Financial Times 17,504 by GOLIATH

by

A gentle challenge from GOLIATH this Friday.

FF: 9 DD : 7

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1 OVEREMPHASIS
Too much stress as he improves production (12)
[ AS HE IMPROVES ]*
10 HIRSUTE
The woman’s legal case sounds hairy (7)
sounds like HER ( the woman’s ) SUIT ( legal case )
11 CUBICLE
Little room for writer in cryptic clue (7)
BIC ( writer ) in [ CLUE ]*
12 TONED
Start off high on drugs, to become healthy and strong (5)
sTONED ( high on drugs, without first letter )
13 ESURIENT
Tu es fou de manger rien! Get greedy! (8)
[ TU ES ]* containing RIEN ; i found out that fou is scottish for drink, and the longer phrase in french means crazy
15 FEATHER BOA
Stole mint? It’s to put in tea of a sort (7,3)
HERB ( mint ) in [ TEA OF A ]*
16 SEMI
Possible home of cruise missiles (4)
hidden in “..cruiSE MIssiles”
18 NAAN
Bread sent back and forth (4)
cryptic clue, back and forth indicating a palindrome
20 UNCUT STONE
Rough diamond abandoning us to create contents (5,5)
reverse anagram clue; us = UU ( pluralized ) + CONTENTS = UNCUT STONE
22 SNOW-CLAD
Sad about clown flummoxed by the appearance of Mont Blanc? (4-4)
SAD containing [ CLOWN ]*
24 JOINT
Venue that could be hip (5)
double def
26 ETHMOID
Hit me! Do! To break a bone! (7)
[ HIT ME DO ]*
27 AUDITOR
One inspects car store internally (7)
AUDI ( car ) TOR ( sTORe, internal letters )
28 MAKING AMENDS
Evolving mankind’s embraced sport as compensation (6,6)
[ MANKIND’S ]* containing GAME ( sport )
DOWN
2 VERANDA
Terrace with letters that spell wartime singer’s name (7)
cryptic def; wartime singer refers to vera lynn. her first name can be interpreted as VER AND A.
3/23 ROUND THE CLOCK
Where hands go all the time (5,3,5)
cryptic def
4 MEEK
Global heirs invoke emperor’s return (4)
hidden, reversed in “..invoKE EMperor..”; the meek shall inherit the earth
5 HOCUS POCUS
Extremely posh couscous cooked for a spell (5-5)
[ PH ( PosH, end letters ) COUSCOUS ]*
6/17 SOBER AS A JUDGE
Abstaining from drink for legal reasons? (5,2,1,5)
cryptic def
7 SECRETE
Stash of classified drug (7)
SECRET ( classified ) E ( drug )
8 PHOTO FINISHES
Soup as dessert oddly easy for close events (5,8)
PHO ( soup ) TO FINISH ( as dessert ) ES ( EaSy, off characters of )
9 WEST SIDE STORY
The FT destroys its review of musical (4,4,5)
WE ( the ft ) [ DESTROYS ITS ]*
14 IRON MAIDEN
Press and media may be beginning to notice rock band (4,6)
IRON ( press ) [ MEDIA ]* N ( Notice, first letter )
17
See 6
19 APOTHEM
Article taken by an Englishman to mean geometrical distance (7)
THE ( article ) in A POM ( englishman ) ; perpendicular distance from the centre of a regular polygon to any of its sides
21 OMITTED
Forgotten reference about glove (7)
OED ( reference, Oxford English Dictionary ) around MITT ( glove )
23
See 3
25 SAGA
Story is great fun when read backwards (4)
A GAS ( great fun ), all reversed

23 comments on “Financial Times 17,504 by GOLIATH”

  1. Thanks Goliath for a well-crafted, very enjoyable crossword. I had many favourites including OVEREMPHASIS, CUBICLE, ESURIENT (Francophobes will hate this clue!), FEATHER BOA, MEEK (great hidden reversal), HOCUS-POCUS (only because I love that word), and SECRETE. (I’m certain a second review of the clues would yield a second list of favourites because I liked the entire crossword.) Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

  2. Thanks, Goliath and Turbolegs!

    My faves: UNCUT STONE and PHOTO FINISHES

    ESURIENT
    To add to what is said in the blog (based on an understanding with zero French knowledge):
    Tu es fou de manger rien=You are crazy to eat nothing.
    Mixing English and French as ‘needed’ it can be read as:
    TU ES crazy to eat RIEN.
    RIEN in (TU ES)*

  4. SNOW-CLAD vs appearance of Mont Blonc: There seems to be a part of speech mismatch.
    Even ‘by the appearance…’ doesn’t seem to work. Correct me, please.

  5. Searched high and low for a French speaker to help me to parse ESURIENT, but didn’t find one. Nor could I parse UNCUT STONE & PHOTO FINISH. New to my lexicon ETHMOID & APOTHEM.

    Good fun, plenty of smiles, thanks Goliath & Turbolegs.

  6. Despite being a retired mathematician, I don’t recall ever seeing APOTHEM before. I did know ETHMOID though. My French is poor but was good enough to get ESURIENT, a word I only know from crosswords. Took me ages to get PHOTO FINISHES followed by FEATHER BOA as my last two in.

  7. Thanks for the blog, totally agree with Tony @1 , a superb set of clues showing great craft and imagination. I second all the favourites listed above, I will add VERANDA , the x and y trick is one of my favourites. My French is very limited but I got the gist of the clue for ESURIENT and all the letters were there to work with. ETHMOID is new to me, the clue was fair with all the letters in place. I did know APOTHEM, it has a good defition being tricky to define concisely.

  9. The only place I’ve encountered ESURIENT is John Cleese in Monty Python’s cheese shop — my favourite sketch.

  10. An excellent puzzle with many words that were new to me:APOTHEM,ETHMOID and ESURIENT. Nor had I heard of the pop band, IRON MAIDEN and seeing images of their records I have no regrets.
    Thank you ,Goliath and Turbolegs for the usual clear blog.

  11. Like others, ETHMOID and APOTHEM were new to me.

    Thanks KVa re 13A for the explanation. Like you, I am pretty fluent in French and translated the sentence rather than trying to separate the parts of the clue.

    4D was my last one in and it reminds me of an old joke – I don’t know who said it: “Until the meek inherit the earth, they are there to be exploited”!

  12. My list of favourites exactly matches Tony Santucci’s, with the addition of 9dn WEST SIDE STORY – but, like him, I could add a whole lot more.

    My take on ESURIENT was: an anagram (fou – foolish) of TU ES round RIEN – but perhaps that’s what KVa and Peter @11 said!

    Many thanks to Goliath for a highly enjoyable puzzle and Turbolegs for a blog to match.

  14. Yes Eileen@12
    I said this (and it’s the same in essence as what you said):

    TU ES crazy to eat RIEN.

    ‘crazy’ in place of ‘foolish’ though both of us considered an anagram of TU ES
    Also ‘to eat’ in place of ‘around’ -again meaning the same thing for our purposes.

    RIEN in (TU ES)*

  19. Using foreign words as an anagram indicator (fou) and containment indicator (manger) – Je suis gobsmacked.

  20. Same as Tony@1. Share the same list of remote words as SM@10 (a few too many for my liking) although I do know IRON MAIDEN the band. Love SM tagging them as a pop band – a wonderful put down.

    Could not work out where the UU came from in UNCUT STONE – thanks for showing me Turbolegs.

    Thanks Goliath for an enjoyable puzzle and thanks Turbolegs for the explanation.

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