Financial Times 16,952 by CHALMIE

by

Todays FT setter is Chalmie.

The theme for today's puzzle was obvious from the start as AMUNDSEN and SCOTT were two of the easier clues. Once they were in place, other themed entries weren't too hard, especially if you know about polar expeditions, so BAY OF WHALES, MCMURDO, FRAM, TERRA NOVA and SOUTH POLE soon followed. Chalmie missed a trick though, as he could have OATES at 27ac, by changing VERSIFIER to DEMISTER or DEPICTOR for example.

Now to the unthemed entries. I personally don't like solutions which are just two words put together (i.e. not dictionary entries), so although LOST DOG and DOOR HINGE are perfectly acceptable phrases in the real world, I don't think they belong in a crossword. Chalmie also used S for second twice (in SADDER and removed from VERSIFIER) and there were a few clues that had an extra word thrown in to make the surface read better, but which had no part to play in the wordplay (e.g "of" in 7ac, "the" in 25dn, and "for" in 1dn).

Again, a good puzzle that could have been a very good puzzle with some tighter editing.

Thanks, Chalmie.

ACROSS
1 BAY OF WHALES
Tree belonging to Henry in country where 17 landed (3,2,6)

BAY ("tree") + OF ("belonging to") H (Henry) in WALES ("country")
7 COS
Reduces price of lettuce (3)

[reduces] COS(t)
9 DOWSE
With some medicine around, try finding water (5)

DOSE ("some medicine") around W (with)
10 SUNBURNED
Study game with coach taking note, reflecting on having been out too long? (9)

[reflecting] <=(DEN ("study") + RU (rugby union, so "game") with BUS ("coach") taking N (note))
11 TERRA NOVA
Go wrong blocking brown eggs for 25’s ship (5,4)

ERR ("go wrong") blocking TAN ("brown") + OVA ("eggs")
12
See 15
13 ATE AWAY
Cat we saw may lose at first, getting eroded (3,4)

(c)AT (w)E (s)AW (m)AY [lose at first]
15, 12 DOOR HINGE
Swinger hero doing wrong (4,5)

*(hero doing) [anag:wrong]
18 FRAM
17’s ship was French-American (4)

Fr. (French) + Am. (American)
20 LEE BEAM
Possibly Bruce and Ray on the ship’s downwind side (3,4)

(Bruce) LEE + BEAM ("ray")
23 SOUND
Very German and healthy (5)

SO ("very") + UND ("German and")
24 MISASSIGN
Wrongly catalogue way to get lost, you say? (9)

Homophone [you say] of MISS A SIGN ("way to get lost")
26 UNSTIRRED
Break stride and run, being calm (9)

*(stride run) [anag:break]
27 OMITS
Order computers society doesn’t mention (5)

OM ("Order" of Merit) + IT (Information Technology, so "computers") + S (Society)
28 EFS
Occasionally selfish characters (3)

[occasionally] (s)E(l)F(i)S(h)
29 WROUGHT IRON
Ingeniously grow our thin fencing material (7-4)

*(grow our thin) [anag:ingeniously]
DOWN
1 BEDSTEAD
Poor beaded covering for stone furniture item (8)

*(beaded) [anag:poor] covering St. (stone)
2 YEW TREES
We try to restructure phone company’s plants (3,5)

*(we try) [anag:to restructure] + EE'S ("phone company's")
3 FREDA
Woman has nothing in colour? Quite the opposite! (5)

RED ("colour") in FA (f**k all, so "nothing"),the "opposite of" FA in RED
4 HISTORY
Man’s Conservative past (7)

HIS ("man's") + TORY (Conservative)
5 LANYARD
Cord some wrapped in fat (7)

ANY ("some") wrapped in LARD ("fat")
6 SOUTH POLE
Where 17 and 25 were headed, only carrying unfashionable sauce (5,4)

SOLE ("only") carrying OUT ("unfashionable") + HP (Sauce)
7 CANING
Heartlessly preserving corporal punishment (6)

[heartlessly] CAN(n)ING ("preserving")
8 SADDER
Second snake is further down (6)

S (second) + ADDER ("snake")
14 WORLD VIEW
I’m surprised to receive drivel disguised as comprehensive theory (5-4)

WOW ("I'm surprised") to receive *(drivel) [anag:disguised]
16 VERIFIER
Poet loses second fact-checker (8)

VER(s)IFIER ("poet") loses S (second)
17 AMUNDSEN
Sun named adventuring explorer (8)

*(sun named) [anag:adventuring]
19 MCMURDO
Old instrument promoted after 1100 makes the 23 of 25’s landing (7)

<=(O (old) + DRUM ("instrument")) [promoted] after MC (1100 in Roman numerals)

