Financial Times 17,141 by JULIUS

19 comments on “Financial Times 17,141 by JULIUS”

1. Entertaining puzzle with plenty of amusing surfaces. This is probably what you meant too, but I took the ‘metallic underwear’ at 16d to be a “lamé (as in the fabric with metallic threads/highlights) bra”. That was one of my favourites, along with LORELEI, even if we have had variations on the theme before, and the surface for GLOOMY. Had to put the thinking cap on for SWITCH and BLEAK.

   Thanks to Julius and Turbolegs

2. I quite enjoyed this, and there was nothing too taxing. Favourites were LORELEI & RUINATION. Took a while to work out why GEL is a posh-sounding girl – we speak Strine down here! I’m not entirely convinced that gloomy is fed up or that pretty is twee. Never heard of “do bird” nor Elizabeth Gaskell.

3. According to Chambers, ‘lame’ (as opposed to lamé) can mean ‘a thin plate, esp of metal, as in armour’ but I think either works. In Chambers’ thesaurus, ‘twee’ is listed for ‘pretty’ so I think that’s ok.

4. An entertaining puzzle, as ever, from Julius with BLEAK, DISMAL, GLOOMY and DREARY belying the fun to be had.
   I imagine shiny lame and Hovis’s metal plate are in some way related but I favour the shiny sort as it conjures images of Madonna in her risqué stage gear. I liked GASKELL but 3d’s long anagram was my favourite.
   Thanks to Julius and Turbolegs.

5. I agree that this was enjoyable and not too taxing. Two new words for me BLEAK the fish and NEGUS the drink, although both were easy to guess. Many thanks to Julius for the fun and to Turbolegs for an impressively early blog.

6. Yes, SM, the joy of solving a Julius puzzle is that more obscure words,(for me, anyway), like BLEAK (fish), NEGUS and GIGUE are always fairly clued.
   Meant to say how much I liked the sly surface of SWITCH.

7. Very nice.

8. What copmus said!

   (I had double ticks for AGGRAVATE and WEATHERBOARDING – and a dozen further single ones, so i won’t list them all!)

   Many thanks, Julius and Turbolegs.

9. Thanks to Julius and Turbolegs

   I do hope the former has cheered up since he set this crossword 😉

10. Probably saved by getting the two 15 letter anagrams on the first pass. Otherwise might have been sunk on the rare words mentioned above. I have often heard of “gig” for a musical performance, but “gigue” was new to me. I presume they’re from the same root. Thanks Julius and Turbolegs.

11. Thanks for the blog, dear Turbolegs, and thanks to those who have commented.
    Props to Diana & CS for spotting the slightly miserabilist thematic material which I bunged in after I’d entered BLEAK although I don’t really remember why. I’m my usual happy self thanks Sue!
    Best wishes to all, Rob/Julius

12. Thanks for the blog, good spot from Diane@4 for the theme , certainly not the effect of the puzzle on solvers
    and I agree that the more obscure words were clued very fairly. WEATHERBOARDING was a fantastic anagram.
    For TRICK I think the definition is – Trump might claim this.

13. Thanks Turbolegs, not least because I was held up for a long time by my “Leadbrain” making the same mistake as yours, so at least I feel a bit better about it now! Also I couldn’t see how LAMMAS worked so appreciate you unravelling the ordering. Well spotted Diane@4 and I am another one grateful for the helpful clueing that you mention in your post @6. Thanks Julius, I liked the witty 11a and the very neat 6d best.

14. john@13. . Gigue is a dance form well known to lovers of baroque music e.g J S Bach and Telemann. I think it is derived from the English/ Scottish jig.

15. Very good puzzle and in spite of the theme I found plenty to laugh at, handrail for one. Thank you, Julius and Turbolegs.

16. Thanks Julius. I found this more taxing than most posters but that made it more satisfying to finally solve this excellent crossword. I went down a few rabbit holes e.g. I tried to think of a city that was an anagram of “scoundrel” in 12a and I tried to think of a country that would “clothe” the letter D in 27a before I realized I was making things more difficult than they actually were. I thought 6d was splendid and I also ticked RUINATION, ELEGANCE, and HANDRAIL as favourites. I like how TRICK works both in the political sense and in the card-playing sense. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

17. An enjoyable solve with no real problems. We wondered if there might be a word ‘leadbrain’ but before we got round to looking in the dictionary we remembered about lamé. The fish at 10ac was new to us but was easily got from the clue and anyway there are all sorts of odd names for fish which crop up in crosswordland (more often than in the real world we suspect). RUINATION raised a smile but our favourites were HANDRAIL and LORELEI.
    Thanks, Julius and Turbolegs.

18. Very enjoyable. Thanks Julius and Turbolegs.

    In 7d, the definition is not fully underlined. Should be “Trump might claim this”. This being the trick (as in bridge).

19. Very good. I too was sent in several wrong directions, not least trying to find a city in Scoundrel

Comments are closed.