Financial Times 16,904 by ALBERICH

18 comments on “Financial Times 16,904 by ALBERICH”

1. I had exaclty the same reaction as Loonpick re 1 across, where F is to the left ie. West, of ‘rightful’. Perhaps we are reading the clue wrongly?

   The puzzle as a whole was not quite as easy for me as for the blogger, but all done and dusted well within my target time of 30 mins.

   Thanks to both.

2. I took “West of France” to mean the leftmost letter of France, I.e. F.

   I did like HIPPO and can’t remember seeing it before. It did remind me of a similar clue animal, one with horn perhaps (5).

3. Meant to say, I put IRELAND for 2d but couldn’t make up my mind which was correct. If you take “one country” as the definition, then “Iceland” seems to be the other country, as it were.

4. I’ll ‘fess up: I have something of a blind spot for west and east, which caught me out here. Thanks to Hovis for a viable parsing of the clue as written, even though it isn’t what was intended!

5. A speedy but most enjoyable solve for me too. Thanks for popping in Alberich though, in fact, I parsed that clue as did Hovis. My picks of the day were 4, 18, 19a and 19d. TOD was last in as I finally acknowledged the role of ‘spot’. I had been trying to make MAD from DAM (mother fox) work. There’s an amusing typo in 3d.
   Thanks to Alberich and Loonapick.

6. Thanks for a great blog, loonapick. I agree (almost) entirely with your preamble. I was grateful for a slightly quicker solve than usual, as I have to go out soon, into the rain – and there was Picaroon in the Guardian, too.

   The one difference was that I didn’t spot the error in 1ac. (I’m with Alberich here: I always think about where East Anglia is to keep me right.)

   Lots of lovely clues, as usual: my favourites were the clever 15ac IL TROVATORE, 17ac EMBARRASSED (‘Hamlet’ to the rescue again), 4dn FRENCH TOAST, 14dn PSEUDONYM, 16dn ADDICTIVE and 19dn THERESA (great surface – but then so were they all) – and there could have been more ticks.

   Many thanks to Alberich for brightening up a very wet morning.

7. Me @3. Was just looking at 2d again. I agree that ICELAND is the better reading of the clue. I was reading it as One country (IRELAND) or another (ICELAND) which has C for R. It sort of works, I think.

8. This all went in very smoothly for me, helped by eg 14d (as easy an anagram as one could wish to see) and the very evident 16d.
   I too read “F” as the west of “France” and saw nothing wrong with it, so for me Alberich’s polite apology is entirely unnecessary. I also had “IRELAND”, which seems to me equally justifiable as Hovis @7 suggests.

9. I wrote in IC/RELAND for 2d because I couldn’t decide which was correct! 🙂

   I agree with Diane@5 about the amusing typo in the blog for 3d.

   Thanks to Alberich and Loonapick.

10. Perplexus @7, but then (in 1ac) the word ‘is’ will be out of place, shouldn’t be there.
    Some setters wouldn’t be bothered – Alberich, however, is not one of those.

11. Sil @10. Although I agree that ‘is’ spoils the validity of the clue and that some setters wouldn’t be bothered (doesn’t concern me that much, but a little), Alberich @4 does say it is viable. Maybe he was just being kind to me.

12. Thanks Alberich and loonapick

    1ac: I agree with Sil @ 10
    2dn: When I solved this clue, I had no doubt that ICELAND was the intended answer. However, I have a lot of sympathy for the view that the clue is near enough to ambiguous in an unchecked letter that Alberich would have done better to use a different construction here.

13. Thanks Alberich, I always look forward to your crosswords. I had many favourites including FRENCH TOAST, PSEUDONYM (great surface), HEIST, THERESA, and FRIGHTFUL, totally missing the East/West mix-up on the latter. Thanks loonapick for the blog.

14. Nice puzzle, thanks Alberich. I too parsed 1a like Hovis and others, (F=left of France) so no problem there.

    Highlight for me was loonapick’s typo at 3d. In light of current affairs in the UK I like to think it was intentional, so thanks, loonapick.

    I still don’t see half of the two short double definitions. PAD = block? LIE = press? Can anyone help?

15. [ And I see that we have a double dose of Don Manley today (FT and Guardian). Lucky us. ]

16. Thanks for the blog, too late yesterday and all been said
    I thought PAD or BLOCK of paper such as those Post-it notes.
    To LIE = PRESS in Chambers I think in the sense of an object lying or pressing upon a surface, Or a responsibility lies heavily upon one’s shoulders.

17. Always enjoy an Alberich puzzle, and this was no exception. Good crisp, air-tight clues as ever.

    I read 1ac as {F = ‘West’ of France} and so completely missed the seemingly redundant link-word ‘is’. Also, I guess that the terminal QM at 19dn just about covers the DbyE ‘May’ 😉

18. Thanks Alberich and loonapick
    Only got to this one later in the week and thankfully it didn’t take too long but was extremely enjoyable as per usual from this setter. There was a lot going on in many of the clues with a couple of new terms in DONCASTER (well the location of it in Yorkshire, anyway) and ‘Sante’ as the French drinking toast.
    Enjoyed untangling a couple of the trickier ones – UNOBSERVANT and ON THE BALL.
    Finished in the SW corner with the clever double definition of BUNTING and the deftly defined MUGGY (notice that ‘close’ was also used in this sense with the Buccaneer puzzle blogged on the same day).

Comments are closed.