Financial Times 17,114 by BOBCAT

by

Entertaining stuff and not overly vicious from the Bobcat today.

I found this relatively straightforward compared with Bobcat’s previous offerings, but witty and satisfying as ever, with a short reminder of where his danger can lie to give us pause, as they say. Thanks to him.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1 GRANDPARENTS
Relations with knight in drag moved secretary to tears (12)
Anagram (‘moved’) of DRAG around kNight + PA (‘secretary’) + RENTS (‘tears’).
8 CHASSIS
Frame Princess Anne? (7)
Anne being the sister of Prince Charles (CHAS), so CHAS’ SIS, perhaps.
9 SPARROW
Special One in a quiver about Porto’s left winger (7)
S[pecial] + ARROW (‘one in a quiver’) around leftmost of P{orto}.
11 TRIBUTE
Stuff almost worthless in hackneyed testimonial (7)
TRI.TE (‘hackneyed’) contains BUm (‘worthless’), shortened.
12 TRIVIAL
Sex during clinical study is unlikely to be earth-shattering (7)
TRI.AL (‘clinical study’) contains VI (Latin 6, ‘sex’).
13 ADEPT
Prior to training, cadet’s discovered to be proficient (5)
cADEt without 1st & last (‘dis-covered’) + PT (‘training’).
14 AARONS ROD
Nora’s upset with Dora’s plant (6,3)
Anagram (‘upset’) of NORAS + DORA.
16 DRESS DOWN
Some padres suffer miserable reprimand (5,4)
Inclusion in ‘paDRES Suffer’ + DOWN (‘miserable’).
19 PIPES
Sanctimonious nuisance spending time with churchwardens? (5)
PI (‘sanctimonious’) + PESt (‘nuisance’) minus T[ime].
21 AQUEOUS
Sort of humour that’s possibly subequatorial, but not peculiarly tribal (7)
Anagram (‘possibly’) of SUBEQUATORIAL minus jumbled letters (‘peculiarly’) of TRIBAL.
23 FARRAGO
Starts to fly and reaches swimmer turning round in medley (7)
1st letters of ‘Fly And Reaches’ + reversal of GAR (a ‘fish’) + O (‘round’).
24 DENOTES
Means test curtailed after individual died in retirement (7)
ONE D[ied], reversed, then shortened TESt.
25 NOISOME
Offensive din drowns sound of devotion (7)
NOIS.E (‘din’) around OM (religious chant, ‘sound of devotion’).
26 EXERCISE BOOK
Paper that’s bound to be used by participant in class action (8,4)
Cryptic whole clue.
DOWN
1 GRANITE
Stone property in France is home to queen (but not Bobcat) (7)
G.ITE (‘property in France’) around RANi (‘Queen’) without ‘I’, i.e. Bobcat, our setter today.
2 ASSAULT
It’s an offence to pick up a sailor (7)
Homophone of ‘a salt’ (‘sailor’).
3 DESPERADO
Person like, say, Dan Dare posed in transit (9)
Ref. Desperate Dan, of The Dandy comic. Anagram (‘in transit’) of DARE POSED.
4 ASSET
No right to state benefit (5)
ASSErT (to ‘state’) minus R[ight].
5 ELATION
Student takes man’s part in effusion leading to joy (7)
EmanATION (‘effusion’), its MAN replaced by L[earner], (‘student’).
6 TARDIER
It’s comparatively late as monarch commandeers last place in doctor’s vehicle (7)
TARDIs (Dr. Who’s ‘vehicle’), last letter replaced by ER (‘monarch’).
7 SCOTLAND YARD
The measure of country coppers? (8,4)
SCOTLAND + YARD, for the H.Q. of C.I.D.
10 WELL-DISPOSED
Favourable pillow talks finally transformed with deeds (4-8)
Anagram of PILLOW + last of talkS + DEEDS.
15 RING-FENCE
Earmark from telephone receiver (4-5)
RING (‘telephone’) + FENCE (‘receiver’ of stolen goods).
17 EQUINOX
Horse trimmed and neat for moment of worldwide significance (7)
EQUINe (‘horse’), shortened, + OX (cattle, ‘neat’).
18 SCOOTER
Child’s toy duck bitten by duck (7)
SCO.TER (breed of ‘duck’) around 0 (zero, ‘duck’).
19 PORTICO
Drink over ice mostly taken in porch (7)
PORT.O (‘drink’) contains most of ICe.
20 PEACOCK
Spooner’s crucial mark for dandy (7)
Spoonerism of Key Pock (‘crucial mark’).
22 SUSHI
Food chain issues oddly lacking after interchange (5)
I.e., switch CHAIN ISSUES around to give ISSUES CHAIN, then remove odd-numbered letters.

