Financial Times 17,199 by AARDVARK

25 comments on “Financial Times 17,199 by AARDVARK”

1. 19d is also H in an anagram of RACES. Your parsing for 27a gives ‘dendarme’. I guess ‘gen’ = ‘latest’ in the sense of news? What is ‘needing’ doing in 25a?

   I guess autocorrect changed your señor in 18a to ‘senior’.

2. I wasn’t sure about 19d either and it was my LOI.
   I was able to complete the grid but was far from parsing everything so all thanks to PeeDee.
   I looked for Ninas and other themes but saw nothing, surprisingly for this setter. Perhaps someone else will spot something?
   Always need to be on top of your game with Aardvark so I didn’t find this easy but enjoyed it even so.
   I liked 15’s definition and wordplay, along with 4d. I spent a long time trying to make an anagram out of ‘Bob’s tone’ before finally understanding it was the tint of a hairdo.
   I thought ‘gallant character’ was more likely to clue ‘chivalrous’…
   Anyway, thanks to Aardvark for a thorough workout.

3. Thanks Hovis for explaining 19dn. It looked like there must be something more but I just couldn’t see it. I have updated the blog.

4. I found this very hard; maybe I’ll blame it on the BOSSA NOVA. Satisfying to eventually solve, though I missed the PAP for ‘Snapper’ at 2d and had the same niggle as Hovis @1 about the ‘needing’ at 25a. I’ll also admit 9d was a BIFE – Bunged In From Enumeration.

   Some top notch clues, even if they weren’t easy. The 27a ‘Nancy’s peeler’, 15d ‘shooting home’ and 16d ‘Bob’s tone’ were great defs and I liked the CHASER &lit.

   Thanks to Aardvark andPeeDee

5. This was not easy, and thanks to Aardvark for the challenge. Traveller/rep and some days/May are the sort of extra-vague wordplay that disappoints me. Yes, the latter is a very specific example of the former, but ascertaining the association in reverse is practically impossible without guessing the complete-word solution first, working backwards from the definition. So I fill in the grid with a sigh, thinking, “OK, I guess a rep could be a traveller.” Thanks, PeeDee for the explanation of “oval cheer.” I did not quite understand the cryptic meaning there.

6. Gosh, this was very much an English puzzle and hard for foreigners to get. “Hay” as a festival site, for example. 2D is “pawpaw” in Australia. 4D I have never heard of.18D is familiar to me but did take most cross letters to solve. 26A was a guess. 22D was totally unknown to me but gettable from the cross letters and the hidden answer. 24A I guessed but still cannot understand why “food” and “cheer” have the same meaning.

   Despite this, I did rather enjoy the challenge, although I had to conduct an online search a few times: something that I don’t like to do.

7. Hi Peter, one of the meanings for cheer is food. The OED shows examples from Thomas Mallory in 1470 up to the most recent from the Goolong Geelong Advertiser in 2014:

   Now, as you’re overindulging in festive cheer, may not be exactly the time for considering a recipe for..a vegan Thai soup.

8. Thanks PeeDee, I am familiar with the expression “festive cheer” but I always though that it meant “festive merriment” or “festive joy”.

   One is never too old to learn…

9. PeeDee @7. I think you’ll find that the 2014 OED quotation is from the Geelong Advertiser, fondly known by locals here as “The Addie”.

10. Hey, WordPlodder, I didn’t know that there was another Aussie here apart from Geoff and my good self. Although I now live in Melbourne, I wasn’t aware of the Geelong newspaper. But then I live on the other side of the city.

11. Wordplodder – yes, Geelong not Goolong. My mistake, and apologies to the misnamed organ.

12. [Yes, Peter @10, it turns out there are quite a few of us here!]

13. I thought Aardvark made up a fine trio with Eccles and Nutmeg

14. Peter@6: I wrote and deleted a comment about the strong UK lean this time and its adding to the difficulty, but I (an American) figured years ago that I am the one crashing their party (or is it “do”?), so I had better suck it up, test my googling skills, and just go with the cultural immersion.

15. Cineraria@14: Oh no! That’s all we in the UK need and I suspect my Aussie friends too – an American testing their skills at googlies (Google that one, Cineraria!)

16. Deezzaa@15: A fair guess that it’s one of the 5,000 bits of cricket jargon?

17. My point being that it is practically impossible to guess something like Sadler’s Wells, even with all the crossers, if you have never heard of it. What does that even mean? An ancient toponym? Senor + (deals) + [expands] suggests nothing familiar.

18. The FT does have a global distribution with various international editions, but the crossword seems to be the one from the UK edition every time. There does not seem to be any allowance in the crossword for an international audience. I have seen international editions with misprints that appear or don’t appear locally, but I have not seen any deliberate change of the clues or solutions.

19. Which, honestly, is part of the challenge. If I cannot solve a puzzle because of deficiencies in my UK-GK, then OK. I cannot complain because I knew what I was getting into when I started. It does sting a little, in those instances, when the comments say “what a quick/easy/delightful solve,” though.

20. I would have thought that the FT would have a slightly different editorial policy than the other British crosswording newspapers which have a less global distribution. Perhaps the expectation is that the international editions will be read by ex-pats, who probably know more cricketing terms than anybody.

    Incidentally, I only knew Sadler’s Wells because it used to be a famous ballet company when I was young, so I guessed at the existence of a theatre.

21. I bailed out on this one, as I’d only solved four after half an hour, and went across to Nutmeg’s in the Guardian, which was most enjoyable. I found this one difficult, not so much for the Britishisms; I just wasn’t on the right wavelength. There were a couple of crosswords a few weeks ago that were impossible (I can’t remember whether they were FT or Guardian), one having a theme of boat races on the Cam, and the other requiring intimate knowledge of places in Kent. Needless to say, I gave up on both. I don’t mind (in fact, I enjoy) one or two clues in a crossword requiring specifically British knowledge (I’m gradually learning all the initialisms, like OR, RE, MOT, WI, etc etc) as it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry, and I don’t consider I have a right to complain when after all I’m gatecrashing the party. But yes, there are a lot of Aussies and probably Americans who are part of the fan base, so setters who recognise this and limit the number of obscure Britishisms are appreciated.

22. “An enjoyable puzzle”? – No, too much like hard work. We only finished with extensive use of wordfinders and then trying to parse suggested words.

23. I live in the UK and probably my comment will not be read by anyone as I am currently in Bolivia and posting very late. I wonder how often the crossword is completed from this far-flung country?

    Anyway, I agree with the sentiment of many of the comments above.

    Thanks for explaining some of the parsing, especially Julia Roberts, which I looked and looked at and couldn’t figure out – even though I could see Liar in the middle of the answer. Doh.

    I did complete successfully, though took quite some time. After a very slow start I nearly gave it after about half an hour with only four clues done. But then it all started to come together and I found the setter’s wavelength.

    Some really obscure definitions – such as Nancy’s peeler – but all the more satisfying when the penny dropped.

    I agree with one of the comments above that a few of the clues could only be parsed once the answer was realised.

    Solving in reverse, so to speak.

24. I’ve been reading Wordplodder posts for years and never twigged he was one of us.

25. I thought this was awful. I gave up after not even finishing the top half. Utterly horrid synonyms E.g Jasmine for cha. Never knew an Oxford is a shoe and never heard the word Antsier. God give me strength!

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