES BEARINGS as ‘news’ is a departure from the standard NESW. I was trying an anagram (maybe) of ‘Using bits of news’ to no avail.

   I enjoyed it nonetheless so thanks BRADMAN and Turbolegs for the blog.

9. Was anyone led astray thinking 1ac might be ‘rubbishy’ (polish = rub) + bish(op) + an unexplained y?.  Fortunately 2dn was so obviously LASSO that we quickly dismissed the idea.  The rest was pretty straightforward although we had to confirm TONK, ROIL and the spelling of TAI in Chambers.
   We particularly liked SPURIOUS, EQUIPAGE and SCRIPTORIUM.

   Thanks, BRADMAN and Turbolegs

10. Thank you both Turbolegs and Bradman. Not as hard as yesterday’s puzzle but still a DNF. Failed on 13D and 16A. I’ve never heard of ASWARM though it was gettable using the crossers and I couldn’t parse SITTER-IN either though I did write it in.
    allan_c I also thought of rubbishy too but couldn’t parse the y and then finally hit on the correct solution. A good workout.

11. I normally like the Don’s puzzles but this didnt quite do it for me. Sorry.

12. A DNF for me as well. I normally manage and like Bradman but there were several here that scuppered me, not least Scriptorium and Roil.
    A curates egg, but thanks, as ever.

13. Thanks for all feedback. Dictionary folk will know that James Murray compiled the OED in his so-called scriptorium at his home in Banbury Road, Oxford. working with slips of apper containing quotations that he filed in pigeon-holes. Those were the days!

14. Ah yes, it comes back to me now…the film “The Professor and the Madman” featured that famous scriptorium and still I forgot!

15. I had “conk” as ‘c’ century ‘on’ ‘k’
    for hit, 11AC.

16. Thanks Bradman and Turbolegs

    Mulled over this one for nearly a fortnight until ROIL finally landed in an inspiration early in the morning yesterday after trying a different dialect for the homophone 🙂 .

    Was disappointed on finding that there was a hidden error with my TIE / UNREAD.  Even though the word play for the former looked back to front and the parsing for the latter was tenuous UNREAD -> uneducated -> ‘savage’, still did not think to revisit !  Had not heard of the TAI-speaking people from several South East Asian countries and China, so some good learning to come from it all.

    This brought to an end a pretty difficult week of puzzles with a harder than normal Io, a tough Basilisk and then this one.

    A hard, but on reflection pretty fair crossword, so thanks again to the setter.

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