Financial Times 17,463 by Leonidas

26 comments on “Financial Times 17,463 by Leonidas”

1. This was a steady and thoroughly enjoyable exercise with numerous smiles en route to the finish in the SW corner with FRUGAL.
   Very satisfying to parse and solve all to boot. SPOONBILLS was a fun reminder of the old TV programme Magpie. 5 and the connected 23 were clever but HOMESPUN was my overall pick.
   Re SQUILL, I didn’t know this plant but parsed it as you did, Pete.
   Thanks to Leonidas and your good self.

2. Thanks, Leonidas and Pete Maclean!
   Liked SPOONBILLS, AUTUMN, FRUGAL, S O T DESERT and PEG.
   SQUILL
   Dictionaries give us many names for this: sea squill, sea onion, maritime squill…
   There seems to be something ‘marine’ about it!
   Will wait for some expert comments.

3. Not much to write this week, as Pete, Diane and KVa have reflected most of my thoughts.

   I do want to mention READJUST and SUBSEQUENT as clever clues. And I do wonder if 26 works (strictly speaking, but not a big deal).

   Thanks Pete for your usual, quality explanations and thanks to Leonidas for an outstanding puzzle – the best Leonidas yet.

4. Marty@3
   AUTUMN
   Do you feel that ‘three (months)’ is too loose to define a season?
   I found it a clever def.

5. Good crossword.

   I wonder whether Uri Geller really counts as GK one might be expected to know. Our 25yo son was visiting and joined in over Sunday brunch: not quite one for the kids.

6. Thanks for the blog, very good set of clues, concise and precise on the whole.
   I am also unsure about SQUILL , I know blue squill , a bit like bluebells , beautiful in spring on the West coast. There is marine squill , sometimes red squill , a bit like a lily. I do not think there is a marine organism known as squill.

7. I can only echo the praise for puzzle and blog. Great fun and clever. Thank you.
   KVa is right about SQUILL. Botanical name is drimia maritima(wish I knew how to put this into italics)

8. I’m with Martyn @3 in his opening sentence – and with KVa’s response @4 re AUTUMN.

   I’d like to add 19ac EXULTANT, 4dn HOMESPUN and 17dn QUATRAIN to Pete’s list of favourites

   I’ll say again that I do like Leonidas’ puzzles – and I have such faith in his cluing that I didn’t think to look up SQUILL.

   Many thanks to Leonidas for the treat and Pete for the blog.

   [You may all like to know that there’s an Arachne (Rosa Klebb) tribute puzzle in today’s Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/prize/29123 ]

9. Thanks Leonidas and Pete

   20dn: Chambers 2014 gives us the following:
   squill n any plant of the genus Scilla, eg spring squill, S. verna, with strap-like leaves and blue star-shaped flowers; the sea onion (Urginea maritima), formerly included in that genus
   Following this around, sea onion takes us to sea squill, whose definition begins “a Mediterranean plant, Urginea maritima“.
   I think there is enough there to allow us to accept the definition used by Leonidas.

10. My train of thought went something like ‘I am sure a squill is found in the sea, like a sea cucumber or something: let me just check Chambers … yes, it lists sea onion as the second entry, so I was right, no further checking needed, job done’. My wife has just helpfully observed that there is some in our garden.

    Thanks to Pete and everyone who has contributed today.

11. Why is green= cash?
    Thanks

12. Joining Oldham@11 with a supplementary question:
    Is ‘green=money’ an import from the USA (greenback for USD) or does it have
    an independent story?

13. Green is predominantly US slang, but if I remember right the jam had a song about having ‘a pocket full of pretty green’.

14. I am not really bothered about SQUILL , good to see it in a puzzle, I love seeing it every spring. However having marine in one of its many names or being called sea squill or sea onion or having coastal varieties does not really make it a marine organism.

15. A clever rejoinder from Eileen at #8’s first line, with which I wholeheartedly concur. An excellent puzzle by Leonidas.

16. [Thank you for the tip-off, Eileen @8]

17. I enjoyed this great puzzle last week.

    I had no problem at all with AUTUMN. Also, I’ve found a squill/sea-squill/sea onion/marine organism connection which I’m happy with.

18. Thanks Leonidas for another excellent crossword. I had no issues with any of the clues or their parsings. I liked PITY (nice surface), SCAM, NOSTRADAMUS, HOMESPUN, and PEG. Thanks Pete for the blog.

19. Let me explain what I meant @3 when wondered whether AUTUMN works. As I wrote at the time it is not a big deal – more musing than anything.

    In its original form, it looks fine as it is instructing us to “Insert month into gold cask”. And a gold cask could conceivably exist. But does it still work when you turn it into “insert M into AU TUN”, given is no such thing as AU TUN? I am probably overthinking it……

20. Martyn @ 19 It depends whether you read ‘gold cask’ as ‘AU TUN’ or, following the crossword convention of ignoring punctuation (and a space is a form of punctuation), ‘AUTUN’.

21. Re 19, with that logic, you’d have a problem with just about every clue there is.

22. Is “back” doing double duty in DORSUM or is “rolled” enough to tell us to reverse “mud”?

23. No, ‘wet earth’ is ‘rolled’. That’s the indicator.

24. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/squill
    ‘1 A European bulbous liliaceous plant, of the genus Scilla, used in medicine for its acrid, expectorant, diuretic, and emetic properties
    2 A sea onion (Drimia maritima)
    3 A mantis shrimp, Squilla mantis, from the Mediterranean’
    Number 3 is a “Marine organism ” but not what Leonidas intended(2) nor what he has in his garden(1).

25. Thanks Eileen@8. I just completed my first Guardian puzzle and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Well, one clue still unparsed….)

    Thank you for the tip

26. 5, 10, & 12 were dreadfully bad clues which completely spoiled any enjoyment of this puzzle.

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