Financial Times 17,120 by VELIA

by

Excellent fun.

The Witch of the Woods has woven her magic once more, with novelties galore and just a few gimmes to get us going.

Of another setter, one might say ‘h’m, hard work today’ and indeed it wasn’t the easiest, but a pleasure throughout.

Thanks, Velia.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1 DELISH
Yummy entrée containing eel skin (6)

D.ISH (‘entree’) contains outer letters (‘skin’) of EeL.
4 ABU DHABI
Hustle and bustle starts in extravagant Dubai emirate (3,5)

1st letters of ‘Hustle And Bustle’ in anagram (‘extravagant’) of DUBAI.
10 FACULTY
Skill of teachers (7)

Double definition, 2nd the collective noun.
11 ALLUDES
Everybody used different hints (7)

ALL (‘everybody’) + anagram (‘different’) of USED.
12 AWRY
Careful backing half that’s wrong (4)

WARY (‘careful’), its front half reversed.
13 BENEFICIAL
Favourable belief I can reform (10)

Anagram (‘reform’) of BELIEF I CAN.
16 EQUINE
One of five in the middle of Greece getting a horse? (6)

QUIN (‘one of five’) in centre of ‘grE.Ece’.
17 ASUNDER
Like below, in separate parts (7)

I.e., ‘as under’.
20 NIGHTIE
One’s out in this close draw (7)

NIGH (‘close’) + TIE (sporting ‘draw’, in Britain anyway). Cryptic def, ‘out’ being ‘asleep’. Oof.
21 WEIRDO
Strange individual Dior design by the Financial Times (6)

Anagram (‘design’) of DIOR after WE (‘the Financial Times’, this newspaper).
24 PERIWINKLE
Before the French returned telegram in pink and purple (10)

WIRE (‘telegram’), reversed, in P.INK, then lastly LE (Fr. ‘the’).

Chambers says ‘periwinkle’ = ‘light blue’ but I’m a man so obviously can’t tell the difference. My Nan used to call any colour in that part of the spectrum ‘heliotrope’ because she liked the word and so do I.
25 PAWN
Seafood not right for man on board (4)

PrAWN without R[ight].
27 EN ROUTE
Lost ten Euro on the way (2,5)

Anagram (‘lost’) of TEN EURO.
29 TABLEAU
Thanks boyfriend about love’s first scene (7)

‘TA, B.EAU’ around 1st of ‘L{ove}’.
30 NOBODIES
What hampers investigations into murder of inconsequential people (8)

‘No bodies’ being an existential problem if you’re puzzling out a multiple homicide.
31 FEISTY
Lively Faeroe Islands temporarily vacated (6)

Innards removed of F{aro}E I{sland}S T{emporaril}Y.
DOWN
1 DEFLATED
Airless apartment indeed (8)

FLAT (‘apartment’) in DE.ED (you have to split up ‘in-deed’).
2 LE CORBUSIER
Designer disrupted Cole Porter’s finale, getting more hectic (2,9)

Anagram (‘disrupted’) of COLE + last of ‘porteR’ + BUSIER (‘more hectic’).
3
See 28
5 BE AT EASE
Relax and provoke? (2,2,4)

I.e., BE A TEASE.
6 DALLIANCES
Extremely devious extramarital affairs (10)

Ends of ‘DeviouS’ outside ALLIANCE (‘marriage’). Thus the letters ’D.S’ are, as it were, ‘extra-marital’. Ingenious.
7, 8, 19 ADD INSULT TO INJURY
Make things worse for a theologian to sin until corrected by group of twelve (3,6,2,6)

A + DD (Doctor of Divinity, ‘theologian’) + anagram (‘corrected’) of TO SIN UNTIL + JURY (‘group of 12’).
9 BYRES
Clientele speaking of cowsheds (5)

Homophone of buyers, ‘clientele’. Slightly confusing word-order, as oft with homophones.
14 ICEBREAKERS
Intercourse made easy by these ships (11)

Double def, give or take a hyphen.
15
See 28
18 VIENNESE
Austrian in a whirl? (8)

Double def, I think, a ‘Viennese’ being a sort of spiral cream-cake or ice-cream, I vaguely remember (Chambers has never heard of it). More accuracy welcome.
19
See 7
22 SPLEEN
Organ music samples essentially sounding thin (6)

Central letters (‘essentially’) of ‘muSic’ & ‘samPles’ + LEEN, homophone (‘sounding’) of LEAN (‘thin’). Sneaky.
23 FLUTE
Start to fiddle with one instrument or another . . . . (5)

1st of ‘F{iddle} + LUTE.
26 OBOE
. . . . and ring in gong for a third (4)

A third instrument, of course. O.B.E. (award, ‘gong’) surrounds ‘O’ (‘ring’).
28, 3, 15 RUB SALT IN THE WOUND
Double NHS wait, turn for treatment and make things worse (3,4,2,3,5)

Anagram (‘for treatment’) of DOUBLE NHS WAIT TURN.