McMurdo Sound (23) was where Scott (25) landed on his ill-fated trip to the South Pole.
20 LOST DOG
Stray unfortunately got sold (4,3)

*(got sold) [anag:unfortunately]
21 ASTUTE
Shrewd like Old King Cole in the end (6)

AS ("like") + (King) TUT(ankhamen) + (col)E [in the end]
22 QUESTS
Is sceptical of missing particle searches (6)

QUEST(ion)S ("is sceptical of", missing ION (particle))
25 SCOTT
Explorer’s bed in the way (5)

COT ("bed") in St, (street, so "way")

17 comments on “Financial Times 16,952 by CHALMIE”

  1. After two stiff workouts midweek, this splendid polar puzzle from Chalmie was just the ticket, commemorating the race of 110 years ago.
    As 17d was one of my first answers, the grid was solved steadily and with much satisfaction.
    Of the themed answers, I liked 11 best and enjoyed the wordplay of 13, 14, 21 and 23.
    Couldn’t fully parse 3, 6 and 9, though, so thanks to Loonapick for providing the info. I think, Loonapick, that LOST DOG, is part of the theme and a serious issue in those Antarctic expeditions.
    Thanks Chalmie for the tribute.
    As an aside, I recollect a visit several years ago to the replicated huts of contemporaneous explorer, Douglas Mawson in Hobart. It was poignant and chilling in every sense of the word.

  2. Diane @1 Excellent point about the dogs. I went to the Antarctic once but have forgotten a lot such as that and the names of the ships. I don’t mind non-dictionary solutions because they make me think a little more. That is why I failed to get LEE ?E?M (not in the dictionaries I use) so obviously I don’t know enough about ships either. Thanks to Chalmie and Loonapick, who I find makes fair-minded criticisms when warranted.

  3. Lucky you, ub! I couldn’t find ‘lee beam’ either except in an online dictionary but thought of ‘broad in the beam’ and ‘ray’ did fit. Another online source gave ‘lee helm’ though I can’t see how that would work. I’m no mariner either.

  8. Thanks all.

    I admit DOOR HINGE isn’t much of an entry, but it’s an example of a setter giving up on trying to come up with a convincing clue for HINGE after an hour or so’s metaphorical head-desk banging and realising that at least DOOR HINGE had a vaguely interesting anagram.

    Diane’s defence of LOST DOG is ingenious, and I hadn’t thought of it myself. But I’d say it was a commonplace enough phrase. For instance, STEAL AWAY isn’t specifically in Chambers, but I wouldn’t think twice about using it as an entry.

  10. As an American, I am grateful this Thanksgiving Day for a puzzle I could finish, unlike the last couple of FT puzzles. I did have to look up the name of Amundsen’s ship; I couldn’t remember it from my Antarctic trip, either.
    11a was my favorite.
    Thanks to Chalmie for a fun puzzle and to Loonapick for explaining a couple of parsings I was unsure about.

  11. To slightly amplify my previous comment, I think LOST COW or LOST PIG would be silly, but it’s not uncommon to see LOST DOG at the top of a piece of paper stuck to every other lamppost.

    I admit to not having known the ships or landing spots before, so I tried to make sure they were clues where you could trust the wordplay with a bit of common sense.

  12. I felt slightly negative about this at first, having rapidly got SCOTT and AMUNDSEN but knowing that the rest of the Antarctic GK was likely to be beyond me (and I hate having to google GK).
    However, FRAM and MCMURDO surfaced from somewhere in the recesses of my memory and the others were all, as Chalmie rightly says, very fairly clued so as to be soluble from the wordplay – so in the event I enjoyed the puzzle and learnt a couple of things on the way – credit to Chalmie.
    For what it’s worth, I didn’t bat an eyelid at LOST DOG or DOOR HINGE, both of which I thought were fine – I’m not as much of a purist in such matters as some.

  14. BB@USA @13: EE is a UK mobile phone company (formerly Orange, I think). HP sauce is a British brand of savoury bottled sauce.

  16. BB @ 13 HP sauce, as described by Perplexus, is supposedly named after the Houses of Parliament – there’s a silhouette of them on the label.

  17. Thanks Chalmie and loonapick
    This one spilled out to the weekend after the two toughies earlier in the week. Didn’t find it easy going but was still mostly solved without prior help – but some post lookups to confirm a few – the two ships, LEE BEAM, MCMURDO SOUND and BAY OF WHALES.
    Interesting theme and some added learning to the continent to the south of us – was sad to read when looking up MCMURDO SOUND of the heavy pollution to one of the coves there, Winter Quarters Bay, where it is quoted that “the bay has one of the highest toxic concentrations of any body of water on Earth.” 🙁
    Finished in the SW corner with SOUND, FRAM and MCMURDO – the latter two totally deduced from word play and a subsequent check.

Comments are closed.