Financial Times 16,744 by WANDERER

24 comments on “Financial Times 16,744 by WANDERER”

1. In 14a, I don’t think “WHAT” is part of the definition. If it were the answer would be SNAIREE! I failed to get STOLEN, being focused on shower or stoker.
   Nevertheless a finely clued and enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to Wanderer and to Turbolegs for the enlightenment, particularly with 11a and 2d which I could not parse.
   Can anybody explain why TRIAD is a CHINESE group rather than any group of three?

2. I had mixed feelings on this outing.

   14a: if in a gin then “snared” but this doesn’t seem to answer “what’s in a gin?”
   2d: seems a very weak &lit. Do you even get actual doctors in an ambulance?
   Not familiar with key meaning command.
   27a: my loi. The parsing in the blog would be better but the clue suggest deleting the T in Solent (shortly) and then adding a T after the S.
   Perhaps others will correct me.

3. Hi John@1 – wiki here.

4. Hovis @2, Cant remember what I was thinking about as I wrote the parsing for 27a. Quite absent-minded of me. The blog is fixed now.

   Regards,
   TL

5. Hovis@2 .. missed answering our query on 2d. I am guessing you are a Windows user and not a mac user … you will find the Command key on a Mac keyboard.

   Regards,
   TL

6. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs

   I didn’t find this puzzle anywhere near as tricky as his Indy Hob earlier in the week

   Hovis @ 2: I think you can make 2 work, in a somewhat convoluted fashion, if you add punctuation: “What’s ‘in a gin’?” “ ‘snared’ is”.

7. Thanks Turbolegs @ 3. Because of my ignorance, I would have been more confident of my answer if “Chinese” had not been there.

8. Turbolegs @5. Actually, I am an apple user. Just never thought of that.
   As for “what might be ‘in a gin’ ?” – I guess that just about works but it seems a bit overly contrived. Thanks to Turbolegs and Simon for the suggestions.

9. Turbolegs, I appreciate your blog and I don’t want to be rude but when you say about 27ac “The blog is fixed now”, I don’t think it is (yet).
   Meanwhile, I agree with Simon S @6 that this crossword was almost a doddle compared to yesterday’s Hob.
   I am still not fully sure about 6dn, though.
   Do we have two anagrams here (as the blog suggests), both with ‘resort’ as the indicator, and sort of connected by the word ‘by’?
   If indeed so, that would be slightly unusual, wouldn’t it?

10. ‘Finely clued and enjoyable,’ as John @1 said.

    I particularly enjoyed the ‘or’ in the ellipsis in 12ac. Other favourites were CLASSICS MASTER (once upon a time I was the female equivalent), MELODRAMA, UNFLEDGED, STOLEN and SUBTLE.

    I read 14ac more simply: ignoring the quotation marks – punctuation is often intended to mislead! – Recalled somewhat harder answer for what might be in gin = snared

    In 23ac I had INTO = keen on.

    Hi Sil @9 – I had initially been puzzled by the plural ‘resorts’ in 6dn, then realised that we had two anagrams, as you say. I don’t think that’s unusual, though.

    Many thanks to Wanderer for the fun and Turbolegs for the blog.

11. Hi SIl @9 .. I hope I have fixed it now. Thanks for pointing it out. :).

    Thanks all for stopping by. Eileen@9 – Good to see you enjoyed the puzzle as well.

    Regards,
    TL

12. If ‘resorts’ means ‘resort’+’resort’, and if that instructs me to take an anagram and thereafter another one (with the same indicator), I actually think that is unusual. I don’t think I’d ever seen two anagram indicators written as one. But I get it.
    I agree with Eileen about SNARED – that’s how I took it.

13. This was on the more difficult end of Wanderer’s spectrum for me — I failed with SNARED, forgetting what “in gin” meant, with TRIAD, mystified by “Chinese” in the clue, and with STOLEN, being unfamiliar with “solent.” I guessed at COMMAND and I neglected to see that punctuation was part of the clever parsing. Favourites included TRAIT, MODIFY, and MEANDER. Thanks to both.

14. Thanks Wanderer & Turbolegs.
    In the blog of 6 down the parenthetic “regularly” is not part of the anagram. If “by” is also included then “resorts” becomes a single anagram indicator:
    [ SAND IS sOlD ( regularly ) (by) SEASIDE]*

15. psmith @14, that crossed my mind too.
    But for me, “resorts” as a form of the transitive verb “(to) resort” doesn’t really work.
    Also, in that case, I am not totally happy with ‘by’ either, although it is ultimately justifiable, I guess, seeing it as ‘+’.

16. Sil @ 15

    I’m setting aside the use of ‘resorts’ for this comment, though it works (as nouns) for me.

    I think that ‘by’ appears often enough in clues to mean ‘next to’ in the solution (and with the same meaning in real life, eg Bromley-By-Bow), that it’s OK to indicate two adjacent anagrams.

    It’s personal taste, isn’t it.

17. An enjoyable solve with no real problems, and we thought the parsing of SUBTLE was very SUBTLE. But 27ac was one of those odd clues where the solver is asked to remove a letter and then put the same letter back, albeit elsewhere; and in this case we thought it could just have read “Hot water sailor might be in – tide’s beginning to come in” which would be an instruction to bring the T in from the outside edge of the word to a position somewhere inside.
    Favourites were MELODRAMA, ENTANGLED and the aforesaid SUBTLE.
    Thanks, Wanderer and Turbolegs.

18. Yes, Simon @16, that’s two anagrams then (which I am fine with).
    However, there’s only one word (‘resorts’, plural of ‘resort’ (as a noun) that catches both indicators in just one word.
    Fine by me, still rather unusual that way.
    In that case, not a problem with ‘by’ for the reason you mention.

19. Late to the feast… top half was completely blank for quite a while having got the bottom halves of the 2 long clues.. 3dn confused by SUMMER = one that’s added?.. but I guess its actually “one that HAS added” .. subtle but significant difference… 27ac was not filled in.. never saw HOT as the def.. apart from that.. all good
    Thanks WANDERER n Turbolegs

20. allan_c @17. Interestingly, my comment @2 on 27a reflects your comment. This was how the blog erroneously first parsed the clue.

21. Sil @ 15. To make the transitive verb reflexive, could we say that “resorts” equates to “rearranges”, and the absence of a direct object implies the reflexive pronoun? Thus, “something resorts” means “it rearranges itself”. Would that be too much of a stretch?

22. Too late to contribute to say anything other than thanks for a fine puzzle and blog – which I needed for the parsing of COMMAND and the solution for 27a which I didn’t get. I’ll print off his Hob to do later.

23. psmith @21, I am fine with that if “something resorts” can indeed be seen as “it rearranges itself”.
    But I prefer the two-anagrams option as suggested by TB and others (like Simon S), also because of Wanderer including the word “by”.
    What I haven’t said yet is that I like the crossword!

24. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs
    Did this one on Friday but with a 90th birthday celebration in the country over the weekend, have only got to checking it off tonight. It didn’t take terribly long on the clock, but there were certainly some chunky clues to get through. Liked both the clever elliptical use of ‘or’ at 11a and 12a, the unusual device of using ‘resorts’ to generate two separate anagrams at 6d and also the use of the COMMA sign in the word play of 4d.
    Struggled initially with the &lit clue at 2d, but finally got my head around it which was the penultimate entry with STOLEN the last one in.
    A very good finish to a very good week of FT puzzles.

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