Financial Times 17,587 by IO

51 comments on “Financial Times 17,587 by IO”

1. MILITES GLORIOSI
   Could MILOS be some Roman theatrical styles? At the end instead of OSI, just I (infantrymen, principally), maybe.
   Also, It looks like a clue-as-def.

   ALL EARS (I think…)
   AS, L gripped=AL S—->L by LEAR—>LLEAR. AS gripped LLEAR.

   SEESAWS
   Could ‘yes and no’ itself be taken as ‘seesaws’ (like someone says yes, then no-dillydallying).

2. I’m still looking for the “simpler solutions” you mentioned! Far too many obscurities (3, 5, 7, 13, 16, 26/27). I don’t mind a few but these were way beyond my Ken. Abject failure I’m afraid.

3. This certainly was a challenge but not without its pleasures. I particularly enjoyed PUT OUT MORE FLAGS (the clue and the novel), SEESAWS, SILENT FILMS and CACTI.
   Couldn’t parse 6d, not knowing ‘dwam’ while 7d and the golf course (26/27a) eluded me entirely. So many thanks to Oriel for full clarification and to Io, of course.

4. Io has always occupied my “Don’t attempt” list, so I don’t know why I even looked at this. After solving only a handful of clues and deriving little or no pleasure, I gave up. A brief look through this blog has justified my decision to leave Io in said list.

5. GDU @4. Wish I’d given up that quickly. I applaud KVa for his effort in parsing ALL EARS but it doesn’t work for me. MILITES GLORIOSI is very obscure and I still can’t see the parsing. WHISTLING STRAITS is also very obscure. Didn’t see how the clue for SPOTTED DEER (also obscure(?)) worked as ‘bathing in’ suggests the SR is included but now see the ‘in’ goes with ‘short’. Then there’s DWAM …
   Sure some will like this but a big thumbs down from me.

6. I have edited the solution for 7d, having discovered that MILOS is an ancient Roman theatre. Not a perfectly elegant clue, but it’s IO, who sets ‘out the box’. Thanks everyone for your input so far.

7. I always enjoy a battle with Io and this one was more of a war than many of his crosswords. I looked at it on and off all morning between doing several other things and finally ended up with a completed grid. He certainly expects you to know some ‘stuff’

   Many thanks to Io and Oriel

8. I don’t usually attempt Io puzzles, but occasionally give one a try. I must have spent an hour and a half on this before I gave up, and I had precious little to show for my efforts.

9. Failed on this after confidently writing DEPENDS instead of SEESAWS

   To depend is to hang (swing) from something, and “yes and no” means depends. I still think this is a better answer than seesaws!

   Thanks to Oriel for putting me right and to Io for a great, if difficult, puzzle

10. As usual with an Io, I got about two-thirds OK, guessed a few more, then packed it in for the rest. A predictable DNF. Obscure parsing of obscure elements of obscure solutions are just joyless sterile formal exercises for me, like practicing long division. (And I enjoy working the Azed every week.) I guessed FERMI and ALL EARS, and I still don’t think the clues make any sense. Thanks for the blog, but I won’t even bother studying the parsing of the ones I couldn’t figure out. “Dwam”??? Come on.

11. “dalliance – not marriage – with a” -> D(alliance) – not marriage – W(ith )A

12. Dnf for me too. But applaud Oriel for his success and blog.

    Thanks to IO and Oriel

13. Superb puzzle, tough but hugely entertaining – I especially liked PUT OUT MORE FLAGS, not least because I love the book, and “WORD ON A BUYER” is a priceless Spoonerism. FERMI also made me laugh when the penny dropped.

    Yes, tough going with the parsing in a few places. I’m sure there must be more going on in IF LOOKS COULD KILL than just a cryptic definition, but I can’t see it.

    Not familiar with DWAM but got the solution from the crossing letters – though it’s ambiguous whether we want EDWARD VI or IV until you’ve solved OWING.

    I think ALL EARS is fine if you take it as [L by LEAR] both being gripped. The word order is a bit tricksy but it works for me.

