Financial Times 16,798 by Julius

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Non-prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of May 29, 2021

On finding this jigsaw I wondered whether we were being treated to it because it is a bank-holiday weekend in the UK or just because Julius came up with it.  I still do not know but will guess the former.

I read the preamble which states that the clues are presented in alphabetical order by answer and then, immediately after making my first solve (FLAGGING), became suspicious because the relevant clue seemed too far down the list for an F word.  In short order, word came to me that the preamble was wrong and should have read,  “Solve the clues and fit the answers into the grid. Each letter of the alphabet appears at least once at the beginning of the grid entries”.  In other words, it’s an alphabetical jigsaw with the clues jumbled and the mistake was not Julius’.

Here is the finished puzzle:

Clearly one could not make much headway into the grid without solving the 15-letter clue that fits the middle column.  And that proved to be a fairly easy anagram.  I started filling the grid with that and a dozen other solves in hand and subsequently needed checked letters to solve the last few, notably 7dn (AEOLIAN) which was my last-in.

All in all I found this a good challenge and think it might have been too easy had the clues actually been given in alphabetical order.  My favourites are 1dn (YUCATAN), 4ac (LIFESPAN) and 12ac (WATCHDOG).  Thank you Julius.

And here are the clues, in the order published with explanations and grid positions added:

19ac. Summer record temperature in south damaged leaves (3,5)
HOT STUFF – T (temperature) in (in) anagram (damaged) of SOUTH + FF (leaves)

10ac. Being from a troubled region, I arm Sikh rebellion (8)
KASHMIRI – anagram (rebellion) of I ARM SIKH

21ac. City returning cucumber gazpacho bottles (6)
ZAGREB – reverse (returning) hidden word (bottles)

18dn. A sort of star chamber, its judges deal with some harrowing notes (1,6)
X FACTOR – ???.  I am well aware of The X Factor as a television program but have not seen more than a couple of excerpts.  As a result I am not sure how to characterize this clue.  Is it intended to be a cryptic definition?  Or is there something about “harrowing notes” that I do not know?

17dn. Regularly evacuating Burnham (town in Herts) in the dark (7)
UNAWARE – [b]u[r]N[h]A[m] + WARE (town in Herts)

13ac. Wife leaving Wyoming, running around in disgrace (8)
IGNOMINY – IN (in) in (around) anagram (running) of [w]YOMING

9ac. Easily bribed, heartless policeman fed hot cutlet (4,4)
VEAL CHOP – VE[n]AL (easily bribed, heartless) + H (hot) in (fed) COP (policeman)

7dn. Ancient Greek pageboy frequently cut out pin-up (7)
AEOLIAN – [p]A[g]E[b]O + NAIL (pin) backwards (up)

20dn. “Walk very quietly”: instruction to reader wearing cravat (6)
TIPTOE – PTO (instruction to reader) in (wearing) TIE (cravat)

6dn. Bolivian capital certain to attract clubs (5)
SUCRE – C (clubs) in (to attract) SURE (certain).  If you thought that La Paz was the capital of Bolivia (which I did at one time), the explanation is that the country has two capitals:  La Paz is the executive and legislative capital and Sucre is the constitutional and judicial one.

2dn. Wild Thing – hit in the disco? (9)
NIGHTCLUB – anagram (wild) of THING + CLUB (hit)

24ac. Roman Emperor caught by the greatest Gaul manoeuvres (8)
CALIGULA – C (caught) + ALI (the greatest) + anagram (manoeuvres) of GAUL

4ac. A combination of lithium, iron and naps in retirement might prolong this! (8)
LIFESPAN – LI (lithium) + FE (iron) + SPAN (naps in retirement).  I am a big fan of naps in retirement!

1dn. Oddly, your chart has no Central American peninsula (7)
YUCATAN – Y[o]U[r] C[h]A[r]T [h]A[s] N[o]

22dn. Breed fish from the sound (5)
RAISE – homophone (from the sound) of “rays” (fish)

5dn. “Getting tired doing chores for older boys” student admitted (8)
FLAGGING – L (student) in (admitted) FAGGING (doing chores for older boys)

14dn. The human condition of Tim Taylor’s brewing? (9)
MORTALITY – anagram (BREWING) of TIM TAYLOR

3dn. Caught sight of episodes (not very funny) (6)
ESPIED – anagram (funny) of EPI[so]DES

23ac. Hoi polloi set about work united (8)
POPULACE – OP (work) + U (united) together in PLACE (set)

11ac. Cigale translated into another language (6)
GAELIC – anagram (translated) of CIGALE

4dn. Conservative VIPs in late night scuffle (6,2,3,4)
LIVING IN THE PAST – anagram (scuffle) of VIPS IN LATE NIGHT

8ac. Leaves nothing in the game (6)
QUOITS – O (nothing) in QUITS (leaves)

12ac. Observe BBC boss protecting old guard (8)
WATCHDOG – WATCH (observe) + O (old) in (protecting) DG (BBC boss).  The BBC’s boss is called the Director General or simply DG.

24ac. Soulful King departs Italy eviscerating Clement (former Pope) (8)
BENEDICT – BEN E (soulful king) + D (departs) + I (Italy) + C[lemen]T.  Ben E. King was an American soul musician best known for the 1961 hit “Stand  By Me”.