15 comments on “Financial Times 17,120 by VELIA”

  2. I’d go with Viennese Whirl; a cake maybe and definitely a biscuit sandwich with jam and cream (1a with a coffee).
    Periwinkle is often associated with blue eyes but the flowers can be both blue and purple.
    The right side of this enjoyable grid slipped in nicely but more thought was required for the NW corner especially.
    I liked that VIENNESE (DELISH), NOBODIES and LE CORBUSIER.
    I certainly needed Grant’s help to parse 22d and to see the definition of 20a. (Of course, ‘out like a light’).
    Thanks to him and Velia.

  3. I agree with Grant’s introduction; both entertaining and challenging. Favourite was the ‘One’s out in this’ def at 20a and it was interesting to have the ‘make things worse’ def appearing twice. I don’t remember having seen the 6d ‘extramarital’ trick before.

    I didn’t know the link between VIENNESE and ‘whirl’ either, but looking it up I see it refers to the biscuit mentioned by Diane @2. According to Wikipedia, brought to us by Mr Kipling, not from Vienna, but from the equally glamorous Carlton, South Yorkshire and Stoke-on-Trent.

    Thanks to Grant and Velia

  4. Yes, when I googled “Viennese whirl” I found a British biscuit. Never heard of 2d. I was going to complain about the definition in 20a, but the penny dropped when I came here. This and plenty of other clues elicited a smile in a very enjoyable puzzle, thanks Velia.

  5. And not just Mr Kipling, Wordplodder, it was a staple of 1970s cookery classes in Britain, eaten on a Staffordshire plates, naturally – the height of glamour, as you say.

  6. Like WordPlodder, I agree with Grant’s introduction. I didn’t care for the word order in 9d though. My Collins gives ‘periwinkle’ as a light purplish blue colour, so I think ‘purple’ is just about fair. Did get held up for a while by confidently entering MASTERY for 10a.

  7. Wikipedia shows the colour of 24a. Definitely in the purple zone. Challenging but got there in the end. Don’t know how Grant and the others did it so early in the morning. Full of admiration.

    Thanks to both.

  8. Maybe it’s just me but I have long had an aversion to slang words as answers in crosswords. 1A is not a word; it is a contraction of “delicious”.

    14D was brilliant as “intercourse” these days has sexual connotations: nice to see it used in its original meaning. I have social intercourse on a regular basis but sadly not the sexual kind!

  9. Thanks Velia and Grant
    Nice puzzle and a bit harder than I originally thought having bolted down the right hand side. Think that the long phrase on that side was a bit easier to crack than the one down the left hand side , so more work to do to wheedle out more crossers. Also not helped, like Hovis, when writing in MASTERY at 10a.
    Don’t have an aversion to slang / informal / idiomatic words, but it is surprising how many of them slip into the average crossword – this one is not too bad, but there would still be a half dozen of them lurking within.
    NIGHTIE was my clear pick of the bunch.
    Finished with NOBODIES (which was also pretty good), VIENNESE (went down the dance path, didn’t know the bickie) and AWRY (which took a while to understand the wordplay).

  11. Whether you like DELISH or not, it has its own separate entry in Chambers as “informal shortening of delicious”.

  12. Spot-on preamble, Grant, as others have said – a delight of a puzzle.

    My ticks were for EQUINE, NOBODIES, FEISTY, DEFLATED, LE CORBUSIER, and the two clever ‘make things worse’ clues.

    I had no objection at all to DELISH, particularly as it was neatly defined by another slang word.

    Many thanks to Velia for the fun and Grant for a great blog.

  13. Thanks Velia for a most enjoyable crossword full of great surfaces. I particularly liked ABU DHABI, DEFLATED, SPLEEN, and the anagram for RUB SALT IN THE WOUND. (Yes, extended waits for health appointments do rub salt in the wound!) I needed a word finder for NIGHTIE and I couldn’t fully parse VIENNESE or DALLIANCES so thanks Grant for the help.

  14. I really enjoyed this puzzle. The only one I want able to pull off was nightie, just like in real life.

    Anil

  15. Got to this very late and enjoyed. Unfortunately missed deflated because I had wary rather than awry as 12 across

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