    I had a different parsing for MILITES GLORIOSI – not necessarily better but see what you think of this…
    MOS – styles when acting, ie plural of MO (modus operandi)
    containing
    (IL – “the” Roman + TRILOGIES*)
    + I – infantrymen, initially

    MILITES GLORIOSI is the plural of MILES GLORIOSUS, a stock character of a boastful soldier in classical comedy, so the whole clue is the definition.

    Thanks, IO and Oriel!

14. Thank you, Frankie G @11, for putting us out of our misery re DWAM!
    And to Widdersbel @13; your parsing of 7d is surely the definitive one.

15. I’m with Geoff on IO’s grids.

    it doesn’t help when there are more encoding issues (that look very much like a “6”) on the downloadable version in 4D & 6D.
    Time this was sorted.

16. Widdersbel@13 – I think you’ve got the correct parse of MILITES GLORIOSI – well done!
    IF LOOKS COULD KILL – then a good-looking woman “une belle femme” would be deadly “fatale”
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_looks_could_kill suggests the phrase derives from Medusa

17. IF LOOKS COULD KILL I just took as a beautiful girl has “looks” means she is very pretty ,
    if looks ( being pretty ) could kill she would be fatal .

18. We are lucky to get IO typically once a month on a Wednesday, only wish he would still set for the Guardian.

19. Sorry Frankie, you beat me to it but I see we do agree.

20. FrankieG/Roz – yes, that works – if looks could kill, une belle femme would become une femme fatale, and “so” in the clue simply stands for the solution. I was overthinking it!

21. ALL EARS works as “Like gripped student by tragic role,” or maybe “Student tragic role gripped by like,” but I do not see how either of those translates to the clue as published.

22. I started well. I completed the first half in about 30 minutes, but then the rot set in and it must have taken me 90 minutes to do the rest. So many of my answers in the second half were guesses, and using the app, I made constant use of the check word function. Reading the blog, it turns out there were several clues I had no hope of parsing, given I simply do not have the requisite knowledge.

    In the end, the puzzle was way too difficult for someone of my skill. Similar to Cineraria @10, I felt much of it was a joyless exercise, wading among excessive obscurities. Indeed, despite the excellent blog, there are still a couple of clues I do not fully understand.

    So saying, I do admire those who enjoyed this – you obviously have far superior knowledge and skills.

    Thanks Io and Oriel

23. After half an hour I had two clues solved, and now I’ve seen the solutions I realise this one was way beyond my pay grade- 7D for goodness sake! I don’t have a “Do Not Attempt” list, but I’m thinking of getting one, if only for this setter.

24. Sigh. I don’t mind a hard puzzle. But when I come to find the answers to the clues I’d missed, I hope for my reaction to be “ah, of course!”, not “what on earth?” 7D a case in point. Definition and wordplay both involved words I’d not heard of, and even with all crossers I’d never have got this clue. Aimed at other solvers than me, I guess.

25. Way above my level. Got a handful and then just waited for the (brilliant!) parsing from Oriel.

    If looks could kill, I’d be looking at IO!!

26. Frankie@11: Yes! That’s how I had the parsing, not DWAM. Good work.
    Widdersbel@13: I parsed MILITES GLORIOSI as you did.

    Thanks to Io and Oriel. What a superb tandem, with Oriel a fine replacement for the estimable, never-complaining PeeDee.

27. Thanks Io and Oriel

    I for one loved it! JH is never going to set easy puzzles, so you have to set aside time, sharpen your wits, and prepare to rack your brains. He doesn’t so much outside the envelope as slit the sides and see what’s out there.

    I think it’s good news that he still appears in the FT (and less frequently the Indy) as well as his fortnightly Toryrag Toughies.

28. Thanks IO and Oriel.
    DNF without MILITES GLORIOSI.
    Needed parsing for three clues.
    Still liked this very much, unique setting style!
    Perhaps, the last for the year here, with 12 so far.

