Financial Times 16,627 by VELIA

15 comments on “Financial Times 16,627 by VELIA”

1. For 16a, I took ‘Content’ to be a verb, as in “to ‘content’ (or SATISFY) oneself with the thought…”. I can’t explain that extra E in ROMANTIC COMEDY which I must admit I missed during the solve.

   Yes, a pangram, plus a PUCKISH theme of sorts.

   Thanks to Velia and Turbolegs

2. Like WordPlodder, I took “content” as a transitive verb. Didn’t object to STANZA – in fact, I quite like these lift and separate clues. Somebody should have checked 30,31 before publication. The FT does seem particularly bad with such erroneous clues. Having said that, the superb clue for KEEP IT UP more than made up for this. Velia remains one of my favourite setters at the easier level, although I do prefer a bit more of a tussle.

   Thanks to Velia and Turbolegs.

3. Sorry, Turbolegs, I found STANZA delicious — and many of the other clues (although I agree with you on COMEDY). A great puzzle: thanks, Velia, and Turbolegs.

4. I also didn’t spot the missing E. Great fun, as was the Moo puzzle earlier in the week. Thanks to all.

5. Yes, agree with the above comments that this was very enjoyable from Velia. The pangram helped with THWACKS which was a top pick, along with FUJI, HEADACHE and KEEP IT UP.
   An excellent variety of clues made up for the odd stray letter, I feel. In fact, I derived SVENGALI from ‘evangelist’ which the crossers seemed to suggest but there too were excess letters – distinctly my error, though.
   Many thanks to Velia and Turbolegs.

6. Oh dear (or words to that effect!), I’m sorry for that extra E. Many thanks for the blog Turboleegs and to all for your lovely comments!

7. Velia @6

   May I suggest that you read Comment No. 3ff under the tab General Discussion. There you will find a  recent and useful Android tool that lets us place tiles of our anagram fodder on a ‘slate’ and move them around to check if we reach our solution without any insufficiency or redundancy.

   There is a nifty long-standing anagram checker in the site Internet Anagram Server.

   https://ne.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=auroraborealis&t=500&a=n

   The purport of this note is that we can never trust visual scrutiny. Even if we have  a crossword editor, any lapse on our part may pass the gate.

   In the decades past we had to write the letters on paper and scratch them out. Woe unto us if we erred, for we had to write the letters all over again. Now technological help is at hand!

   I hope you wouldn’t mind this from a friendly person. All the best.

    

    

8. Sorry. Please try this link
   https://wordsmith.org/anagram/

9. Thoroughly enjoyable, thanks Velia. I struggled with USPS but found the rest pretty much as Turbolegs suggests so thanks for your confirmations. I though STANZA was cheeky with the “a” attached to the verse and smiled when I got it. It did take some time to get started with TALC being the first one in and then the bottom half filled nicely. The top took longer for some reason but it all filled time on yet another wet afternoon.

10. Thanks Velia — that was fun especially HEADACHE. NIGH, KEEP IT UP (great surface), SEXUAL ACTIVITY, QUESTION, and PHLEGM. I did notice the extra “e” in 30,31 which could have easily been eliminated with “drug free” or “non-European” thrown into the surface but I guess everyone here already knows that. Thanks to both.

11. Re 13a STANZA.

    It’s a stand-out clue in this puzzle.

    I think they this clue-type is called ‘lift and separate’.

    Solvers generally like it. When they first come across the device, they congratulate themselves on having cracked it and express their pleasure.

    It seems the setter, while dealing with word breakup and writing the clue, stumbled upon the idea and carried it out. Fine.

    However, in my opinion the ‘life and separate’ operation must be in SI only.

    The def is usually at either end of a clue and so it must be stand-alone as the solver would be looking  there. In this case, however hard solvers toy with ‘averse’ they are unlikely to get ‘stanza’. I think they may be spared of that ordeal.

    What do others think?

     

12. Great puzzle but the extra “e” is an issue if, like me, you count letters to check whether the clue is an anagram before trying to solve the anagram.  No combination of the likely letters gave you the 14 required so it was only with the crossers in place that I went back to look for the anagram.

13. Agree with Rishi. Lift and separate operation should not be applied to the definition part of the clue.

14. I interpreted 12a as HE and HE (lads) around rACe tHEm. Turbolegs’ solution is much better. Like everyone else, I struggled with the anagram at 30-31a. I’d never heard of Unique Selling Proposition before, so got stuck on 5d. (Never worked in sales.)

15. Thanks Velia and Turbolegs

    Was a surprise to see this Monday setter sitting in the Friday slot – but a very pleasant one.  Did it whilst watching the last day of our Melbourne Cup carnival at home, instead of being on track, so the elapsed time was much longer than what it would normally have been.

    Particularly enjoyed the extended perimeter clues and there were many other memorable clues as well.  Forgot to look for the pangram even though most of the telltale letters were there quite early.  Will say that I am a big fan of the lift and separate clue and not particularly fussed if it refers to either the word play elements or the definition.

    Started off with the subtraction anagram at 20a. Finished with the tricky HEADACHE, even trickier THWACKS (had to look up and check if there was a ‘Ruby Wax’ and the unheard of USPS (which I guessed through the wordplay and after deciding that it had nothing to do with the US Postal System, finally chased down the Unique Selling Proposition abbreviation).

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