16ac. Trunks on board this large aircraft? (5,3)
JUMBO JET – cryptic definition

23ac. Choice medicinal drink giving Oscar the lead (6)
OPTION – POTION (medicinal drink) with the ‘O’ (Oscar) moved to the front (giving…the lead)

15dn. Windward jib out, Indiaman rounds part of the Horn (8)
DJIBOUTI – hidden word

18 comments on “Financial Times 16,798 by Julius”

  1. Aside from the mystifying and manifestly untrue assertion that answers were listed in alphabetical order, this jigsaw grid proved, as Pete says, to be another super treat from Julius.
    I agree that it seemed easier than previous ones because as soon as the sole 15-letter answer was inserted, it was a smooth and steady solve with few difficulties arising over the correct positioning of the others.
    FLAGGING, MORTALITY, CALIGULA and NIGHTCLUB earned ticks with my favourite being X-FACTOR (harrowing notes indeed). I took this to be cryptic: the programme is painful to watch/listen to!
    Sucre, rather aptly, is also a chocolate-producing city. Rather good it is too.
    I needed to cheat however to get Aeolian.
    Thanks to Julius and Pete.

  2. Agree with much of what Diane and Pete wrote.

    I managed to work out the majority of the answers before populating the grid – mildly shocking for me. I got AEOLIAN and even X-FACTOR from the clues alone, but needed the checked letters to work out most of the clues Diane liked – FLAGGING, CALIGULA and NIGHTCLUB. I needed more than the checked letters for BENEDICT – a Google search was required to understand the BEN E part.

    Thanks to Julius for an enjoyable crossoword and thanks to Pete for the great explanation.

  3. Thanks Julius, this was one of my favourite crosswords this year. At several times I thought I had done all that I could do but repeated attempts led me to complete this gem. HOT STUFF, CALIGULA, LIFESPAN, and QUOITS were especially satisfying. Thanks Pete for the blog.

  4. Thanks for the super blog, really enjoyed this. I was not given the paper copy until Monday and by then Gaufried had kindly supplied the correction to the preamble. Nice twist to mix up the order and as Pete said it was quite an easy grid to fill in because of one 15 letter word.
    I knew AEOLIAN because of the harp.
    Did not know BEN.E , thanks for that but the pope made it obvious.
    Timothy Taylor is actually a famous brewer so nice touch there.
    X FACTOR is a rather good cryptic definiton.
    Did Julius give us an alphabetical quite recently ? Long may (s)he continue the tradition.

  5. It became very quickly obvious that the the preamble was nonsense, as plenty of the clues were soluble at first sight. Once that was out of the way, an enjoyable solve, with no serious problems. BEN E was the only parsing failure, so thanks to Pete for helping out with it.

  6. I echo the enjoyment described by others, though I didn’t find the grid fill quite so straightforward, having not solved DJIBOUTI despite having more than half solved before attempting the fill. This made the positioning of JUMBOJET dubious, as I then needed an unknown word with J second letter! I think Julius has set the clues at just about the right level of difficulty, and once I had overcome my initial blip, the crossers proved helpful in solving the remainder. SUCRE in Bolivia was unknown to me, but the clue was so obvious that I only looked it up out of curiosity. I never watched the X FACTOR, but knew enough from trailers on TV and tabloid headlines in music stands to realise that some horrendous warbling would be involved!

    Thanks to Julius and Pete.

  7. Like others, I’d never heard of BEN E the soulful king (lovely!), so fell down on the parsing there, though, of course, it had to be BENEDICT.

    I thought the plethora of 8-letter words was going to make things tricky but getting the long anagram early on, leading to LIFESPAN along the top gave some initial letters and a good way in.

    I have to go out shortly so haven’t time to list and justify my favourites (too many of them) but I think they’ve all been mentioned above.

    Many thanks, Julius, for a most entertaining and enjoyable puzzle (and for your explanation of the rubric error on the Guardian comments thread) and to Pete for a super blog.

  10. Thanks for the blog, dear Pete, and thanks to those who have commented. I hope the boob with the preamble didn’t result in too many people binning the puzzle – I’m not sure what happened there. Thanks also to NNI for the birthday wishes!

  13. Yes. I placed all the clues I could answer (except Tiptoe) but was still 10 other answers short.

  15. Thanks Julius and Pete
    Was suspicious of the rubric after my first solved clue ZAGREB was the fourth listed one. Had a unique solving experience with this one – unlike others here, I couldn’t untangle the anagram of 5d, which meant that I had to solve the rest of the clues individually without any crossing references – have never done that before. My entry into filling the grid was HOT STUFF / TIPTOE and then JUMBO JET / DJIBOUTI after having the full list of the answers. It wasn’t until all of the crossers were in that the ‘obvious anagram of 5d’ leaped out !
    It is a credit to the fair construction of the clues that this was able to be done.
    Of the others, DJIBOUTI (a well-hidden clue), HOT STUFF and FLAGGING were the last few to be winkled out.

  16. Marvellous fun Julius, once I got going. Thanks.
    I only got X-FACTOR because I remembered the definition from another crossword sometime over the last year or so. The bell rang, you might say.
    The preamble did make me wary but when my second answer was obviously KASHMIRI, I just ignored it.
    Thanks for the blog Pete – I missed your posting this week so this is later than usual.

  17. Yucatan is in North America. (Belize and one district of Guatemala are in the peninsula, but I don’t think anyone would say Yucatan is Central American.)
    PTO = instruction to readers?
    I actually had trouble with “LIVING IN THE PAST”, which I shouldn’t have. But I did know who Ben E. King is.

  18. Surprised the editors didn’t fix the rubric for the web version. I got Zagreb first too and checked again once I was certain there was something wrong. Did not get 5d immediately, so my entrée was the two nines and JUMBO JET. Once I had that, I got the SW and then 5d.

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