Financial Times 17,457 by Neo

24 comments on “Financial Times 17,457 by Neo”

1. Thanks Neo and Pete

   14dn: I wondered if the “old plane” might be indicating an archaic usage, but Chambers 2014 just gives “a car, aeroplane, etc” as a slang meaning for bus “as a term of affection”.

2. Thanks, Neo and Pete Maclean!
   Liked VERB, NOBLE GAS and ABYSSAL.

3. I have Chambers and Collins, as the newspapers don’t seem to be able to agree which one’s best. In Collins they have ‘a car or aircraft, esp one that is old and shaky’, which exonerates the compiler. They can only go with what is in the dictionaries, after all. For ABYSSAL, I can’t see Pete’s objection.

   I’ll go for IMMERSION HEATER as my favourite in this puzzle, but I enjoyed the garden cities gag. Typical chewy Neo with plenty of wit.

   Thanks N and PMac.

4. Thanks Pete

   I agree with everything you wrote, and even had the same FOI and LOI as you.

   I have a couple of additional likes: namely the two TV-related clues ANIMAL and EARLOBE – the latter being a joke from the Goodies, heaven knows how many years ago.

   I agree ABYSSAL was pretty ordinary. But it was not alone in my eyes. AMBUSCADE piled obscurity on obscurity. And then there were the towns! I do not know what Neo was thinking even referring to Bude, EBBW VALE and WELWYN, but then as Pete noted two of them intersected on the grid. The three towns differ only slightly on the obscurity scale – with a combined population that does not even reach 40,000. And then there was the unknowable BBW spelling. EBBW VALE must be a strong contender for the worst clue of the year award.

   Thanks for the blog Pete, and thanks to Neo for the puzzle. And thanks PB@1 for expanding on bus

5. Since Neo/Tees is among my favourite setters it pains me to say that I disliked this crossword. I ticked a few favourites — ANIMAL, EARLOBE, and LILAC but the intersection of WELWYN and EBBW VALE was off-putting to me as was the parsing of AMBUSCADE. Oh well, you can’t please everyone all the time … many thanks to both.

6. 14dn: Thanks Lady Gewgaw@3 for the Collins reference. I agree that setters should feel able to use either dictionary as equally valid sources.

   16dn: I suppose EBBW VALE could be considered an obscure place name, but the clue itself seems to me to be perfectly constructed.

   18dn: The EARLOBE joke is indeed over fifty years old. The Goodies recycled it from the radio programme I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, and I would not be at all surprised to find that ISIRTA were not the first to use it.

7. Thanks for the blog, I thought this was really good although I can see that the UK towns could be a bit obscure for non-UK solvers.
   AMBUSCADE (or O ending) has been in Azed a few times and I like the word. Perhaps “old bus” is just old RAF slang ( not archaic ) , pretty sure I have heard it in the old films, referring to the large bombers like the Lancaster as opposed to the fighter planes like the Spitfire.
   NOBLE GAS was a very neat hidden clue.
   HIND as a farm steward was new to me but had to be right and nice to learn something new.

8. I thought this was rather easier compared to other puzzles by this setter, but a good mix of clues, and surfaces were elegant. Abyssal I rather liked because of the tease as to whether little governed girl or was separate, and it’s quite a fun word.

   None of the place names seemed remotely obscure, even if I would normally write Ebbow Vale rather than the Welsh.

9. I enjoyed this although I didn’t parse NOBLE GAS. I even looked up Eugene to see if that helped. I haven’t seen a clue like this before where the hidden word is an example of the solution. Nice.

   HIND was new to me too.

   Like Roz @8 I thought “old bus” was RAF slang – I think I remember it from the Biggles books I used to read as a child.

   Thanks Neo (first time I have tried one of your puzzles) and Pete MacLean

10. I enjoyed this puzzle and the excellent blog . Thanks to both .
    However, EBBW VALE and its spelling are not obscure. In the early twentieth century it was the home of the largest steelworks in Europe. The founder of the NHS, Nye Bevan, was its MP for many years. Perhaps not well known outside the U.K. but this applies to many other clues.

11. I couldn’t see the hidden neon until something switched and I saw the light.

12. A really enjoyable weekend puzzle for me.

    Just for the record, if it’s a Saturday puzzle, I can’t see why it shouldn’t have a few Britishisms — if that’s what they are — thrown in, or other mildly unusual entries. There’s plenty of time to ponder, surely. In any case I’m pretty sure WELWYN GC and EBBW VALE are hardly obscure to UK residents, and you’ll get them from the clues with this compiler anyway. I did actually think YARROW a bit on the wild side, but that hasn’t been mentioned yet by anyone else 🙂

    Like others, I don’t see what’s wrong with the clue for ABYSSAL. NOBLE GAS and NOVA SCOTIA my picks.

13. Ui Imair @12: As a non-Brit I expect “Britishisms” in UK crosswords, Saturday or otherwise; after all, they are British crosswords. I actually like picking up information about our mother tongue and its nation. I also enjoy Neo because he often includes words unknown to me that I derive from his excellent style of writing clues. I guess this particular crossword just exceeded my abilities on that score.

14. Lovely Saturday stuff from Neo as ever. I liked EARLOBE and ABYSSAL. Thanks Neo and Pete.

15. WELWYN doesn’t work as a homophone – the second W is silent.

16. Liked ABYSSAL especially.

17. Like Tony@16, as a non-Brit I enjoy learning britishisms through these puzzles, but for me 16d was unfair. It would have been fine as a TILT, if EBBW were a combination of letters that could have been guessed as a word in any language. WELWYN on the other hand was guessable from the clue and L and Y crossers; I first tried SELWYN, until google set me straight.
    HIND was new to me as well, and I started with RANCH as the second part of 7d, so this was not a good effort on my part – not Neo’s fault (except for 16d).
    Thanks Neo and Pete for the challenge and much-needed help.

18. FrankieG@15, WELWYN (23a) may not work as a homophone of the town (who says it has to?) but it works just fine as aural wordplay,

19. 16dn: It is a readily verifiable fact that W is a vowel in Welsh. This may not be widely known outside the UK (or even outside Wales), but I think there is enough in the clue to point you in the right direction. In my view, it is not fair to say that this could not have been known or guessed.

20. WELWYN GARDEN CITY is pronounced WELL IN. That’s not even close to WELL WIN.
    I’m a fan of good aural wordplay like KINK EARN NEWT and LOGGER RHYTHM.
    For me this one just doesn’t work.

21. Thanks SM@10, I think you demonstrated with far more humour than me how obscure EBBW VALE is. Thanks also to PB@19 for the Welsh lesson. I will try to keep that in mind. I think the issue is many of us did not know until last week that it is possible to end a word with BW – which makes parsing pretty difficult.

    And, isn’t ironic that the setter did not know how to pronounce WELWYN.

    I too enjoy learning Britishisms – I have mentioned previously that I am building a formidable knowledge of UK rivers and mountains. But please remember the majority of FT readers live outside UK, some of whom do the crossword. Look at the number of non-Brits who comment regularly in this blog, for example. The crossword editors and setters just need to keep this in mind and maintain a balance.

22. Just gonna have to sit here and take it I guess 😀

    Thanks Pete et al.

23. Does anyone pronounce Selwyn as sellin?
    I’ve always pronounced it as Welwyn

24. Panthes @23. If only all words spelled similarly were pronounced the same. The old joke tells us that “sitting on the jury” takes on a whole new meaning when pronounced like “bury”.

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