Financial Times 17,297 by LEONIDAS

17 comments on “Financial Times 17,297 by LEONIDAS”

1. CALVES:
   I parsed it as you did.

   Thanks, Land l!

2. How chewy was the parsing of 6d! All part of the fun supplied, consistently as ever, by Leonidas.
   I particularly liked the surface of 12a and the connected 24a. Also worth a mention were ‘The Who’ (7d), ‘live’ (26a) for almost catching me out and 28a for its refreshing use of ‘cycle’ in the wordplay.
   Thanks to Leonidas and Loonapick for help with parsing unexplained bits of 5a and 3d. (Forgot about the poet). My thoughts were similar on CALVES being a double def but didn’t feel satisfied with it.

3. I escaped here after failing miserably with Vlad’s in the Guardian, and my self-esteem was restored. Plenty of smiles. Only a couple I didn’t parse — never heard of Andrew Motion, and I thought there must surely be a better explanation for the stray “a” in 17d. (Is “acceptable” acceptable?) Also I struggle to equate “strict sort” with “observant”, but I’m sure someone will come along and tell me it’s in Chambers, and that no further correspondence will be entered into. 😉

4. It was a pretty easy solve on the whole but I was thrown for a while by the references to numbers in the clue. After realizing from 1D that Fe was 26 in the periodic table, I assumed (wrongly) that the references to “8” in 12A was not “O’ for oxygen; same as 22 (Mg) in 26A and a couple of others.

   Re 19D – I justified this by assuming something that contracts (shrinks), reduces it; and as glaciers “calve” they are reducing the size of the glacier. I’m not suggesting this as a better solution as Leonadis, Diane and KVa outnumber me by three to one!

   Re 22A, does “aggro” really mean “problems”? Isn’t aggro short for aggravation; and problems are there to be solved.

5. Geoff,
   It’s probably ‘observant’ in matters of faith but perhaps also in the sense of observing a strict diet or ‘dry january’.

6. Thanks, Leonidas & Loonapick – and happy new year to you too! Diane @2 sums up my feelings perfectly. Lots of very well constructed clues. I wasn’t sure about CALVES either but your parsing makes sense.

7. I read the definition for OBSERVANT as “strict, sort of” which makes a kind of sense but I think Loonapick has it right – works better as a noun, in the religious sense, as Diane says. I believe it’s used specifically of some very strict monks.

8. Geoff @2. Yes, A for “accepted” is in Chambers. (Have seen this in several crosswords.) A contractor is a type of muscle and calves are contractors so I don’t see anything contentious with 19d. People say “This is giving me aggro/problems/aggravation”, so I think this sense of “problems” is fine.

9. Fair enough, Diane & Widdersbel. I was thinking of “observant” as attentive and perceptive, and the religious meaning didn’t occur to me. My bad.

10. Geoff,
    Your ‘bad’, such as it is, is the sort of bad I commit all too often! I view every word in crosswordland with suspicion but still, I get caught out.

11. I do like Leonidas’ puzzles! I thought this was a little less chewy than they can be but no less enjoyable.

    Favourites today were 5ac GENEVA, the linked 12ac GRACELAND and 24ac LISA MARIE, 28ac PEDESTAL (like Diane, for the use of ‘cycle’), 1dn FORAGE, for the construction, 3dn for the clever surface, 6dn EVENING PRIMROSE for the fun parsing (with Diane again), 7dn EQUIP for construction and surface and 21dn PETREL for ‘The Rock’ and the twist in the tail.

    Many thanks to Leonidas and loonapick.

12. Thanks Leonidas and Loonapick

    25ac: I thought the “HE BRIDE” device was quite witty when I first saw it decades ago as a hypothetical possibility, but is it not now simply a factual error?

13. Missed Egress but got the rest. Quite a few ??? so thank you for helping unravel these clues.

    Personally, I hate abbreviations such as a= acceptable.

    Thanks

14. Thanks Leonidas for an excellent crossword. My top choices were GENEVA, GRACELAND, REGROUP, the &lit MIDDLE C, CANINE, FORAGE, EQUIP, and PETREL. I couldn’t parse 3d, not knowing the poet. I found “he-bride” in 25a to be a bit bizarre and frankly off-putting. Thanks loonapick for the blog.

15. Peter @ 4, I also was thinking glaciers for calves. I equate “egress” with “exit” as a noun so I would have preferred the clue to start with exit. Nevertheless,I enjoyed the solve so Thanks to Leonadis and loonapick for parsing 3d.

16. My intention for 19d was as suggested in the blog: DD of calves the muscles (contractors) and the baby cows (delivered on the farm). I hadn’t thought of the glacier angle, I must say, but I guess that works too. Thanks to loonapick and to all who have commented today.

17. I misspelled Hebridean (because I didn’t see the he-bride thing, kinda glad I didn’t). So I missed calves, despite thinking for a second “what are those baby cow things called?”.

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