29. Got somewhere near finishing by looking some things up but really thoroughly defeated by combos of v unusual solutions and v difficult clues.
    Thanks Oriel for the explanations & congrats to Widdersbel for cracking that long one.
    For ALL EARS, Widdersbel has explained it but perhaps not spelled it out:
    AS, [with] L contained (gripped) next to (by) LEAR
    Liked SEESAWS and LORD CHAMBERLAIN, and discovered Thoth is an Egyptian god (hidden along with EARTH).

30. Had five after 90 minutes. Gave up. I’m with Mark A @15. Annoying wrong characters in the printed edition. Again

31. What a rubbish crossword.

    I spent an hour and a half and got nine answers.

    I take my hat off to those of you that could complete this, but I it’s a disgrace publishing such a thing in the Financial Times, catering only for elite solvers.

    I pay a subscription to read this paper, and don’t expect to have my time wasted like this

    I solved the last Io, so I thought I stood a the chance this time. It was just impossible for someone of my skill (previous three days crosswords allcompleted)

    Boo to the editor and boo to Io.

    What makes been mad is seeing the answer I realise I just didn’t stand a chance. Having solved the previous one I thought all I must be in with a prospect. Well, I wasn’t.

    So I feel taken advantage of and abused.

32. Moly@31 So your points are (a) you should be able to solve all crosswords in the FT unaided because you pay a subscription for the paper, (b) if you fail to solve a clue it’s the setter’s fault not yours, and (c) the FT should publish only easy crosswords.

    The principal purpose of this site is to help solvers understand how cryptic clues work. The hope is that this will help people to become more proficient at solving puzzles as they gain experience.

33. Amazing job Oriel, explaining a fiendish crossword. I enjoyed doing the first half of this, but was on it all yesterday evening and still ended up checking or revealing – 6, 7, 13, 27 : the usual suspects. Thanks also to FrankieG@11 and Widderspiel@13 for making the solutions to two of my failures just a bit more accessible. Come on, John – I love taking on an Enigmatist (which I can even complete sometimes), and I know to expect an Io puzzle to be tougher than an Enigmatist one, but there is a point where it ceases being fun.

34. I tend to save FT crosswords to complete when I’m travelling with my daughter. I have a Guardian subscription and mostly complete that cryptic, with the odd DNF. My daughter really likes Io as a setter because she gets a chance to read and ponder the clues as I’m not so quick at answering them as some other setters.

    We solved a lot of this yesterday on a mostly underground trip, so weren’t able to look up some of the more abstruse references, although the check button works underground, and I finished it off later, which meant we both came here to understand why various clues worked. She spotted THORN and why, plus ME TOO, but neither of us could see why the OO before coming here, although I should have as I’ve seen that meaning of rabbit before. Also MILITES GLORIOSI because I’d worked out some of anagram fodder, but not all, and EDWARD VI made sense, but I had no idea where the DWA came from.

    Thank you to Io for a fun challenge and Oriel for the much needed blog.

35. Rudolf @32 I don’t think Moly has made any of those points, but despite your taking his remarks to extremes I find (b) and to a lesser extent (a) reasonable positions.
    A setter may be at fault for making a puzzle or clue too difficult. 7d is an example. There are those who can and will solve anything, having a combination of large vocabulary, long experience and plenty of time, but 7d will simply have been an impassable barrier to everyone else, and that would have been quite obvious when setting.
    There’s pressure on this site to stifle negative feedback, but the positives are meaningless without it.

36. James – I think your points are indeed reasonable and well made. I think if Moly wrote in the same measured tone as yourself then his “negative feedback” would be seen as such and would carry a lot more weight. As it is Moly’s post comes across as a something of petulant rant.

    It is no surprise that feedback expressed like this isn’t taken very sympathetically, and not really surprising that there is a (perceived) pressure to stifle such comment.

37. I failed to finish this simply because I had never heard of the film BIRD ON A WIRE, so never had a hope. The rest was undoubtedly challenging, but it all went in, some of it not well parsed. I rarely fail to complete the FT and Guardian puzzles, so I could say this was annoying, but I regard it as only reasonable that sometimes my GK is not up to it, so I am not complaining.

