Financial Times 16,670 by BASILISK

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A treat for my last blog of this always interesting year. The sneaky snake strikes again.

Tough stuff – you'd expect no less from this setter – but great fun, with interlocking literary clues requiring a bit of general knowledge but nothing too obscure (I've read and enjoyed all the works here). Many thanks to Baslisk and a happy new year to posters and lurkers everywhere,

image of grid
ACROSS
1 TREASURE ISLAND Children’s story developed natural desires (8,6)
 

Great anagram of NATURAL DESIRES.
10 AWARD Pull together article about settlement (5)
 

DRAW ('pull together') + A, reversed.
11 HERBIVORE Vegetarian woman endured being fed second and third helpings of liver (9)
 

HER ('woman') + BORE ('endured') surround 2nd & 3rd of 'lIVer'.
12, 13 AN IDEAL HUSBAND Alien had transformed American company’s theatrical piece (2,5,7)
 

The Oscar Wilde play. Anagram ('transformed') of ALIEN HAD then US BAND.
14 DRESS Medical professional regularly reuses bandage (5)
 

DR ('medical professional') + alternate letters of 'rEuSeS'.
16 TRISECTED Had a go about religious group in several pieces (9)
 

TRI.ED surrounds SECT.
19 OBSTETRIC Heads of business organisations endorse strict reforms to do with labour (9)
 

Anagram ('reforms') of 1st letters of Business Organisations Endorse + STRICT.
20 SHELF Author’s written about 13 on which 6 may be left (5)
 

Will S.ELF ('author') around H[usband], answer to the 13 part of 12, 13, The definiton here is where a 'spinster' (answer to 6) may rather archaically be said to be left.
22, 25 OF HUMAN BONDAGE Old fellow being mature about relationship in book (2,5,7)
 

O[ld] F[ellow] + HUMAN ('being') + AGE (to 'mature') around BOND ('relationship'). Heartbreaking, semi-autobiographical 1915 W. Somerset Maugham novel.

27 SYMBOLIST Painter perhaps recorded impression of metal disc first (9)
 

1ST after homophone ('recorded impression') of CYMBAL ('metal disc').
28 VIRAL Bottled up resistance all over social media? (5)
 

R[esistance] in VI.AL, a small bottle, therefore 'bottled up'.
29 MOSTLY HARMLESS Work improbably leads to hapless man leaving solar system (6,8)
 

The 5th novel of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker trilogy (sic). Anagram of SOLAR SYSTEM & !st letters of Hapless Man Leaving, &lit, arguably.
DOWN
2 READINESS Set condition on when to partake of feasts? (9)
 

RE ('on') then A.S ('when') surrounds ('partakes of') DINES ('feasts'). An athlete might be said to be in 'readiness' or 'set condition' after the starter's second instruction.

3 ADDLE Source of distraction briefly allowed to cause confusion (5)
 

A[ttention] D[eficit} D[isorder] ('source of distraction') + LEt ('allow', shortened).
4 UPHOLSTER 3 helps tour provide cover for fixtures? (9)
 

Anagram ('addle', answer to 3d) of HELPS TOUR.
5 EARTH Heavenly body exhibiting lower level of hydrogen in core (5)
 

HEART ('core'), with H[ydrogen] 'descending' to the end of this down clue. 'Earth' is of course 29 in the trilogy.
6 SPINSTERS Misses people who haven’t taken part in matches? (9)
 

Double definition, both of unwed women.
7 AGORA Commander recruiting soldiers in old meeting place (5)
 

O[ther] R[anks] in AG.A (Turkish 'commander').
8 DREADED Scan blocks half-hearted exploit causing fear (7)
 

READ ('scan') in DEeD ('exploit'),one 'E' erased.
9 MARAUD Damage car, scratching wing in raid (6)
 

MAR ('damage') + AUDi, ('car' minus one 'wing'.
15 STEAMROLL Force people working together to fill special auditor’s position (9)
 

TEAM ('people working together') in S[pecial] + homophone ('auditor's') of ROLE ('position').
17 INCUBATOR Supporter of new ventures in communist country rejected corruption (9)
 

