Financial Times 17,592 by BRADMAN

18 comments on “Financial Times 17,592 by BRADMAN”

1. Very enjoyable. I knew of carbuncles as kind of boils on steroids, and was unaware that they’re also gems. Two quite disparate meanings.

   I became befuddled for 21d. I thought that the clue was telling us that a religious organisation was around “up”, and tried very hard to find a religious organisation STA among the dozens of possibilities in Wikipedia.

   I hadn’t heard of Joseph Addison. Tile/hat got me too (18a). Collins tells me it’s “British old-fashioned slang”. And there were two that weren’t in my lexicon: TRACTATE & BASINET.

   Thanks Bradman & Cineraria.

2. Thanks Bradman & Cineraria.

   ACTS OUT
   Yesterday scchua called a similar one a ‘reverse clue’. Seen others calling this type of anagram
   ‘a reverse anagram’. There may be a more apt technical name for it. Will hear from others.

   An indirect anagram as I understand is an anagram of a synonym of a word in the clue (as
   opposed to the anagram of the word itself).

3. I enjoyed much of this, but for me the less-than-familiar words were close to being more than just a complication.

   I had no real problems beyond that, although I did hold myself up with the reasonable “catch on” rather than LATCH ON, and I see salvation as a completely different concept to religious freedom – even in crossword land. But no big deal. No real favourites today.

   Thanks Bradman and Cineraria

4. As Cineraria says, Bradman is solid in that his grids are always time well spent.
   All done and dusted with the exception of ADDISON which I had to guess. It’s a good thing, too, that TRACTATE and BASINET were neatly clued or else they’d have been failures; I only knew BAS(S)INET as a place in which babies sleep.
   I liked ENCHANT, CENTRALLY, STUPA and ETIQUETTE (the latter being one of three that took me longer to LATCH ON(to) than they should have.
   For 1d, I thought initially of S.PINE (something that might stick into you as you pass by) but common sense did, at last, prevail after a quick run through other four-letter trees.
   Thanks to both Bradman and Cineraria.

5. Cineraria,
   I thought, like you, of STRIKE, at first, but it was the presence of ‘is’ in the clue which made me think of STRUCK. I then wasn’t sure if ‘is hit or just ‘hits’ was the definition; both seem to work.

6. Sorry, I meant is 1A’s definition ‘hit’ or ‘is hit’?

7. STRUCK
   Diane@6
   IMO, ‘hit’ seems all right as def. ‘is hit’ will be ‘is struck’. Right?

8. Paul recently had – Vehicle hit , bonnet gone (5) – giving TRIKE but people thought TRUCK . Similar issue here but with the s added instead of removed.

9. Thanks for the blog, a very neat set of clues , I did not know ADDISON but the clue was very fair. The Blue CARBUNCLE is a Sherlock Holmes mystery about a stolen gemstone. The TRACTATE Middoth is a ghost story by M R James.
   KVa@2 agree for ACTS OUT , I would call it a reverse anagram .
   An indirect anagram could involve just one letter being substituted in before the anagram, it means not ALL the letters of the anagram are seen in the clue and deserves a severe Paddington stare.

10. Yes, KVa @7, course it is!

11. To my mind, too many clues had several possible answers: STRIKE-STRUCK even perhaps STRAIN; LATCH ON-CATCH ON; DEFILEMENT-DERAILMENT. Oh well. Good blog!

12. Thanks Bradman and Cineraria

    23ac: I would call this an inverse anagram, keeping the application of the word “reverse” for the order of letters in a part or whole of the answer. The term “indirect anagram” is generally understood to mean one in which not all of the letters to be rearranged appear in the clue. It should be noted that Roz@9 states an extreme adverse position on the acceptability of indirect anagrams. Other positions are available. I like Azed’s position which allows the setter to give an unequivocal indication of the letters to be rearranged. Some people are happy with much more indirectness than that.

13. Wondered why the Latin word “degradatio” in 11a DEFILEMENT — but it’s just an online typo, not in the paper or pdf

14. For TIL(D)E = hat there’s this song: Where Did You Get That Hat? ©1888. Chorus: ‘
    Where did you get that hat? | Where did you get that tile?
    Isn’t it a nobby one, | And just the proper style?
    I should like to have one | Just the same as that!
    Where e’er I go they shout: “Hello! where did you get that hat?”‘
    Thanks B&C

15. 1ac (STRUCK), but also 11ac, 19dn, and possibly 1dn: I have generally regarded Don Manley in his various guises as belonging to the school of thought which expects each clue to have only one solution on its own, not depending on checked letters. For 1ac itself, I am inclined to forgive Bradman to some extent in that he may not have thought of TRIKE as a possible alternative vehicle – there could be no such excuse in Paul’s case mentioned by Roz@8.

    For 1dn, ODE 2010 gives us two meanings for the noun spine that could fit “that is sticky”: “the part of a book’s jacket or cover that encloses the inner edges of the pages, …” and in Geology “a tall mass of viscous lava extruded from a volcano”. I am prepared to dismiss the second of these as too obscure, but the first one seems to me to fit, and I am sure that several of the FT setters would be prepared to defend it as a valid answer if the checked letters had given us -P-N-.

    21ac (SALIVATION): OED 2010 gives, as a theological meaning for salvation, “deliverance from sin and its consequences, believed by Christians to be brought about by faith in Christ”. Similar definitions can be found in Chambers 2016 and Collins 2023. I think that can reasonably be considered near enough to freedom in a religious sense, and hence can be clued as “religious freedom”. I am not sure that I would ever use the word in that way myself, but, if we insist that setters only use meanings that every single one of us would use in our own speech, we are not going to leave them with much.

16. Further to my comment@15 on 1dn: to forestall any suggestion that the FT grids would not allow a five letter answer with only two checked letters, what if the answer had been in the plural and checked as -P-N-S?

17. Thanks Bradman for the ultimately satisfying challenge. One of the joys of solving is discovering new words through clever wordplay; in my mind Bradman and Neo both excel at this. RUDD, TRACTATE, GABBLE, and BASINET all fit that bill. I liked CREAM TEA, ENCHANT, RESPITE, and OINKS quite a bit. I too was held up a bit by “strike” instead of STRUCK. Thanks Cineraria for the blog.

18. Just for the avoidance of doubt, in comment 15 on 21ac, OED 2010 was a typo for ODE 2010. The New Oxford Dictionary of English was first published in 1998, and dropped the word New from its title with the second edition in 2003 (revised 2005). The third edition dated 2010 appears to be the latest edition.

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