Financial Times 17,032 by MONK

25 comments on “Financial Times 17,032 by MONK”

1. There are a few word pairs both in the across rows and down columns. I don’t know what they mean, or rather how they relate to one another, but someone else will.

   The usual hard struggle with Monk. I couldn’t parse WEBCAM either and hadn’t come across the archaic term at 26a. I thought DAWDLING was OK, DAD ‘being fed by’, or containing, the letter W for ‘wife’.

   Thanks to watching the Monaco GP for many years I could get the otherwise never heard of RASCASSE. GUJARATI was tricky and was my last in.

   Favourite was 15a. Forget new IT, it’s “Up, Up and Away” for me.

   Thanks to Monk and PeeDee

2. No way I could complete this without aids. Didn’t know RASCASSE, for example, and guessing CASSEROLES from ?A?S?????? is somewhat of a stretch.

   Best I could come up with for WEBCAM is CAM (snapper) on WEB (line) with no space between them, so WEBCAM not WEB CAM with a clue as definition.

3. Wordplodder @1 – I knew Rascasse as the name of a restaurant I used to frequent years ago when I worked in Leeds. What is the connection of rascasse to Monaco GP?

4. CALCULATED RISK
   CARE ATTENDANTS
   TERRACOTTA ARMY
   ZINC DEFICIENCY
   But I didnt spot the pangram perimeter

5. Gujarat cooking is GREAT

6. PeeDee @3 – La Rascasse is one of the corners on the Monaco Grand Prix circuit, named after a café/entertainment venue there.

7. The perimeter contains almost no vowels, one E only. Did this happen just by coincidence?

8. I’m pleased to say I noticed the pangram and the linked clues in this very tricky but most enjoyable crossword

   Thanks to Monk and PeeDee

9. This cerrainly was tricky and I too needed cheats to finish WEBCAM, GUJARATI and TANDOORI. And I similarly knew RASCASSE from the F1 but ‘casseroles’ eluded me also though I know they are both ovenware and food.
   I was keen to see how GUJARATI parsed because I couldn’t get past the idea this contained the letters ICU.
   Suspected a pangram which helped with QUAICH though not WEBCAM. I didn’t spot all the pairs but TERRACOTTA helped reel in ARMY which combined to form my favourite.
   It was a challenge I enjoyed, however, and I live in hope of finishing a Monk puzzle unaided. Thanks to him and to PeeDee for stellar work in shedding light where it was needed.

10. Tricky one today, took three of us 1h45, with dictionary checks to confirm that a QUAICH is a thing, and that DIFFERENTIATION can mean “exact definition”.

    We had a different parsing for 5d WEBCAM – a webcam is a “Snapper online”, but the clue says “Snapper on line” – so “getting no space” indicates the removal of the space in “on line”, making the definition work.

    Thanks to Monk & PeeDee!

11. je4d – your explanation for WEBCAM makes sense, I will update the blog. I hadn’t thought of “on line” and “online” as being different things, but I suppose they are.

12. It was interesting to learn today that a QUAICH is a shallow Scottish drinking bowl. I knew the word because we have a valley named Glen Quaich just up the road from us. I have wondered what the name meant for a long time.

13. I think ‘fed by’ is OK. I’m vegetarian, and on a trip to Germany once was basically fed by pasta and vegetables. That works.

14. Thanks Simon. “Fed by” makes no sense to me, but then that’s why its better to get multiple views on the puzzle. There isn’t just one way of understanding the English language, it varies from person to person.

15. PeeDee @ 14 It may help if you substitute ‘nourished’ for ‘fed’.

16. Simon @15 – yes nourished would certainly make sense, but mean something different. For me the point is that the food nourishes the person. The nourishing is done by the food. The food is the actor here, the thing doing the nourishing. In grammar I think this called the passive voice.

    Your second example illustrates what is wrong with the first. I could understand “being fed…” or “being fed with…” or “being fed some…”, but “being fed by” changes the second clause form being the thing being fed into the thing doing the feeding.

    In your examples nourish and feed are used synonymously: they mean to sustain, to keep alive etc. To be a containment indicator feed has to be used in a more literal way: “insert into”, like inserting food into a mouth. You can’t use feed with this meaning the same way as using feed meaning to nourish.

17. [I used to find FT Crosswords by going to ft.com/crossword but the last entry there is 18 Feb. I have been Googling ft crossword and the number since. Can anyone please advise me what url to use to find current crosswords?]

18. Tony,
    I just tap ‘FT crossword’ into my phone (using DuckDuckGo) and it directs me straight to FT.com’s updated crossword page.

19. Tony @17, why not use the link from fifteensquared? top left hand corner.

20. Tony@17: jmac probably offers the best solution, but you might also try refreshing your page in the browser, if you haven’t done that already.

21. Very tricky. Thanks to Monk and PeeDee.

    ‘Fed by’ is common usage in the U.S. as in ‘the Amazon is fed by a thousand tributaries’ or other common phrases in which it means filled, stuffed or infused with something.

22. Thanks for that Hugh. I still have the same stumbling block though, what do the tributaries feed the Amazon with? They feed it with water. Tributaries are the thing doing the feeding, not the thing being fed.

    Consider the following three sentences in the passive voice:

    1) I am injected by the nurse. (something ends up inside me)
    2) I am injected into the nurse. (I end up inside the nurse)
    3) I am injected with the nurse. (the nurse ends up inside me)

    Changing the preposition changes the grammar of the sentence.

    1) I (indirect object) am injected by the nurse (subject) with something (direct object, implied).
    2) I (direct object) am injected into the nurse (indirect object) by someone (subject, implied).
    3) I (indirect object) am injected with the nurse (direct object) by someone (subject, implied).

    It may well be the case that two verbs mean almost the same thing (fed, stuffed, filled, infused etc), but it is the the preposition that dictates what is being fed to what, not the meaning of the verb.

23. Relating the above back to the clue text “old man being fed by wife”:

    Old man (indirect object) being fed something (direct object, implied) by wife (subject). This does not say anything about what is being fed, only who is doing the feeding.

24. Well said, PeeDee, and clearly broken down into various possible grammatical treatments. To some degree, the preposition ‘by’ can also be viewed as part of the verb, not as the agent doing the feeding.

    We hear it that way in the US, likely colonial misuse. Fed by misinformation and fed by medication come to mind in current chatter. Not very grammatical though.

25. Thanks Monk and PeeDee
    Did this one a while back but only got around to checking it off. Was a rare occasion in which I was able to complete a puzzle by this setter in a single session – although it went for nearly an hour at some ungodly time one morning from my notes.
    Noticed the pangram but missed the word pairs and didn’t see the subtle ‘no space’ in the online clue.
    Think that only needed to check the dictionary post solve for QUAICH and RASCASSE (did actually see the CASSEroles part to construct the word). Suspect that the surface reading got preference over the grammatical correctness with 3d – must admit that I didn’t dwell on it for too long when I understood the intent of the setter.
    Plenty to like as per normal, finishing in the NE corner with REMNANTS and that WEBCAM as the last one in.

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