Financial Times 16,956 by SLEUTH

10 comments on “Financial Times 16,956 by SLEUTH”

1. Had fun with this puzzle from Sleuth which hinted wistfully at sunny travel destinations (7,11, 22 and 25).
   Loved the deceptive surface of 27 regarding the musician’s provenance and that ‘g’ (‘good’) which serves just as nicely for ‘George’.
   Other ticks included 12, 23 and, for its definition, 18.
   Most of this was a write-in with a few hiccups: CASH for 26 was an early entry requiring a rethink as the puzzle wore on, couldn’t parse 29, and took an age to see the definition of 21, my LOI, where I’d been considering ‘dissect’ equating ‘society’ with ‘sect’. Cracked it eventually.
   Thanks to Sleuth and Grant (especially for 1d, 11, 29).

2. Sorry, can’t help with BIZ – entered with a shrug as the saying goes. Otherwise everything pretty clear without any obscurities, though with some parsing that took a bit of thought eg for EQUITABLE.

   I liked the appearance of Sally and Doris at 12a and the VEGANISM def. Favourite was the surface for COVERT, even though it’s miles away from the real world of course.

   Thanks to Sleuth and Grant

3. Thanks for the blog, many well-constructed clues here. BIZ puzzled me as well and I have nothing to add.
   I thought DOWAGER was very neat.

4. While it’s quiet, my only other thought about this puzzle was that there seemed to be a lot of spare ‘a’ letters in the clues. This is an observation & not a criticism but Across clues 1, 9, 10, 15, 16, 19, 23, 25 & 28 and Downers 1, 5, & 19 all contain indefinite articles unnecessary to the parsing.
   Obviously, they do help the surfaces along but I do feel that other setters might have left them out in favour of that Conciseness which, for some reason, we all admire.
   Any views?

5. No problems with this, except for having to guess that Gras is a French town – not very common knowledge, I would have thought : Grasse I have heard of.
   Grant@4 – I didn’t give it any thought as I solved the puzzle, but looking back I’m inclined to agree that this could have been rather more tightly worded or edited. In a number of cases the “a” is redundant and (eg in 25) does not really even help the surface noticeably.

6. Thanks Sleuth, I enjoyed solving this. EQUITABLE was my favourite clue. When I saw a Z and a Q I thought a pangram might be in the offing and I wasted a few minutes assuming an X and a J might be lurking about. I guess it wouldn’t be a cryptic without being misdirected. Thanks Grant for the blog.

7. Like Diane@1 we found this to be mostly write-ins but with a few hiccups. We guessed GRAVITAS but left it pencilled in till the end as we weren’t too sure that Gras was a town in France (not to be confused with Graz, Austria). Our main hiccup was with GARRISON as we’d got an unparsed ‘mint’ for 26dn (vaguely equating it with ‘money’) and we only got the answer when we decided ‘mint’ was wrong – but that then gave us LOOT as our LOI.
   Very enjoyable nevertheless; thanks, Sleuth and Grant

8. Never heard of Chas & Dave; otherwise very enjoyable.

9. Well, Geoff @ 8, to pick up where you left off the day before, this was another pesky clue to torment non-Brits but perhaps gettable if you had all the crossers.
   I don’t know how well known this duo was outside the UK, but “Gertcha” and “Rabbit” were memorable hits.

10. Thanks Sleuth and Grant
    Out of kilter with most here, finding this pretty tough going and pushing back the crossword solves by a couple of days for the rest of the week. Looking back over the puzzle, not quite sure why this was, as there wasn’t anything too outrageous going on with it – must have just been a wavelength thing.
    Did take ages to get TOLEDO out of my thinking at 22d, but it just wouldn’t parse and eventually found the other city ending in DO.
    An initial DELIGHT (nearly works with ‘please’ and ‘put down’ for light) slowed things up in the SW corner for longer than it should have. This was where I finished up with WICCAN (after eventually settling with I for ‘island’ instead of IS), GARRISON (where the setter may have missed something by using G[eorge] [H]ARRISON somehow) and VEGANISM (cleverly defined and probably my best of the lot).

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