Financial Times 16,625 by BASILISK

12 comments on “Financial Times 16,625 by BASILISK”

1. I agree with PeeDee’s prologue – thanks to him and Basilisk

   Don’t know quite what our crossword setters are planning, but 1d is the second PUTSCH in today’s crosswords

2. I agree with PD — and found it hard enjoyable work. In the end I had to wait for PD for some of the parsing. How refreshing to be subjected to Basilisk’s surfaces. Thanks Basilisk and PD

3. I don’t often attempt Basilisk /Serpent puzzles but I’m glad I had a go at this one, which I really enjoyed and didn’t find too difficult.

   I agree with Hornbeam about the surfaces – favourites were INGRATE, COUGH, SPIRITUALIST, INERTIA, CONSPIRATORIAL and SIGMA.

   Many thanks to Basilisk and PeeDee.

4. Most clues weren’t immediately obvious and this needed a bit of thought to eventually solve. I couldn’t work out INGRATE so thanks to PeeDee for the parsing. I liked the old-fashioned variety of ‘Keyboard’ and the surface for COUGH.

   I don’t think it’s appeared elsewhere today, unlike PUTSCH as pointed out by crypticsue @1, but EXECRATE has been getting quite an airing in various places over the last few weeks – not that it helped me solve it any more quickly I’m afraid.

   Thanks to Basilisk and PeeDee

5. It took an age to get going today and the first run-through yielded very little.
   However, once those ‘irrational cops’ were dealt with, the rest of the grid was fairly straight forward until finishing in the SW with just GATHER failing me.
   I was surprised, this being Basilisk, that there were no pangrams, ninas, themes or other tricks. But it was eminently enjoyable nonetheless and a pleasure to parse.
   Really liked EXECRATE, CHEATING and the connected ADULTERER.
   Thanks to Basilisk for the fun and PeeDee for the summary.

6. Thanks to Basilisk and PeeDee. Great fun. I did not parse the -ing in INGRATE, but everything else gradually fell into place.

7. Couldn’t parse little bits of 3d, 11a, and 12a, but got them all from the defs and crossers. No nina I assume, because it’s not Serpent.

   I don’t do the FT puzzle on a regular basis. I only choose a few setters, mainly because of all the inm used in printing the puzzle. Can someone change the solid black cells to a light grey colour please?

8. Inm? I thought I’d typed ink.

9. That was tough but ultimately rewarding. I agree with others about great surfaces. Favourites were ACADEMIC, SIGMA, and TREASON. I needed the blog today to figure out a good bit of the parsing. Thanks to both.

10. An enjoyable and satisfying solve.  Last in were SIGMA, where we failed for ages to ‘lift and separate’ ‘Greek tragedy’, and INGRATE which was the obvious answer but we couldn’t parse.  Favourites were the four long answers at 4, 9, 14 and 18.  Thanks, Basilisk and PeeDee.

    [NNI @ 7/8: I don’t know what device you download the puzzle on, but there are ways of converting the black squares and lines to grey if you’re prepared to experiment a bit.  It’s probably easiest on a Windows laptop.]

11. Many thanks to PeeDee for the excellent blog, and to everyone who has taken the time to leave a comment. I’m delighted everyone seems to have enjoyed the puzzle.

12. Thanks Basilisk and PeeDee

    Usually I have trouble with this setter, but was clearly on the same wavelength today as was able to solve it over a cup of coffee.  Really enjoyable both from a device perspective as well as the clever surfaces of the clues.  Like others, I didn’t see how the first part of INGRATE worked – but see that it was another clever piece of word play.

    Thought that the clue for TITANIC was particularly good and liked putting the word play for MISSHAPEN together.

    Finished with SPIRITUALIST and PRIVATEER before going back up to get PUTSCH as the last one in.

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