Financial Times 16,850 by REDSHANK

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A fun puzzle from Redshank

If you like a bit of general knowledge and some new words in your puzzles, this one is for you.

My new word was the very first answer – I have never come across SCHIPPERKE before, and I also learned that a fly-half can also be an OUT-HALF.

Other clues and solutions that required some GK were IRVING, HOLSTEIN, MISTR(i)AL, Olympiacos, INDRI, EL NINO and REDPOLL.

The clues were generally very good, with nice clean surfaces and a sense of humour.

Thanks, Redshank.

ACROSS
1 SCHIPPERKE
Cooked chips benefit European dog (10)

*(chips) [anag:cooked] + PERK ("benefit") + E (European)

The schipperke is a breed of dog which was originally used as a guard dog on barges in Belgium and the Netherlands.
7 OOPS
Ring works: “Sorry, I slipped up” (4)

O ("ring") + OPS ("works")
9 LEAD
Skip odd features of blues and heavy metal (4)

[skip odd features of] (b)L(u)E(s) A(n)D
10 DISENCHANT
Turn off – this can end disastrously (10)

*(this can end) [anag:disastrously]
11 IRVING
Terry’s stage partner’s Irish, very good in parts (6)

Ir. (Irish) + IN parts VG (very good)

Henry Irving was a Shakespearean actor, who often played opposite Helen Terry on stage.
12 IGNORANT
Uneducated Italian lady doesn’t start books (8)

(s)IGNORA ("Italian lady", doesn't start) + NT (New Testament, so "books")
13 HOLSTEIN
Bar manager meets a German milk supplier (8)

(Gustav) HOLST (composer, so one who "manages" musical "bars") meets EIN ("a" in "German")
15 ALTO
Singer? Get her to quit completely (4)

(get her) to quit ALTO(get her) ("completely")
17 TSAR
Nicholas was the last to survive a revolution – initially (4)

T(o) S(urvive) A R(evolution) [initially]
19 OPEN FIRE
Where to toast order of battle (4,4)

Double definition
22 MISTRIAL
Cold wind limiting one’s defective hearing? (8)

MISTRAL ("cold wind") limiting I'S ("one's")
23 OVERDO
Ham and eggs inspiring composer briefly (6)

O and O ("eggs") inspiring (Giuseppi) VERD(i) ("composer", briefly)
25 PROHIBITED
For one morsel he’d circumvented taboo (10)

PRO ("for") + HE'D circumvented (I (one) + BIT ("morsel"))
26 BOOK
Disapprove of entrance to Kenyan reserve (4)

BOO ("dissaprove of") + [entrance to] K(enyan)
27 SPAR
Yard’s free? Not quite (4)

[not quite] SPAR(e) ("free")
28 NE’ER-DO WELL
Surprisingly, we enrolled slacker (4-2-4)

*(we enrolled) [anag:surprisingly]
DOWN
2 CHEERIO
Olympiacos character always retained ball so long (7)

CHI (Greek letter, so "Olympiacos character") retained E'ER ("always") + O ("ball")

Olympiacos is a Greek football team.
3 INDRI
Malagasy native interrupts third night heading north (5)

Hidden backwards in [interrupts…heading north] "thIRD NIght"

The indri is the largest species of lemur found on Madagascar, its name coming from the Malagasy for "there it is".
4 PEDIGREE
Poke about in waste to find roots? (8)

DIG ("poke") + RE ("about") in PEE ("waste")
5 RUSSIAN ROULETTE
Dangerous game that involves spinning round (7,8)

Cryptic definition
6 EL NINO
Climatologists study this in one complex around Lima (2,4)

*(in one) [anag:complex] around L (Lima, in the phonetic alphabet)

El Niño is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
7 OTHER HALF
Shedding uniform, rugby player grabs woman’s spouse (5,4)

[shedding] U (uniform) O(u)T-HALF ("rugby player") grabs HER ("woman's")

I don't think I've come across out-half before. I know the position as fly-half.
8 PINE NUT
Seed set outside in small space (7)

