Financial Times 16,962 by ZAMORCA

12 comments on “Financial Times 16,962 by ZAMORCA”

1. I did the top half lickety-split but really enjoyed the often chewy bottom half. Didn’t read “has” as an inclusion indicator in 11a. I took PUTIN + J to be ‘Russian leader has judge’ with AIL following after.

2. A very enjoyable write-in from Zamorca today: favourites were 4, 6, 7 and 19. The pangram suspected early on helped with ALEXA and TIZZY.
   My LOI was 17 because I’d lazily written in 18’s vegetable in one of its various spellings, giving me a ‘b’ (as it sounds, here) instead of ‘p’. After stopping to parse it correctly, I saw the light.
   Thanks to Zamorca and Grant.

3. Grant,
   The ‘E’ of 8d is missing – I took it to be ER (Queen), the following M(ary) notwithstanding.

4. Thanks Zamorca and Grant
   Got off to a good start with HANSEL AND GRETEL straight off the bat, but didn’t find the rest of it as easy as others here taking longer than average time to get it out across three sittings this afternoon. Also missed spotting the pangram.
   Was nearly going down the BOK CHOY route, but did hold off until I had parsed it properly.
   Finished down the bottom with STAY ON, TIZZY (taking ages to see TINY as the key bit of the word play) and HONEST (excellent hidden, well cos I didn’t see it until last).

5. I thoroughly enjoyed this crossword … until I hit 2 down.
   AWE-STRUCK added a good half hour to my time and quite a lot of irritation.
   If, like me, you’re a rhotic accent speaker, AWE and OAR are non-homophonic words.
   I know this is a long-standing problem in cryptic crosswords and compilers have to cater for such a wide range of accents in English, but I really think this is an example of an unfair clue.

6. To Mike04@5
   Being married to a Scot, I sort of share your pain, but I’d like to act as referee here.
   The FT is a British newspaper and its crossword sort of reflects that. The general knowledge required is Brit-centred and the homophones generally are based on RP, ‘Received Pronunciation ‘ or ‘The Queen’s English’, to use an old-fashioned phrase.
   Sometimes this irks me as well. My first name should be pronounced with a short ‘A’, to rhyme with ‘ant’. Anyone south of the Tees-Exe line pronounces it ‘Grarnt’ and even that’s not right for Scots, who’d put a rolled ‘R’ in that spelling, or for Cockneys, who’d swallow the last ‘T’.
   Homophones aren’t my favourite clues for this reason, but blame the system, not the setter.

7. Thanks for your input, Grant and thanks too for all your helpful blogs.
   I’m from north of Hadrian’s Wall and the RP-base has been a problem since I started solving
   cryptic crosswords in the 1970s.
   I made a comment about this particular homophone because for me there are two big
   sound differences: the vowel ‘omicron/omega’ and the consonant R in one of the words.
   I can just about cope with one, but two … help!
   In common with many other solvers I’d like the qualifier (for some) to be used more liberally
   but I know it can spoil the surface reading of a good clue.

8. A straightforward and reasonably quick solve for us, although we share Grant’s concern about the smoothness of a few surfaces being at the expense of the wordplay – 20dn being a case in point. No problems with PAK CHOI, though, as we weren’t aware of any alternative spellings.
   Thanks, Zamorca and Grant.

9. Thanks Zamorca, entertaining as usual with ALEXA, TIZZY, and OUT-AND-OUT being favourites. I didn’t know WISBECH nor could I guess it from the wordplay, otherwise it was smooth sailing. Thanks Grant for the blog.

10. Thanks Zamorca and Grant. I thought 21d was a double definition, with STAY ON meaning both “keep working” (as opposed to switching off) and “delay leaving”.

11. To Verbose@10:
    That was my first thought too, and I’d blogged it as being a bit weak, ‘stay on’ being almost identical in both meanings. But on review I realised the alternative meetings for ‘stay’ & ‘on’, which makes it a VERY much better clue.

12. Being a long way from the UK I got stuck on TT being a race in 3d, have never heard of Wisbech, and I’m more familiar with bok choy for 19a. Otherwise most enjoyable.

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