Financial Times 17,044 by JULIUS

31 comments on “Financial Times 17,044 by JULIUS”

1. The ‘Ageing Aussie swinger’ at 1a is Greg Norman, aka the GREAT WHITE SHARK. Excellent double def + wordplay clue. Sorry but can’t help further with GABRIEL and also wondered about the ‘new currency’ at 18a.

   Very enjoyable puzzle as usual.

   Thanks to Julius and PeeDee

2. Greg Norman golfer (swinger) is known as Great White Shark

3. Thanks for explaining about Greg Norman. I can’t remember ever hearing of him, though reading his Wikipedia page I think I must certainly have come across his name at some time or other.

4. EUR is the standardised code in the FX market for the Euro Currency and came to market in 1999 bar far the new currency of the majors (USD,EUR,JPY,GBP)

5. Thanks for the blog, great puzzle, some clever hidden words. Many fine clues , will just pick out EPSILON.
   Did GABRIEL inform Mary of the coming birth of Jesus ?
   GREAT WHITE SHARK I got straight from maneater, I will not say what I was thinking for the first bit of the clue.
   I thought the symbol was called just HASH but I am very out of date.

6. SABREV TOOTH TIGER did not parse and only fit with 5d of the down clues; so had to print out a new grid! Great puzzle but needed PeeDee for the parsing of 1a, 13a, 21d, and 18a.

7. SABRE no V. Sorry

8. Another treat from Julius – many thanks to him and PeeDee

9. Yes, Roz, it was the Angel Gabriel who came down to inform Mary she was with child in “The Annunciation” (a scene depicted in many great masterpieces) in Luke 1: 26-29.
   A great puzzle as usual from Julius, my favourite being KEEP A CLEAN SHEAT. I did know of Greg Norman and his nickname but I never would have parsed 1a. Thankfully, we have PeeDee for that.
   And thanks to Julius.

10. I agree that this was a very satisfying puzzle which was quite straightforward with a little thought. Gabriel did indeed announce to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus. As she was a virgin this was ascribed as a gift from God. Couldn’t get away with that nowadays .

11. Of course thanks to both for an entertaing puzzle.

12. Thanks Julius and PeeDee
    A puzzle where the grid filled quickly enough but spent just as long afterwards trying to parse quite a few of them. Gave up with NOSTALGIA (couldn’t get past MYALGIA for the pain), GREAT WHITE SHARK (went in by the Greg Norman definition, but wasn’t clever enough to notice ‘maneater’ as the second definition rather than potential anagram fodder) EPSILON (was able to see the physical parsing but didn’t know the lisping children story book character) and SUNBATHED (where was able to work out the word play but didn’t understand the ‘PM in Marbella’ bit.
    Lots of variation in the clue devices, even the ones that I couldn’t unravel, and enjoyed it a lot.

13. Roz @5 – # is indeed a hash. In social media apps such as Twitter # is prepended to words to create labels or “tags”, #fifteensquared for example (pronounced “hashtag fifteensquared”). The whole thing is known as a hashtag. In the clue we have #1 which is “hashtag I”. So really I should not have broken this into two parts in the blog.

    I would really have no idea about any of this social media stuff if it were not for my daughters, who patiently explain it all to me.

14. Thanks for the blog, dear PeeDee, and thanks to those who have commented. This puzzle is a few months old and I had quite forgotten about the strangely topical allusion at 1D. At least the surface wasn’t as descriptive as “Explosion killing head of Russian administrative region (5)” from my last Indy puzzle which had unanticipated overtones of the awful events in eastern Europe…
    Warmest regards to all, Rob/Julius

15. Thanks Julius for another excellent crossword. I found this on the easier end of the Julius spectrum but no less clever. I liked MASS MEDIA, SCOTS, IDIOTIC, TREACLE, and TRADE FAIR (nice reverse hiding). Thanks PeeDee for the blog — I couldn’t fully parse 1a and relied solely on maneater for my answer.

16. Thanks, Julius and PeeDee. Great puzzle, challenging but solveable. Thanks for parsing GREAT WHITE SHARK.
    EPSILON was my only stumper – not familiar with the Just William stories (yet).
    I just saw Zelenskyy’s address to Congress and 1D is even more appropriate today. Prayer for the world – maybe we need the intervention of 17D now.