PUT ("set") outside IN + EN ("small space" in printing)

All three dictionaries that I use have PINE NUT (4,3) rather than PINENUT (7), so I think the enumeration is wrong.
14 STRETCHER
It carries the injured artist’s frame (9)

Double definition
16 SECONDED
Not much time before journalist’s reassigned (8)

SECOND ("not much time") before ED (editor, so "journalist")
18 STIRRUP
Get excited about radical supporter at Epsom? (7)

STIR UP ("get excited") about R (radical)

I can't see R = radical in Chambers, but it is in the OED.
20 REDPOLL
Flyer regularly held up in wind (7)

[regularly] (h)E(l)D (u)P in ROLL ("wind")

The redpoll is a small finch.
21 BIG BEN
Thamesside tower etc, British, being restored (3,3)

*(b being) [anag:restored] where B = British

Technically, Big Ben is the bell inside the Thamesside tower, but the tower and the clock have become known as Big Ben through repeated usage.
24 ELBOW
English bishop visits humble joint (5)

E (English) + B (bishop) visits LOW ("humble")

13 comments on “Financial Times 16,850 by REDSHANK”

  1. Minor error in blog for 22a. It is MISTRAL around I.

    Even though it is a common error, I think 21 is still considered unacceptable usage.

  4. Off to a good start with SCHIPPERKE, one of my favourite canines. Other favourites were the sort of &lits TSAR and EL NINO. I just knew who the IRVING was, though he went in mainly from wordplay and I remembered INDRI from at least one previous outing in crossword land. Never heard of an OUT-HALF either.

    I agree about the enumeration for PINE NUT which I’ve not seen as one word before.

    Thanks to Redshank and loonapick.

  6. Thanks Redshank, that was great. ALTO was my COD and I also liked IGNORANT, TSAR, OPEN FIRE, and NEER-DO-WELL (nice surface). For some reason I couldn’t parse PEDIGREE or MISTRIAL; SCHIPPERKE and REDPOLL were new to me so I needed a word finder to complete the puzzle. I couldn’t figure out why “etc” was in the BIG BEN clue. Thanks Loonapick for the blog.

  8. All fairly straightforward, although we had a few head-scratching moments. SCHIPPERKE was half-remembered and as ‘cooked chips’ suggested the start of the word it was easily checked from Chambers. INDRI was new to us but obvious from the clue. IGNORANT, HOLSTEIN and EL NIÑO were our favourites. Agreed that 8dn should be (4,3); regarding 18dn, R for radical is also in Collins.
    THanks, Redshank and loonapick.

  9. Kenyan reserve very apt in the surface of 26ac as our country is well- known for them It was my COD naturally, as well as my FOI.

  10. Whilst I’ve no Kenyan connection I’m with OinK@9 in admiring BOOK – for me
    it was the misdirection (or rather association) which meant it was my third last in with PEDIGREE and IRVING being the last two. I’d never heard of the dog or an OUT HALF but they had to be. Thanks to Redshank and loonapick.

  11. 7d When I was at school number 10 was always OUTSIDE-HALF (outside number 9, scrumhalf, the other half-back)

  12. Thanks Redshank and loonapick
    An enjoyable crossword that had the grid completed quicker than average but with a number of big ??? that needed the blog to elucidate.
    More often one enters a word from definition only, it was the opposite here with the two of the last three in – INDRI and IRVING, where the reversed hidden and construction from the word play generated the answers, but was left scratching to find the definitions. Dictionary provided the first answer (finding the species of lemur and then the Malagasy meaning) whilst the blog was the only source to the relationship between IRVING and actress Terry. HOLSTEIN as the last one in was remembered as a cow, but that tricky ‘bar manager’ definition for HOLST took a while longer to see.
    The parsing of OTHER HALF also required the blog, as rugby union is far from top of mind in football terms down here. On the other hand EL NINO, with its direct impact on droughts here is the opposite.

  13. Nice one, Redshank, as usual, and thanks for the excellent blog, loonapick. Just for the record, Henry’s frequent co-star was Ellen.

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