Financial Times 16,942 by Buccaneer

12 comments on “Financial Times 16,942 by Buccaneer”

1. Buccaneer does it again – another super weekend diversion.
   I enjoyed the misdirections in 1a, 23 and 16d and the clever linking of 8 with 4 and 5. The surface of 18d was amusing.
   POPCORN, PIFFLE, FLOPSY, GARIBALDI, FIBONACCI and the two long down clues all held appeal for me.
   I knew FIBONACCI from architecture rather than mathematics but I presume the golden spiral adheres to this numerical sequence. Anyway, it was the latter which prevented me from persisting with LAVER (L+’aver’ = ‘advance’, say, a theory) instead of the intended player whom I greatly admired in his day.
   Thanks to Buccaneer and Pete.

2. Re ‘Alice band’, this solver grew up wearing ‘headbands’ – I’ve an idea that ‘Alice Band’ may be an American term but it’s a widespread usage now and the connection is clear to all who loved Lewis Carroll’s illustrated classic.

3. Thanks Buccaneer for a most enjoyable crossword. Favourites included FLOPSY, ENEMA, HANDY, BUDDHIST, OVERBOARD, and POPCORN, the latter for its amusing surface. I did not get ALICE BAND (never heard of such a thing) so no prize for me. By the way, are prizes ever coming back or is the contest a permanent casualty of COVID? Thanks Pete for the blog.

4. Thanks Buccaneer for the fun.
   Pete, I think 20d parses as an anagram of “icy and” to which is then added an “r” for run, so the “then” is telling you to add that. That also makes the definition just “kind of race”.
   Thanks for the blog.

5. Thanks for the blog and the information on INDYCAR which was new to me ( agree with Mystogre @ 4 for the stray R )
   I still wear an ALICE BAND when I go dancing, about 25 years out of fashion now.
   Agree with Diane@1 as usual both for the puzzle and the nice clues .
   Will just add LADLE for the misleading Spooner and for putting it at the start so it naturally had a capital letter. Nice to see the linked clues at 4D and 5D are actually linked.

6. I parsed and understood INDYCAR as did Mystogre @ 4.
   Roz @5,
   I’m sure you cut quite a dash – more style, less fashion, I say!

7. Another splendid Saturday treat – thanks to Buccaneer and Pete

8. Oops, I made a silly mistake with INDYCAR, now corrected. Thank you Mystogre and Diane.

9. Too difficult for me. I bow down to you Pete for solving this quickly – I needed the entire 10 days to finish it, and even then I parsed a number of clues wrongly.

   In particular, I find clues such as 15 & 19 challenging, where the solver needs to find a word (in both cases, pretty remote), delete some of that word, then add more letters. I am also forgetting things – for example, I have seen “East London” and “China” before, for example, but completely failed to recognise them a second time.

   Oh well, onward and upward!

10. Apologies everyone, I hit “send” too soon. I forgot to send thanks to both Pete and Buccaneer

11. Thanks Buccaneer and Pete
    Try to do these weekend puzzles as close to blog time as I can – easier to remember what went on that way. This was done across four shortish sittings in breaks during the work day. Still there seemed to be a lot going on in most of the clues – as Martyn mentions, many instances of lesser used informal words or idioms (stretch / porridge, flicks, retch / throw up, turkeys / flops and so on). Cleverly done and in many instances, used with a different meaning in the surface, as in ‘flicks’, ‘Spooner’, etc.
    Started off by seeing A BIT ON THE SIDE from the enumeration and finished in the SW corner with POPCORN (one of my favourites), IMPASSIVE which allowed me to fix up PIFFLE from an unparsed WAFFLE.
    Just goes to show that it doesn’t have to be a hard puzzle to be filled with enough twists to make it truly enjoyable.

12. Too hard for me too. I just have not got into Buccaneer’s mindset.

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