Financial Times 17,295 by CHALMIE

18 comments on “Financial Times 17,295 by CHALMIE”

1. Oh no, this is going to depend heavily on 5d & 6d, I thought. So I nearly threw in the towel, but thankfully it wasn’t as forbidding as I expected. After a few intersecting clues 5d was pretty obvious, and I couldn’t be bothered parsing it — just as well, as I wouldn’t have had a hope. Likewise ON EARTH. Never heard of CLOTHO, nor MENSCH (except in German).

   I’ve thoroughly enjoyed several crosswords in recent days that required no special knowledge, and have decided that that’s how I like them. Still, mustn’t grumble — this one was quite enjoyable. Thanks Chalmie & Cineraria.

2. This was much more difficult to parse everything than it was to fill the grid correctly. Well done for getting the TEN COMMANDMENTS which I just bunged in from the DE MILLE reference and the help of a few crossers; like GDU @1, I never would have been able to parse it properly. CLEOPATRA was also tough and even though I sort of knew what was going on with ON EARTH, I wouldn’t have been able to explain it.

   MENSCH rang the vaguest of bells, but crossers and the clue being a hidden helped.

   GDU @1 – the other two Fates are Lachesis and Atropos. Worth bearing in mind for crosswords, even if for nothing else!

   Thanks to Chalmie and Cineraria

3. Thanks, and happy new year.

   I was casting around for some words to start a new puzzle, and it happened to be CBdeM’s birthday that day.

4. Chalmie@3: Thank you for the engaging puzzle and for the feedback in the comments.

5. Thanks, Chalmie. Got on quite well with this until the last handful that took ages to twig. Particularly enjoyed DEDUCE, COVET, CLOTHO. In my amateur dabblings as a setter, I never know where to start with filling the grid – might have to try your technique.

   And thanks for the blog, Cineraria. I managed to unravel the brilliantly tortured 5d but got stuck with parsing the relatively straightforward ESCHEWS, so grateful for the help there.

6. Nice level of difficulty for me. Not really a theme person, especially the covert variety, but this was just a sprinkling on top – indeed I solved the two films before the director.

   DEDUCE got a laugh. Thanks for the parsing of TEN COMMANDMENTS and the blog.

7. Re 6D
   I thought it was “DeMille” not “De Mille”?

8. Mark@7: Correct, but I learned how to stop worrying [about spacing] and love the blog. Besides, I am not sure how one would fairly indicate the mid-name capitalization with numerals only, so the choice seems tolerable, if not strictly accurate. Actually, based on the enumeration, my first guess for director was De Palma, which obviously was going to lead to a very different puzzle.

9. Yes, the only thing that fitted the template (and with 6a & 12a) but made no sense at all was De Palma … or should I say DePalma? 😉

10. Thanks for the blog, I love clues like this. The theme was worth it just to get the M AND M’S in the word play for 5D. DEDUCE was also very novel .

11. Thanks Chalmie. I found this easy by Chalmie standards and my unknowns, CLOTHO and NOVI SAD, were obvious from the wordplay. I was familiar with the theme and that helped. My favourites were GREATEST, OIL LAMPS, and DE MILLE. Thanks Cinearia for filling in my parsing gaps.

12. Did anyone else put in ESCAPES for ESCHEWS?

13. Mark_A and Cineraria@7&8: My surname is Van D***, a cousin’s is VanD***, his father was Vand*** and another uncle was van D***. I get all four (along with just Van, or just D***) from companies’ computer data bases. You get used to it, as I suspect Cecil did.

    I’m with Roz@10. 6a DEDUCE was brilliant and I love the idea of snacking on M&Ms while watching the movie @5d.

    Thanks, Chalmie and Cineraria, for the excellent puzzle and blog.

14. Petert@12, I thought of it, but although some men are apes, I didn’t think it applied to all of us.

15. I think, biologically, we are all apes.

16. Thanks Chalmie and Cineraria

    Petert@15: The statement that men are all apes is a scientific fact, or, possibly and more simply, part of the definition of an ape. However, taking “man” in a clue to give APE in an answer would be an unsignalled definition by example. I am genuinely unsure whether Chalmie would do that sort of thing.

17. PB@16 It would never have occurred to me that “man” and “ape” could be interchangeable – I can’t see any circumstances in which that would be remotely fair. I could see either being indicated by “primate”, I guess, and somebody might be able to get some mileage out of orang utan literally meaning man of the woods (but don’t ask me to try, because it sounds too convoluted even for me).

    Thanks to those who enjoyed finding M&Ms and also those who noticed that the theme was mainly additional information rather than an attempt to probe solvers’ knowledge. I’d put PLAINSMAN in the grid, but since I’d never heard of the movie myself, it seemed pretty unfair to expect anyone else to know it (except for the odd 1930s film maven). And, to be honest, I actually thought it was the other Cleopatra that he’d directed; I’m not sure if I’d have used the 6d film definition if I’d realised.

18. Chalmie@17: Thanks for that helpful clarification.

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