38. Pleased it wasn’t DWAM (a fine scottish word meaning “in a stupor”) as it doesn’t share any characteristics with DALLIANCE apart from the first letter. Enough has already been said about the rest…
    Thanks IO n Oriel

39. Thanks James and Pedee

    I accept that I should have been more measured. Apologies to anyone offended.

    But I stand by my basic points, and thank you for generally accepting these.

    I was frustrated after wasting a lot of time, and what really irritates me as the inconsistency of the setting. Despite trying to do cryptic crosswords for nearly 20 years, I still find myself in the foothills with some of the setters.

    And I may be mistaken, but I think they’ve got more difficult of late.

    I also nitice that this site, which I find incredibly helpful, tends to be very polite about all of the crosswords.

    Some are far better than others, that is the truth.

    But generally speaking, every setter gets a pat on the back regardless.

    I believe honest feedback is likely to lead to improvement whereas backslapping will just encourage mediocrity.

40. PS. I was also trying to provoke a response, and I succeeded in that regard.

41. Hi Moly, I also think that there is a tendency on this site for people to praise puzzles more than to criticise them. Actually I see this as a very good thing. Without this imbalance site would descend to the level of the rest of the Internet, and that would spell the end for fifteensquared.

    Whether one puzzle is “better” than another depends on the person doing the judging. What one person views as improvement is seen as retrograde steps by someone else. You thought this puzzle was rubbish, I loved it. There is no universal “truth” here, neither of us is wrong, our statements are not contradictory, they just represent personal views coming from different viewpoints.

    Over the hundreds of blogs I wrote here it became clear to me that in general people don’t qualify their positive personal opinions. People don’t write “in my opinion this puzzle is wonderful”, they just write “this puzzle is wonderful”. Readers do not assume the (positive) poster is an extremist who believes their view is the universal truth, they are just stating a personal view and typing fewer words for the sake of convenience.

    However, it also became clear to me that reading unqualified negative comment really does invoke anger in people. Reading comments that use emotive language to criticise puzzles without qualifying this as “in my personal opinion etc” really does lead to bad feeling. People do not react to negative and positive comment equally. Unqualified negative comment gets seen as the behaviour of a troll.

    Like it or not, positive and negative feedback is not treated equally. One has to be a lot more careful about how one writes negative feedback. This might not be fair, but that is how it is, and how it needs to be if fifteensquared is to continue being the polite and helpful place it is.

    As an aside, I have a theory:

    Negative and positive feedback are both useful, but it is a lot easier to to cause bad feeling with negative feedback so people use it less. Ironically this sometimes leads to the very outburst of frustration that was trying to be avoided. Is there an element of that in your original post? You read so many positive comments about such puzzles that finally you snap and write a negative rant to “redress the balance”? A feeling of being outnumbered so you have to hit harder? I’m not intending any criticism here, I am just speculating about how the site works.

42. PS – I also think that puzzles are generally getting harder. I have a theory about that too, but perhaps leave that one for another time!

43. PeeDee, that all seems fair. Having thought more about what I meant by pressure to stifle negative feedback, I think it is a stifling effect created primarily by majority action/peer pressure (i.e. nearly all posts being positive) which is occasionally reinforced by direct censure of a negative post. As it is obviously the majority view I’d have to accept that it’s more beneficial than not, even though I feel no discomfort myself at reading a critical post and don’t really understand the reason for others’ discomfort, so long as posts are just about the puzzle.
    As for Moly’s original post, I don’t agree that it would carry more weight if it had been moderated. Perhaps its crossness made other posters disregard it, but surely they weren’t its target audience. It was directed at the editor/setter. An honest blast like that must be more effective than the mild understatement that showed that other people had had similar experiences.

44. For me it depends a bit on the imagined audience for the comments. Yes, other solvers – but I have to assume the setters and editors look in too.

    It will be painful for them to see they’re infuriating (some) solvers, but surely better in the long run if they know?

45. Interesting discussion.

    I had no problem with Moly’s rant @31 – the substance of it boils down to “I found this puzzle too difficult to be enjoyable” which is hard to argue with as one person’s opinion. I took a very different view of this puzzle but I can respect that as a point of view. (In fact, I found Moly’s post quite entertaining.)

