Financial Times 16,804 by Mudd

11 comments on “Financial Times 16,804 by Mudd”

1. Thanks Pete,

   This non-Brit had trouble with the two clues you highlighted. I did know the meaning of BAP, but did not realise a head is a loaf. I also fell Into the YANKS trap you spotted in 27 – which made YONKS my last one in.

   Not believing 20, I conducted an experiment. Going down the street, I leapt out of doorways to scare ten random strangers. Five shouted “S**T!”, three “EGADS!” and two cried “ODDS BODKINS!”. I had almost put my annoyance with Mudd aside, when I spotted “beef” in 14d referring to a milking cow again. I know one of the contributors found “beef” defined as “cattle” in some dictionary last time this happened, but I also wonder whether Mudd decided that enough people thought it was wrong that he would use it again.

   Thanks Mudd for the crossword and thanks, as always, for the blog Pete. I found some of the clues quite challenging and it is great to read the calm voice of wisdom

2. My FOI was DOG COLLAR but it took me a long time to get going with this after completing the NE corner -good thing I had the weekend to mull over it.
   MESH, TAUPE, DOOR and YANKS were among those I entered unparsed but feel the latter must be YONKS as Pete says. EGAD was the reverse, parsed long before I understood the definition.
   I wondered the same about ‘bap’. My local bakery used to sell ‘floury baps’ when I was a child and I always thought they sounded unappetising. I really did like the clue though, along with SHAFT (hallmark Mudd) and, once I finally landed the definition, GRIMACE.
   Though it was a slow-burn for me, this puzzle was a worthy tussle. Thanks Mudd and Pete for well-considered blog.

3. Diane @2 – I agree on 27. I stared at it, on and off, over the course of a few days. I sort of parsed it for YANKS, but could not convince myself. It was quite cleverly clued, as ‘years” could be Y or even YS. I eventually parsed it along the same lines as Pete.

   I also parsed EGAD, without understanding the definition – it took outside help (and my experiment) to realise what “odds bodkins” means.

   Like you, the parsing of MESH eluded me, but I did get TAUPE: initially from the cross-letters, after which the parsing took some time.

4. Thanks once again for a super blog. DOG COLLAR made me think of our students, many seem to wear them these days, black ones with silver spikes, maybe the punks did as well years ago.
   LOWER seems a funny word to me, same meaning as GLOWER or LOUR even.
   Paul in the Guardian had a theme of minced oaths very recently but do not think he had EGAD or ODDS BODKINS, Gaufrid did a nice list of them all with their other meaning, I will try and track it down.
   BEEF for Jersey is also recent , well spotted Martyn@1
   Very minor quibble, is a DARK HORSE really unknown ? Unknown ability maybe so low down in the betting but not actually unknown.

5. Thanks, Pete, and Mudd. I knew “loaf” = head, having been told plenty of times to use mine, but had not appreciated until I decided for some reason to research the point that it’s Cockney rhyming slang: “loaf of bread” = head. As, by birth and upbringing, I am almost as far as an Englishman can be from Cockney, I was surprised that the expression should have been commonly used in my youth.

6. Thanks Mudd and Pete
   Peter@5: There is a tendency to describe all abbreviated rhyming slang as Cockney. Not all of it is, and of course some examples that are undoubtedly Cockney in origin have spread far outside the East End of London. Their origins are often forgotten. In the case of “loaf”, one can see how the fact that a loaf of bread and a human head have similar shapes could have helped the spread of the term.

7. Martyn@1: just wait till Mudd decides to exploit the fact that the (UK) plural of the the archaic “beef” meaning cow or steer is “beeves”, which might throw a few people. The US plural is apparently “beefs”.

   I enjoyed the puzzle and found it less hard work than Mudd can sometimes be: thanks to him and to Pete for the blog.

8. Thanks to Mudd and Pete. I remember thinking this one was even more clever than most by this setter, and as I scrolled through the blog I think it was because I’m tickled by the likes of WIN SOME and INTO NATION — which look like compound words and have humorous literal meanings when you separate them. I wasn’t taken in by YANKS/YONKS because of wordplay and the fact that the clue had ‘blue coat’ as two words. The soldier is one word, and to my memory it refers specifically to Union men in the US Civil War. I looked in Collins, which confirmed this.

9. For some reason I had a tougher time with this than I usually do with a Mudd crossword. It seemed Paulesque in some ways but that’s to be expected. I found DOOR, UPSTANDING, and SONGSTERS to be my favourite clues. Thanks to both.

10. Thanks Pete and Mudd. This took me longer than usual and I see I am not alone. I was just not on the right wavelength this time, but I did get it all sorted in the end. Loved MESH.

11. Thanks Mudd and Pete
    Finished in the single session after a pretty tardy start. Am starting to really appreciate the double definitions of this setter, who is not afraid to sprinkle around a half dozen through his grid with the trick to having the meaning in the surface leading one away from the actual required definition.
    Really liked MESH and thought that LEGLESS was quite good too.
    Finished in the SE corner with SWEEPER (one of the clever dd’s), DESIGNATE and TAUPE (which I have only ever encountered in crosswords).

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