IN + CUBA then ROT ('corruption') reversed.
18 THESAURUS Reference work mixed up the United States of America with half of Russia (9)
 

Anagram ('mixed up') of THE USA + half of RUSsia.
19 OPOSSUM Very large amount of money supporting work for Native American (7)
 

OS SUM ('very large amount of money') after OP ('work').
21 FEEBLE Pathetic complaint upset the French (6)
 

BEEF ('complaint'), reversed, + LE (Fr. 'the').
23 HUMUS Rotting material stinks outside entrance to urinal (5)
 

HUM.S ('stinks') around 1st of 'Urinal'. Enjoy your breakfast.
24 NEIGH Sound of Hackney is almost the same as N8 (5)
 

Cryptic def of sound a 'hackney' ('horse for general use', Chambers says) might make. Wordplay is 'N EIGHt' without last phoneme/letter.
26 NOVEL Number cyclically permuting 0 and 1? (5)
 

N[umber] + LOVE (zero, '0'), the 'L' 'cyclically permuting' to the end. Def = 1a as example of 'novel'.

9 comments on “Financial Times 16,670 by BASILISK”

  1. A treat indeed. Took me ages to see why ADD was “source of distraction” with this and AWARD being my last two.

    If the anagram at 1a is an original, then kudos to Basilisk for discovering it. What a beaut!

    I’m a fan of Hitchhiker’s and thought the surface for 29a was masterful.

    If there’s a hidden nina, I failed to spot it. I did wonder about her = woman in 11a (as opposed to “she” say). Surface could have had “woman’s” or “woman has” and still worked.

    Thanks to Basilisk and Grant.

  2. My last two in were MARAUD and AWARD both of which I thought brilliant (after much head scratching)
    Three novels and a play. I saw PAUSE in one row and I’ll bet there is something else lurking as he is a crafty cove
    Thanks JC and GB

  3. If someone else doesn’t beat me to it, I’ll be the first to say, this was certainly not MOSTLY HARMLESS, especially as I was shamefully ignorant of the author of the work in question. I did manage to get there finally, though had no idea of the parsing for ADDLE, or NOVEL at the end. Looks like I mis-parsed SHELF as well; I took ‘Author’ to refer to ‘setter’ = SELF.

    Apart from the literary references there was lots of good stuff here. I don’t remember having come across MARAUD very often as a verb (as opposed to the derived present participle or noun) before and AGORA tickled up a few memory circuits.

    A big thanks to Basilisk and to Grant.

  4. To WordPlodder @3:
    I’m not quite sure about ‘self’ either. It comes up quite frequently. Both will do I think but I went for Will today, given the theme.

  5. A DNF for me today, which is very unusual. I had considered READINESS and ADDLE for 2d and 3d but didn’t enter them because I couldn’t parse them. 9d and 10a were the others unsolved, but I’d possibly have solved them if I’d entered the first two.

  6. A tick up in the difficulty factor led to a DNF for me — could not get MARAUD, AWARD, or MOSTLY HARMLESS which was unknown to me. Still this was worthwhile — I agree about the great anagram in 1a and I enjoyed HERBIVORE, OBSTETRIC, and INCUBATOR. Thanks to both.

  7. We didn’t finish either. Not being galactic hitch-hikers 29ac was a total mystery to us and meant we couldn’t fathom out 24dn and 29dn either.
    Th rest was OK, though. Thanks to Basilisk and Grant.

  9. Thanks Basilisk and Grant
    Away from a printer so a bit late to get to this one … and it spilt over a couple of days when I was able to do it – found it quite difficult.
    I liked the literary flavour throughout the grid, although not being a reader of the Hitchhikers’ Guide series, needed to help to find 29a. There were quite a number that I failed to parse or parse properly, including OF HUMAN BONDAGE, READINESS, NEIGH and ADDLE. Didn’t know of the SYMBOLIST movement and don’t think that I have seen INCUBATOR in this sense. Did like the construction of the charades that I did manage to unravel.
    Finished with READINESS and MARAUD in the NE corner and returned to finally understand NOVEL as the last one in at 26d. A good Christmas / New Year tussle … and may this new year be a better one for all of us.

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