9 comments on “Financial Times 17,114 by BOBCAT”

  1. Got off to a good start with CHASSIS as I remembered a similar clue from a while back that I really liked. It was

    How one might briefly describe the Princess Royal’s body?

    by Imogen back in September 2017. Had to check ‘gite’ in 1d, but the rest went in readily. As usual, I had a quick check for any feline nina and found the one wittily referred to in the blog.

  2. Yes, CHASSIS was good, and I don’t remember having seen it before. My other favourite bit was the wordplay for TARDIER, though I think there’s an argument that ‘doctor’s’ could have been capitalised as a specific Doctor was being referred to.

    FARRAGO is an interesting word. It was our student newspaper but apart from that my instant word associations are “lies” and “nonsense”. I wonder if you can have a FARRAGO of something good?

    Thanks to Bobcat and Grant

  3. Hi WordPlodder, you must be an alumni of the University of Melbourne if Farrago was your student newspaper. I struggled with this clue but when I solved it. my wife said that it was her uni’s newspaper. I agree that “farrago” usually is negative but it really just means a collection of disparate items.

    Re 25A – nice to see “noisome” given a correct meaning and not as a synonym for “noisy”.

    My last one in was 19A – I had three letters but finally decided that “popes” and “churchwardens” were somehow the same. Not being a smoker, I would never have associated churchwardens with pipes.

  4. [Yes Peter @3, a University of Melbourne alumnus, even if it was many, many moons ago.]

  5. Ah, I didn’t know the ‘church warden/pipe’ connection either so thanks for that, Grant and Peter. Thankfully, the answer was clear in the parsing.
    Didn’t get around to this until relatively late but found it a reasonably steady solve with some super clues. I liked CHASSIS, SPARROW, DESPERADO, TARDIER and SUSHI.
    Thanks to Bobcat for some very good fun and Grant for a very welcome blog which tipped me off re the nina which I missed.

  6. A fairly quick solve for us. For 1ac we made a wild guess at GRANDPARENTS and were pleasantly surprised to discover the parsing as we wrote it in. Some entries were a bit trickier but nothing we couldn’t solve. We knew about churchwarden PIPES – they’re the ones with a long, usually curved, stem; Sherlock Holmes is often depicted smoking one.
    AQUEOUS, GRANITE, DESPERADO and EQUINOX were our favourites.
    Thanks, Bobcat and Grant.

  7. Thanks Bobcat and Grant. Some wonderful entries like TARDIER and CHASSIS. The puzzle threw me in several places where I tried to make wrong answers fit. I wanted 25a to be ADORING with 19d as PERGOLA, and so needed the blog to solve the whole SE corner – I also tried TOPICAL for 21a. Everything makes sense now. Also didn’t know meaning of RING-FENCE which I had to look up. Learned something new, as often happens in a good puzzle!

  8. Great fun, completed with morning coffee again. Thanks Bobcat.
    And a special thank you Grant for telling me why I had a number of the answers. For me, there were a number I could not parse today although the answer was clear.

  9. Thanks Bobcat and Grant
    Slipped a day late already this week and only got to this on Wednesday. Always a pleasure solving the puzzles of this setter and wondered where the hallmark nina would be and only found it post solve down the centre. Strangely enough the ‘churchwarden’ / PIPES was my first entry – always remembered from the illustrations in some of the Charles Dickens books.
    A couple that I didn’t parse fully or correctly – had SP for special and couldn’t get a second definition from ‘Porto’s left wing’ and didn’t twig to the ‘key’ half of the Spoonerism. Also took a long time to remember the Latin ‘sex’ – VI trick. AQUEOUS humour was new and had to check the French GITE.
    [Started a post grad Dip Ed at Melbourne Teachers College back in the day, but had to wait for an IT contract a few years back to consolidate one of their data centres to be truly involved with the University of Melbourne – not sure whether the newspaper was still circulating.]

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