Financial Times 16,646 by Julius

10 comments on “Financial Times 16,646 by Julius”

1. This made me realise how much, as a newcomer to crosswords,  I rely on the letters from the cross-answers. But, I preserved and completed the puzzle, albeit with several pencil rubbings to move wrongly-placed answers

   Not only was KERYGMA a word I have never seen (and will probably not see again), but it also contained an anagram of GYRE, which I view as obscure. Quite an achievement to get it, I thought. Not being English, I had never heard of Whipsnade Zoo and had to seek outside help. I am still not sure I understand 12ac – is “on vacation” an indicator to delete the middle?

   As always, several clues appealed to my sense of humour. In particular, EFFED for swore and I loved the Bad Hombre reference.

   Thanks as always, Pete and thank you Julius

2. One small quibble: surely Julius Caesar never became emperor – the assassins took steps to prevent that. Perhaps the setter has delusions of grandeur?

   @Martyn, one thing I learnt from this puzzle is that Whipsnade may be better known in some quarters as the surname of WC Fields’s character in “You Can’t Cheat and Honest Man”.

3. thought this would be a struggle but did better than expected. First two solves were Zonking and Vanuatu, so Zoo became vey likely even though the Whipsnade took ages. It enabled me to start the grid, and Queen of Sheba went in neatly at the bottom. I got the anagram for Caesar and Julius was the only one who fitted, but for the life of me I could not work out why. The setter Julius as I staring in the face but still didn’t see it.

   Got Rhomboids rather than Rhombuses for the shape (couldn’t work out why) so SE corner defeated me in that words went in which were incorrect. Never met Kergyma

4. Thank you Pete for your blog. Filling these grids is always pretty hard work (if a normal 15×15 takes me X minutes, these alphabetical jigsaws take 10X, or more) and almost inevitably there will be one or two words from the darker corners of the dictionary – in this case notably KERYGMA.

   If I may address Martyn @comment 1, the wordplay is not intended to inclued an anagram of GYRE (itself not a common word) but a reversal of it (up) which was intended to help the solver determine whether it goes into the grid as a down or an across entry, rather like “from the east” in the clue for ONAGERS etc.

   warmest regards to all, Rob/Julius

5. Julius @4: I enjoy these as a change of pace, so thanks for all the extra work. I would not think any less of them if you had to leave out a letter or two on occasion and just said in the preamble that every letter but (one, two, etc.,) starts a word. You would not even have to say which letters are missing.

6. In my opinion, there are alphabeticals and alphabeticals.
   There are the ones I call Araucarian and there are the ones I call Julian.
   Araucaria & his successors (eg Paul, Maskarade) often include lots of ‘obscure’ words.
   Julius has the ability to keep the number of such entries to a minimum.
   In this puzzle we had XERODERMA and KERYGMA – and, for me, that was about it.

   Another difference is that Julius doesn’t give us the starting letter of each clue.
   More than once he did explain at this place why he made that choice.
   The available FT grids are very user-friendly and can usually be used more readily (by the solver) than the ones in The Guardian, which is helpful.
   On top of that, and not unimportant, Julius’s clueing style is very accessible, which is helpful too.
   In short, I like these alphabeticals very much – they’re never really tortuous.

   As to this particular crossword, I wondered about why Julius used ‘aside’ in the clue for ADOPTER.
   Apart from one or two other things (like the plural use of the verb ‘transport’ in ONAGERS), all very enjoyable.
   Julius @4 made clear that he deliberately used ‘from the east’ and ‘up’ in a couple of clues to help the solver decide on the orientation in the grid.
   Not that it was really necessary because JULIUS CAESAR could only be placed in the top row (then, with so many useful starting letters, causing a chain reaction).

   Many thanks Pete for the blog & Julius for the Fun (uppercase!).

7. Thanks Pete for the blog and thanks Julius for a cracking puzzle.  I was beaten by three but loved the complexity of the challenge.  If the effort is 10X the challenge and enjoyment was >>10X, especially over a weekend when a two-day challenge puzzle is welcome.  More please!

8. @ Malcolm Capon – I must confess to the same problem with Caesar – I got Caesar easily, then it took for ever to get Julius. Talk about missing the woods for the trees!

   @Julius, thanks for the insight into your thinking. Very interesting

9. Many thanks for this enjoyment Julius and it really was pleasure to work on it over a couple of days. All very accessible. I started with the long answers and then went looking for things to hang off the first letter. JUPITER solved that. Once I realised I had a ZOO I had no alternative but to consult a list of British zoos (such places are not common knowledge out here) and things fell nicely into place after that, helped by Julius providing the two directional clues.
   And thanks, as always, for the blog Pete.

10. Thanks Julius and PeteAs it turns out, GISMO was the first clue that I solved – it took another two hours or so over a couple of days to fit it into the grid and get the rest of the puzzle out though.The grid fill started by recognising that the left perimeter clue ended in ZOO (hadn’t heard of this particular one, so it was a while later and a number of crossers before the particular zoo was found).  JULIUS CAESAR was the next long one to find its place at the top of the puzzle and corrected an erroneous NEPTUNE for JUPITER.  Once they were in, it became a steady solve, having to check a number of unknown words, including XERODERMA, the QUEEN OF SHEBA sinfonia, the zoo and KERYGMA / GYRE (which was my last one).A really enjoyable experience, as I find with all of the alphabetical crosswords by this setter.

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