Financial Times 16,842 by NEO

16 comments on “Financial Times 16,842 by NEO”

1. I managed to complete the whole thing apart from 13A and 14D and not even trying to cheat by using the internet helped me. Being born in England but raised in Australia, I have vague recollections of “dandelion and burdock” as a soft drink from my youth but could not relate that to wine. “Oiled” is not really used down here but there are various other expressions – some not suitable for children – to describe being drunk.

   I should have worked out 13A as I did see the building on my last visit to London but the name did not stick as much as the Gherkin did.

   Welcome to your new COVID freedom – we are still in lockdown in Melbourne. I just hope that people there and here act responsibly. We are worried about 95 daily cases; your government seems relaxed about 40,000. Stay safe everyone.

2. I enjoyed that very much – although I did sigh at 13a as I’ve certainly missed the London S&Bs at the George where 13a was very much part of the surroundings. I’ve also made 14d which is very nice. Anyone who collected postage stamps will remember the Finnish element of 15a

   Thanks to Neo and Grant

3. Thanks Neo and Grant
   I did not remember 18ac, although I am sure that I have seen the word before. I really think, of all the answers in this puzzle, that was the one where it was least appropriate to do without a constructive wordplay element in the clue.

4. Another former stamp collector amused by 15a. 18a was once a familiar sight here so no difficulty there once the ‘c’ of CHOWDER was found. Really enjoyable grid from Neo today with GODSEND, SHARD and SUNBEAR among my favourites. Thanks both to Neo and Grant.

5. I missed the CHEONGSAM parsing and took a while to figure out DANDELION, also my last in. CLEAN was an original ‘quite’ which I could only get via the wordplay.

   Didn’t spoil an enjoyable puzzle, but a pity there was no reference to a musical instrument in the wordplay for SHARD and I couldn’t put some new-found knowledge to use.

   Thanks to Neo and Grant

6. Thanks for the blog. Agree with Pelham Barton @3 for 18AC , we only see it in crosswords, I accept it may be the only word to fit in an awkward part of the grid but please give us a chance to construct it.
   I thought DIGITALIS was the humble foxglove, a lot in our garden right now, and DIGITALIN was the drug ?

7. Collins has different definitions for the two. It says digitalis is ‘a drug’.

8. Thank you , I had not checked yet, I know that foxglove is full of the drug and actually quite poisonous.

9. I am with Pelham Barton and Roz on 18a: I did manage to dredge it out of some recess in my memory as a garment, but there was no way of telling whether it was right or not until checking in the dictionary gave the “rents”. At least when Azed has an obscure word there is almost always a fair chance of getting there from the wordplay.
   Otherwise pretty quick and enjoyable.

10. Thanks Neo and Grant
    Another good puzzle for the week that took a bit over the hour to finish. Having been married to a Malaysian lady, the cheongsam was a quick get – it was only really worn at special events such as Chinese New Year, etc.
    There was some tricky parts that had to be negotiated – took a while to remember the London Shard and the NE corner gave the most grief with CAPITOL (misleading ‘pass’, nicely disguised ‘enclosure for animal fights’ and the not so obvious definition), CLEAN (not the first term for ‘quite’ that I would have thought of) and TROPE (which I used a word finder for to finish off).
    Thought that the clue for DERRING DO was a good original rendition and the reversed SUOMI passed me by in the parsing – even as a junior stamp collector that did have that marked all over the Finnish ones.

11. Bone china is emphatically NOT porcelain, in fact it is technically inferior to porcelain, whatever folk from Stoke may tell you.

12. I think ‘cheongsam’ is fair enough for general vocab. It turns up in stuff like Somerset Maugham, Suzie Wong &c, although I did first misspell it as ‘chiongsam’.
    And I thought that the reversal of SUOMI was pure class.

13. @11 BONE CHINA is listed as a synonym for porcelain in both Chambers and Collins. That was emphatic enough for me on this occasion, though the distinction is noted.

14. There are three types of porcelain, soft-paste , hard-paste and bone china with sub-divisions of course. Of these, Staffordshire bone-china is the finest porcelain in the world. I was born in Florence and educated in Dresden and Etruria so I may be slightly biased .

15. Good puzzle (of course, I would say) but I think some solvers above associate Suomi with ‘Finnish’ for the wrong reason.
    Suomi is actually the local name for Finland (as a country) which is why that appears on stamps.
    However, it is also the language spoken over there, which is what Neo uses here.
    No connection to stamps, in my opinion.
    Doesn’t matter, we got it.
    Many thanks to Grant & Neo.

16. A nice challenge for the afternoon. Thanks Neo.
    I too used stamps as my knowledge base for SUOMI and loved the clue.
    There seems to be a DERRING-DO rush on with setters at present and I hereby nominate the SHARD as the building of the week.
    DIGITALIS is the base for the heart drug digoxin.
    Thanks for the explanations Grant.

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