17. 1 across is almost a dreaded indirect anagram, but redeemed by the fact that the double definition supplies the answer. An enjoyable puzzle, which I nearly spoiled by writing in EPISTLE for EPSILON. (There’s a lisp in there somewhere) I think Gabriel is more strength of God than gift, even if he announced a gift.

18. @Petert, 16
    1 across is definitely an indirect anagram; it’s a fair cop – I’ll come quietly guv. I think there’s quite an extensive colour chart of these though, and I’d obviously suggest that this is at the magnolia end. When I submitted the puzzle, I did specifically draw the editor’s attention to it and he didn’t raise it as an issue although of course some other outlets where my puzzles are published wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.
    I expected more pushback against this clue, so maybe it is magnolia after all!

19. Magnolias come in many colours: white ,yellow, pink, red. There is even a new hybrid which is blue. What does a magnolia anagram mean? I am puzzled.

20. Ii think it is a bit more sophisticated than a vanilla anagram or it’s one you aim along.

21. Magnolia was traditionally a shade of paint that was very nearly white, perhaps a traditional anagram would be pure white

22. Thanks both. I think I get it.

23. I don’t see what is so wrong with indirect anagrams myself, in fact I rather like them. I would like to say a short thank you to Julius for sticking his neck out and to the FT crossword editor for publishing the clue unchanged.

24. PeterT @20 – very nice!

25. Petert@20. Just got it. Talk about neat!

26. Thanks Julius and PeeDee. I normally try to stay out of discussions on what is or is not acceptable these days and stick to comments which help to explain a clue, but I have some thoughts on indirect anagrams which also further illustrate the way that a clue can become topical, in this case after 48 years.
    Going right back to 1973, Azed (in the slip for puzzle 75) comments that he was taken to task for cluing MORONIC as “Stupid, getting what comes before pi wrong”. This is technically an indirect anagram, but presumably at the magnolia end of the spectrum. The worse type would be “Stupid, getting Greek letter wrong”, which Azed says he would never use, although even this is not too bad, as there are only three Greek letters with seven letter names. The direct anagram would be “Stupid, getting omicron wrong”, which Azed described as far too easy (I agree, and that is still true) and incidentally nonsensical, which I would say ceased to be true some time last year, when the clue would have become topical.

27. Hi Pelham – thanks for that interesting snippet from way back.

    What strikes me is that Azed’s comments are fundamentally about the solvability and elegance of clues rather than about the acceptability of of indirect anagrams per se. The same considerations apply to all clues, not just anagrams.

    Staying out of acceptability discussions and sticking to explaining clues is wise goal and one I have for the blog. But in practice I find it almost impossible to separate them completely. To explain a clue involves taking a viewpoint on what is acceptable.

    In games such as football, cricket, chess etc there are rules written by governing bodies: a move may be beautiful but if it breaks the rules then it is not acceptable. In literature, poetry and theatre there are traditions and expectations: a starting point to depart from rather than a boundary to remain inside.

    Crosswords sit somewhere between the two, with no official body to dictate where. Much of the disagreement I read here boils down to differences in the commenters’ mindsets: those who think “There Must Be Rules!” at one end and those who think “Anything Goes!” at the other. Much like politics in general really.

28. PeeDee@27. Thanks for that elegant insight. I sit towards the “Anything Goes!” end of the spectrum myself – giving setters more latitude often results in ingenious and humerous cluing. For those stalwarts firmly at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps you should stick to Sudoku.

29. I partly agree with Kev, my favourite setter is Torquemada who is long gone of course and was definitely “Anything goes ” . However at the other end of the spectrum is Azed, the master of ingenious and humorous clues ,
    There is only one rule – The setter sets and we try to solve. We can grumble if we do not like the clues.

30. I think I would put my one rule in a slightly different way from Roz, and “the setter must provide enough information to allow the puzzle to be solved”. There is then plenty of room for differences in legitimate expectation on such matters as how much effort should be expected of the solver, what reference materials are expected to be consulted, and how much distortion of the normal meanings of words is acceptable. As an example of the last, I cannot remember ever hearing the word “flower” (rhyming with “mower”) to mean a river outside the world of crosswords, but it is now so well established that there can be deceptive effect when the word rhyming with “power” is used to mean a plant.

    The world of crosswords is large enough to accommodate a wide variety of tastes. Long may it continue to be so.

31. Quick correction to comment 30: insert “say” before the first quotation marks.

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