    Peedee, I don’t think adding “in my opinion” to posts would be useful in any way – I take it as read that posts are maters of opinion except where they deal with factual matters of parsing. What would be more useful is for posters to explain why they did or did not like a puzzle… On the other hand, I try to keep my comments reasonably concise – I could probably write an essay on all the finer points of this one puzzle alone and what makes it so brilliant, but I’ll spare you my waffling. In short, I find it incredible that someone who has been setting crosswords as long as IO can still find new and surprising ways to fox us as solvers.

    Also, I don’t see much evidence of negative comments being stifled on this site – just look at any day’s Guardian blog… mercifully, there tend to be fewer of the hyper-pedantic (and often incorrect) quibbles on the FT blogs.

    Hopping Rhino @44 – I know that many of the setters and editors do read the comments here and do take them on board, but we have to remember that fifteensquared commenters are a small, self-selecting cohort and the comments here may not necessarily reflect the wider consensus of the many thousands of people who solve these crosswords every day.

46. Widdersbel @45: I completely take the point about a self selected sample. Genuine question – do editors/setters have any way to access the views of the many thousands of solvers?

    Having reflected further, I think the issue with the Io puzzle was one of surprise. There’s nothing wrong with a very hard puzzle – that will be just right for some, even if it’s infuriating for others. But in this case the others (incl me) had no idea what we were taking on. Perhaps puzzles need colour coding like ski runs. If you’re a beginner, stick to blues, and avoid the blacks – for experts vice versa.

    I get that regular FT solvers will perhaps have known that Io was tough, but beginners certainly won’t, and it sets them up for an unnecessary bad experience.

47. I have followed this discussion with some interest. I think we should remember that the founding purpose of this website is “to provide a daily analysis of, and commentary on, the cryptic puzzles published in …”. The fact that some editors and setters do take note of the comments here is a bonus, but they are under no sort of obligation to do so.

48. HR @46 – if it helps, IO is aka Enigmatist of the Guardian and Nimrod of the Indy, and is editor of the Inquisitor series. As Roz says, he’s one of the few really TOUGH setters who still appears regularly in the dailies (though we haven’t seen Enigmatist for a couple of years now, alas).

    I don’t know the answer to your question but I do know that the FT’s crossword ed is a very experienced and well respected journalist, and that counts for a lot when gauging what readers want. (Having worked in consumer magazines for well over 20 years, I know that keeping the readers happy is a very inexact science and a lot of it comes down to journalistic instinct.)

49. Widdersbell @48. That does help, thank you.

    PB @47 Certainly agree that eds and setters are under no obligation to read comments such as these, or even if they do, to take them as gospel. Per Widdersbell, journalistic instinct has a key role. More generally, giving customers exactly they ask for can be a trap.

    All that said, it still seems worth pondering what kind of commentary here would be useful to a setter/ed if they chose to use it. The engagement of minds between setter and solver feels like the essence of crosswords.

50. How to resolve varied viewpoints into a single publication without upsetting too many people is at the heart of what editing is about. I find this a very difficult and very interesting problem. Similarly, why do some people perceive critical comment as being stifled and some don’t? What social behaviours drive this? These are the difficult questions with no easy answers.

    In comparison, whether someone thinks a puzzle is good or not is a simple affair. A person has their own values, they apply them to the puzzle. They either like it or they don’t. Almost a mechanical exercise.

    For me the real interest comes when one has to cohabit a space with people who hold different values, different ideas of what “good” should look like. Widderspel @48 hits the nail on the head here: it is an inexact science and a lot comes down to instinct.

51. Hopping Rhino @46 when I was a beginner the Guardian had setters far more fearsome than Enigmatist/IO , some weekends I would not solve a single clue, you soon learn who they are but I did not avoid them and kept trying. I hope this has not put you off IO , most of his puzzles for the FT are a little friendlier.
    I think there is room for occasional very tough puzzles in the dailies, I am glad the FT agrees and sad that the Guardian has given up .

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