Financial Times 17,360 by MUDD

10 comments on “Financial Times 17,360 by MUDD”

1. Liked OUTDATED, ONE-OFF and MINOR SUIT.
   Thanks, Mudd and Turbolegs!

2. ONE-OFF
   I was wondering if Mudd intended ‘bit’ to mean ‘one’ (binary digits:bits: one and zero).
   bit short=bit off=one off. Still a cd.

3. Thanks for the explanation of 9A. The answer was obvious from the definition and the cross letters, but I couldn’t parse it. I’m still not totally convinced that “rare” and “excellent” have the same meaning. I have a “rare” recording of me singing “Help me make it through the night” but I’m not too sure how many would call it “excellent”.

   Not being a bridge player, I wasn’t aware that diamonds was a minor suit in 6D. In the card game 500, it is the second top suit behind hearts.

   Re 14A: I couldn’t manage to see how “careful” and “sparing” have the same meaning. I hate to use the Internet to complete crosswords but I could not find any website that linked the two words apart from confirming that they are both adjectives. I would appreciate an example of a sentence in which these two words are interchangeable.

   Thanks again, Turbolegs, for your efforts.

4. Peter @3. I had the same problem with “careful” and “sparing”. My Chambers has “sparing” as synonymous with “careful (with money)”.

5. I liked SLAPDASH, ALOOF, SIGHT and SPRAY CAN among others. Though completed, I’m grateful to Turbolegs for clarifying the parsing of a few including REFINERY.
   And thanks to Mudd for his customary wit.

6. Peter @3, I don’t think Mudd is suggesting diamonds are a minor suit, but that they can be. The question mark suggests definition by example to me, so diamonds, hearts, clubs or spades would fit the meaning, but not the surface.

   I thought of “he was sparing/careful with his money, as he was trying to save for new shoes”. But I’d also use it with ingredients if I was trying to juggle recipes from limited resources.

   This was fun, thank you Mudd (as a regular Guardian solver, I keep wanting to say Paul) and Turbolegs.

7. Thanks Mudd and Turbolegs

   6dn: The definition by example must be indicated as clubs is also a minor suit in bridge, spades and hearts being the two major suits. The meanings for major suit and minor suit from the game of bridge are the only ones given in Chambers 2014.

8. Yes, that’s the correct definition of MINOR SUIT, PB. (I have played bridge though not for some years.)

   Being “careful” with money is a euphemism for being tight-fisted, so that works for me.

   KVa – if a cricketer is out for 99, you might say they’re a “bit short” of their century. That’s how I understood that clue.

   Very enjoyable puzzle, I thought. I couldn’t see the parsing for 1a, but that’s just me being slow witted. Thanks, Mudd and Turbolegs.

9. We took a while to get OUTDATED as we were fixated on the idea we needed something more specific such as a name given to a particular discovery of neanderthal remains. But our biggest hold-up was in the SW corner where we took ages to get SPRAY CAN and then CYGNET.
   Otherwise pretty straightforward. We liked NOTATE, SWITCH ON and IN EARNEST among others.
   Thanks, Mudd and Turbolegs.

10. Thanks for the blog , good set of clues .
    I have never seen the reason for the particular ranking of suits in bridge .
    They need to be ranked , it is S H D C , so that different bids have priority .
    Major and Minor is also important for the number of tricks need for game .
    But why S H – major and D C -minor ?

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