Financial Times 17,304 by ARTEXLEN

by

An excellent challenge from ARTEXLEN this Friday. Parsing some clues took longer than the solve ! 🙂

FF: 9 DD: 9

ACROSS
1 DEDUCT
Take away daughter by English Channel (6)

D ( daughter ) E ( english ) DUCT ( channel )
4 OBSCURED
Dog occupying bed so badly hidden (8)

CUR ( dog ) in [ BED SO ]*
9 REPAIR
Sound condition of Queen song on record (6)

R ( queen ) EP ( record ) AIR ( song )
10 INCUBATE
Hatch in club sealed by stick (8)

IN [ BAT ( club ) in CUE ( stick ) ]
12 OVERBLOWN
Excessive working to keep part of speech short (9)

ON ( working ) containing [ VERB ( part of speech ) LOW ( short ) ]
13 TRIBE
Family tucked into eight ribeyes (5)

hidden in "..eighT RIBEyes"
14 STEPPING STONES
Recalled tame animals with two sounds, showing ways to progress (8,6)

STEP ( tame animals = PETS, reversed ) PINGS TONES ( two sounds )
17 ABRAHAM LINCOLN
President once dancing in a ball with monarch (7,7)

[ IN A BALL MONARCH ]*
21 VESPA
Cycling surfaces with slabs for two- wheeler (5)

PAVES ( surfaces with slabs ) with the last three letters moving to the front ( cycling )
22 NOTIFYING
Telling someone else going fast to avoid learner (9)

NOT I ( someone else ) FlYING ( going fast, without L – learner )
24 TRUE GRIT
Regularly reused garlic wrapped in dry film (4,4)

RUEGRI ( ReUsEd GaRlIc , regularly i.e. alternate letters ) in TT ( dry )
25 REPORT
Appraisal on alcoholic drink (6)

RE ( on ) PORT ( alcoholic drink )
26 ROSARIES
Very big sign after beginning to rub devotional items (8)

R ( Rub, first letter ) OS ( very big ) ARIES ( sign )
27 FROSTY
Hostile suspect forty-seven, not calm (6)

[ FORTY-Seven ( without EVEN – calm ) ]*
DOWN
1 DORMOUSE
Small creature used moor to lark around (8)

[ USED MOOR ]*
2 DEPLETE
Remove clamps close to jeep exhaust (7)

DELETE ( remove ) containing P ( jeeP, last letter )
3 CLIMB
Scale of calcium oddly black (5)

CLIM ( CaLcIuM, odd letters of ) B ( black )
5 BANANA SPLITS
Puddings having nuts left in hollows (6,6)

BANANAS ( nuts ) [ L ( left ) in PITS ( hollows ) ]
6 COUNTDOWN
Year taken out in Northern Ireland region for launch build-up (9)

COUNTy DOWN ( northern ireland region, without Y – year )
7 REALISE
Get Greek deity stories read aloud (7)

sounds like RHEA ( greek deity ) LIES ( stories )
8 DEEMED
Considered action restricting space (6)

DEED ( action ) containing EM ( space )
11 MOUNTAINSIDE
Advanced down in number within part of Vesuvius? (12)

[ AMOUNT ( number ) with A – advanced moving to the end ] INSIDE ( within )
15 PHALANGER
Arboreal beast from China taking hour to consume nettle (9)

[ PAL ( china, cockney for mate ) containing H ( hour ) ] ANGER ( nettle )
16 KNIGHTLY
King every evening is chivalrous (8)

K ( king ) NIGHTLY ( every evening )
18 BASQUES
Garments some snub as questionable (7)

hidden in "..snuB AS QUEStionable"
19 OMINOUS
Threatening duck negative about another (7)

O ( duck ) [ MINUS ( negative ) about O ( another duck ) ]
20 AVATAR
Icon gave man start when abandoned by all outsiders (6)

"..gAVe mAn sTARt..", without end characters ( outsiders )
23 FLEER
One escaping dance following lifts (5)

REEL ( dance ) F ( following ), all reversed

10 comments on “Financial Times 17,304 by ARTEXLEN”

  1. Hey, this was a fine puzzle. Clever clueing, no weird obscurities, a Goldilocks level of difficulty and an abundance of smiles. The only one I hadn’t heard of was a BASQUE, despite having enjoyed a visit to the Pyrenees many moons ago.

    A bit embarrassed to have taken so long to get PHALANGER. One such (a possum in fact) is a regular visit to my roof cavity.

  2. I agree this was a fine puzzle. Bunged in PHALANGER from the wordplay but didn’t know of it. Thought ‘taking…to consume’ was OTT to denote the inclusion though. Kept going back to 11d and failing until it was the only one left. Then I noticed MOUNT fitted the top bit and then the rest soon followed with a sigh of relief. I admit, I only knew Basque and not basque, as it were.

  3. NOTIFYING, COUNTDOWN, MOUNTAINSIDE and KNIGHTLY were my faves.
    Hovis@2
    I agree with you on ‘taking …to consume’.

  4. Good challenge. No hope of parsing MOUNTAINSIDE which went in from def alone and for some reason I missed the parsing of the much gentler DEPLETE. Vaguely remembered the word PHALANGER but didn’t know what sort of ‘garment’ a BASQUE was; everything I know about fashion I’ve learnt from cryptic crosswords or at least it seems that way. Favourite was VESPA.

    Thanks to Turbolegs and Artexlen

  5. Yes, I’m in agreement; a very fine puzzle which was somewhat kinder than the two previous days though not without a few challenges (parsing mostly).
    BASQUE posed no problem either way for me (ridiculous garment though) and luckily, the unknown PHALANGER was derived from the wordplay. I couldn’t parse OVERBLOWN or INCUBATE though the crossers helped. MOUNTAINSIDE was my last in and entered much as Hovis said.
    I liked BANANA SPLITS, STEPPING STONES and FROSTY.
    Thanks to Artexlen and Turbolegs.

  7. Thanks for the blog, Turbolegs – a fine puzzle indeed. As Diane says, gentler than the last two days but by no means a pushover. The only one that gave me any difficulties with parsing was MOUNTAINSIDE, which was my LOI – like Hovis, I took ages to see it even with all the crossing letters in place.

    Many thanks for a fun challenge, Artexlen.

    And thanks (not) to GDU for the Harpo spoiler. FFS!

  9. A fairly stiff challenge, we thought, though we did get it all, but with ABRAHAM LINCOLN and MOUNTAINSIDE unparsed – the former being a guess when we only had the B; we couldn’t fully parse NOTIFYING either.
    We liked STEPPING STONES and OMINOUS.
    Thanks, Artexlen and Turbolegs.

  10. I found this tricky and didn’t quite finish with the south east corner and mountainside having a few gaps. A very fine puzzle.

Comments are closed.