Financial Times 17,083 by SLORMGORM

27 comments on “Financial Times 17,083 by SLORMGORM”

1. A few I wasn’t certain about at the end so turned out to be a bit harder than I’d initially thought. I couldn’t parse MACES and my last in EVE went in with a shrug as an answer of exclusion after an alphabet trawl.

   Favourites were MOP UP and NEFARIOUS, a word which comes in useful when describing all sorts of naughtiness.

   Thanks to Slormgorm and Teacow

2. MOP UP: The clue reads nice. Mo is clued as second by many setters. Here it stands for ‘minute’. A moment, of course, could be an hour or even a day when you talk of a historic moment 🙂

   EVE: Is Eve (Eden) being defined as a bird here? I didn’t get it.

   Thanks, S and T!

3. KVa@2: “bird” as in the informal reference to “woman”, and “paradise” referring to the garden of Eden.

4. KVa, I thought “bird” was just slang for a woman.
   I enjoyed what I got out but only managed about three quarters. Some clues elicited a groan. Forgive me if I’ve never heard of yucca. I was unable to find any Cornish banker in Google for Fal. Unless of course it’s that over-used cliche for a river …

5. Thanks, Teacow and Geoff!

6. Geoff@4

   Your take on Fal is interesting 🙂

7. Thanks for the blog, really enjoyed this, I liked CURER for the imaginative double definitions, I am not usually a fan of that type of clue. I thought EVE was very neat, bird for woman is a bit out of date now, “Dolly Bird ” used to be very common. SIMULATE was well constructed.
   Geoff @ 4 , FAL is indeed a Cornish river, there is a town called FALmouth. We do have a large number of three letter rivers that are popular with setters.

8. Thanks Roz. I can see that if I’m to enjoy British puzzles to the full I’m going to have to do a study tour!

   (Actually I was aware of Falmouth, but the penny didn’t drop.)

9. Thanks Slormgorm, that was satisfying. I liked STENCH due to its apt surface and CIRCA where “about” was the definition for once. I got ACCURACY before I corrected my parsing — at first I tried to make the automobile “Acura” somehow fit into the wordplay until I realized the plant was “yucca.” Thanks Teacow for the blog and Roz for explaining the name of the city “Falmouth.”

10. { KVa: Your surname wouldn’t be Watt or Watts, would it? }

11. A lot of fun, I thought. I would have thought ‘bird’ for ‘woman’ would be frowned upon these days, though it was very common /quite normal usage when I was young enough to care.
    Thanks Slormgorm and Teacow.

12. I was going with NOTORIOUS for 21a until I realized that I needed an F for Feral. Fun with some head scratchers!

13. Thought this was going to be tough when I didn’t get any answers out until 2d but things went in fairly smoothly thereafter.
    Luckily, I was familiar with both the Cornish river and the yucca palm. Nice to see ROSE APPLE too, a very attractive tree which thrives in my subtropical environment producing pretty red waxy skinned fruit.
    I agree with Roz on SIMULATE and was amused by MOP UP. RASTAFARI and INTERROGATE were ticks as well.
    Tony is right that CIRCA is more usually seen here in wordplay and for that reason, I waited until the end though the parsing made it clear from the off. An entertaining and fairly clued grid.
    Thanks to Slormgorm and Teacow.

14. I enjoyed this, but may I be the 94th person to point out that accuracy is not the same as precision (1d). They are distinct measures of observational error. Here’s a rabbit hole for you if interested – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision

15. I’m playing devil’s advocate today.
    In the US, at least, the chairman and the president of an organization have different roles, although they are sometimes (but not usually) held by the same person.
    Accuracy and precision are different concepts. Pi = 3.1 is accurate but not very precise. Pi = 2.54321 is very precise but quite inaccurate.
    Otherwise, a fine puzzle which I enjoyed despite those quibbles. Thanks to both Slormgorm and Teacow.

16. Whilst my students would get severely ticked off for confusing accuracy with precision we cannot enforce the same standards on our setters.
    From Chambers ; PRECISE – definite ; exact ; ACCURATE.
    Many words have an every day usage separate to scientific rigour , in fact meanings often pre-dating their adoption in science.

17. Goujeers@10

    🙂 Ohm!!! Was resisting the temptation, but there is such potential in your question that….

18. Nice puzzle. But nothing screams “crossword constructed by a man and edited by one” more than the whole bird = woman device. Insert eyeroll emoji here.

19. Varnsen @18: From time to time we see man clued as “cock.” Never thought to roll my eyes at that, however.

20. Thanks, Slormgorm and Teacow. Great clues including MOP UP, STENCH and NEFARIOUS.
    How does rabbit = gas? I know a rabbit is a plug used in a flow line …

21. jeff, methinks both words can be used as verbs meaning to talk at length.

22. Many thanks to TC for the usual great blog and to all who solved and commented.

    ‘Bird’ as a descriptor for a woman is something I have tried to avoid throughout my setting career for just the reason Varnsen mentions, but I got seduced recently after seeing clues I could make for ‘bird of prey’ and ‘bird of paradise’ and convincing myself I could use it in the sense of a person (they are a strange bird) rather than the sexed definition. Having said that, both clues were women-based and so in retrospect would’ve been best avoided.

    Hope to see you all next time around, but until then it is goodnight and good luck from me. 🙂

23. Thanks Slormgorm and Teacow
    Very nice puzzle to start the week that certainly had more grist in it than the once traditional Monday offering. Going out on a limb here, but I disagree with the negative arguments on the ‘bird of paradise’ clue – thought that it was a clever trick that certainly had me fooled for a while – when it clicked, it was a capeau to the setter moment – cleverly disguised use of a very pretty tropical avian bird. There is no hesitancy in using words like IDIOT, NITWIT, etc. which also have negative connotations, but BIRD is a well-known slang word just as GEEZER, GOAT, ODD BOD, etc are that have also been widely used in puzzles with little or no comment.
    Apart from that a lot of other clever definitions, misdirection and innovative clueing that made this a pleasure to solve. Finished with LACERATED, BLUDGEON and then back up to ADAMS (took an age to think of an old American leader, back to the 2nd of a long line of presidents).

24. Forgot the h in chapeau :O

25. Late thanks Teacow, this took me a while to polish off the SW corner and I didn’t understand MACES (which are a bit more than clubs really) so your explanation appreciated.
    I thought it a little unfortunate that “bit” appears in both clue and answer to 5A albeit differently.
    But enjoyed the challenge, thanks Slormgorm, my favourite was CIRCA (so often seen abbreviated in wordplay, nice that it gets its moment in the sun).
    PS jeff@usa@20 in case you pop back, further to Geoff down under@21 here is some high culture from Blighty that may help further cement the slang:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGNojF9qKS0

26. me@25 doh of course a mace can be exactly like a club, sorry!

27. Thanks Geoff@21 and Gazzh@25 (lol!)

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