Financial Times 16,730 by MONK

28 comments on “Financial Times 16,730 by MONK”

1. 🙂 I did have a bit of a lie down after finishing what I thought was the most difficult of today’s cryptic crosswords

   I too looked for a Nina but to no avail. My favourite was the wonderfully deceptive 16a

   Thanks to Monk for the extreme brain-mangling and to PeeDee for the blog

2. Thanks Monk and PeeDee. I too have looked for a Nina without any success. The four letters surrounding the centre square spell the Spanish greeting HOLA clockwise or HALO anticlockwise, but that seems more than a bit feeble for Monk Nina.
   18dn: A small typo in the given answer. As the explanation makes clear, it is ASININE not ASANINE.

3. A very tough Monk. I often use a likely looking nina as a support rail but no such luck today, no safety net, no nothing-just a great test to keep the noddle oiled
   Thought HOAX was brilliant-and feel slightly chuffed to come out unscathed
   Thanks Monk and PeeDee

4. Agreed, this was very hard. I thought there might be some kind of (anti-)war theme, with FALKLANDS and IRAQ (the latter perhaps based on the HOAX dossier), and the BRITISH and SALVATION armies, but I can’t make more if of it.

   23a seems a bit weak to me, as “eduction” and “education” are essentially the same word, as in the saying “education is a drawing out, not a putting in”, memorably quoted by Gussie Fink-Nottle in Right-ho, Jeeves.

5. As you must have suspected, the definition in 15a is just “ska band”. No way is my home town of Coventry, northern. The Northern in the clue denotes a vertical reversal of SLAIn with the “served up” only relating to CEPS<.

6. Yes, very tough. I had no hope with FACE-ACHE or NIELLO, a few other NHO’S such as EXTERNAT were entered from wordplay and I couldn’t parse ISRAEL. Too tired to look for a theme or Nina! Well and truly beaten on this one I’m afraid.

   Thanks to Monk and PeeDee

7. Sorry, meant 15d, not 15a.

8. Way too hard for me. Externat, bish, and face ache were all new words/phrases to me!
   In my nearly 3/4 of a century living in the US, I have NEVER seen Fa as an abbreviation for Florida. It was generally Fla before the USPS standardized on two-letter abbreviations for all the states and territories.
   And CHOcICE two days in a row?

9. Thanks Hovis & Pelham for spotting the errors, the blog has been fixed now.

10. If Webster’s 2nd can have “Dord,” then I suppose Chambers can list Fa. for Florida. Which is to suggest, it’s a typo. As EdK says, Florida is Fla. or FL. (Oh, another possibility: Reference books do sometimes include erroneous information in order to smoke out piracy.)

11. Late to the party so it seems as though I don’t have to jump down anyone’s throat re The Specials not being a northern band (Hovis got there first). Whilst on this subject, for this East Midlander ‘daft’ means ‘barmy/potty’, didn’t know ‘fond’. Loved FACE ACHE which made me laugh out loud but I can’t claim to have finished this toughie from Monk. Thanks, anyway, and to PeeDee.

12. Diane @11. I think daft for fond is along the same lines as meaning barmy/potty – just as you might say “I’m mad about you”.

13. EdK@USA @8 : I got my CHOCICE in first… a total fluke! Lovely puzzle, Monk and thanks to PeeDee

14. I have just noticed that the unchecked letters in rows 3 and 1 (in that order), if read from right to left, spell MACARTHUR FLIES. Could this be (part of) a Nina?

15. Well spotted, Pelham. More evidence for my “war” hypothesis?

16. Floridian abbreviations aside, I thought this was a great crossword and I was pleased to complete it except for FACE-ACHE and NIELLOED. Clues like EDUCTION, WORTHY, RIALTO, and the &lit UNMERCIFUL made this worth my time. Thanks to both.

17. MacArthur Flies Back to Front was a newspaper headline from WW2

18. Contrapunctus@17: of course. Actually, some searching suggests that it may have been the Korean War, but in this context that is an unimportant detail.

19. Top right hand corner stumped this solver – Rialto, Face Ache, Llanero and Nielloed all foxing me – unsurprisingly I might add.

20. Thanks Monk and PeeDee
    Hmmm … glad that it wasn’t just me. Progressed slowly but steadily through the puzzle until coming to the NE corner where I wouldn’t have got it out without aids to get RIALTO and NIELLOED.
    It wasn’t all that easy to discern many of the answers and after, there was still a lot of meat on the bone to work out the why with the word play. Eventually was able to with the exception of not seeing the tricky I9 square just off the chessboard.
    Fruitlessly looked for the customary nina and / or theme – so didn’t see the ghost wars / army one.
    Hard, and a bit of a slog, but satisfying to get the grid filled in the end.

21. I also have NEVER seen Florida abbreviated as FA. My response is the same as that of EdK@USA.

22. Very tough with NIELLOED a tilt via a word search – interesting to learn more about it. EXTERNAT was also new and confirmed via Google. HOAX was my top clue. Many thanks to Monk and Pee Dee.

23. Late to the party because we didn’t start this till late (10 pm). But we got most of it unaided – needed a wordfinder for TOPEKA (which we ought to have spotted), NIELLOED (new to us or maybe long forgotten) and FACE-ACHE, plus we needed a French dictionary to check EXTERNAT.
    Thanks, Monk and PeeDee.

24. Too many new things to mention any in particular… but what I did get was well worth the effort.. I worked out 26 ac backwards so whether FA was or wasn’t what it was clued as was fairly academic..
    Thanks Monk n Peedee

25. FT setters have no idea when puzzles appear, so I missed 16,718 in late Feb and accidentally landed on this one late in the day. Thanks to PeeDee for the usual meticulous blog and to all for comments. Apologies for Fa. for Florida, but there it is in Chambers.

    Pelham Barton and Contrapunctus were on the right track of the Nina. Hidden in the unches in rows 1 and 3 were MACARTHUR FLIES BACK TO FRONT, and rows 8, 10 and 14 contain contiguous strings BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS, both of which are “Crash Blossoms” exemplifying syntactical ambiguity often seen in newspaper headlines. I should add that my Ninas are a grid seed above all else; sometimes they are completely missed.

26. Thanks Monk for dropping by to share the well-disguised nina with us.

27. @Monk: Mike Shenk has a clipped headline on his bulletin board: SHARK ATTACKS PUZZLE EXPERTS

28. @Jon Delfin 😀

    So basically it’s the old verb-noun one-two in a lot of ’em, e.g.:
    SHARK ATTACKS PUZZLE EXPERTS
    BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS
    8TH ARMY PUSH BOTTLES UP GERMANS
    SQUAD HELPS DOG BITE VICTIM
    etc.

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