Financial Times 17,603 by GUY

23 comments on “Financial Times 17,603 by GUY”

1. ISLE
   Also some wordplay:
   W (Western) +ISLE (this) might be LEWIS.

2. Thanks KVa@1 – that makes the clue much better.

3. Found it hard to get on Guy’s wavelength today but got there in the end. The wordplay in 29a led me to guess WINCEYETTE so was pleased to find I was correct. Could only parse HIRE CAR as a cd, as in blog, but wondered if there was more to it.

4. Another solid puzzle from Guy and a decent workout to boot.
   Favourites were FASTENER (both for the reverse hidden answer and the surface), STAGGER and the delightfully old-fashioned WINCEYETTE (for pyjamas and nighties).
   Thanks to Guy and Teacow.

5. HIRE CAR
   I took it as a CD like Teacow and Hovis.
   A moving ‘holiday let’ (which conventionally is
   an immovable property) with a variety of views
   like Lakeview, Seaview etc.,

   Maybe there is more hidden in the clue.

6. Tricky for a Monday but enjoyable

   My favourite has to be 29a because if you ever showed my dad a garment you’d bought, he’d always say “that’s nice, is it winceyette? 🙂

   Thanks to Guy and Teacow

7. I also enjoyed this, so thanks to Guy.
   In my (rather frequent) pedantic/quibble moods I would not be happy with “vergers” in 27a meaning “edges”. Although the intended interpretation is obvious, a verge is an edge and the only meaning for verger given in Chambers is the religious one. The OED also does not have verger as relating to edge, giving only the religious meaning and a Middle English use of verger meaning a garden.

8. Thanks Guy and Teacow

   Perplexus@7: I cannot find verger with the necessary meaning in Chambers, Collins, ODE, or SOED either. However, I cannot find flower in any of them with the meaning “something which flows”, and that is a long-established way of referring to a river – so well-established that to an experienced solver, it is a good misdirection when the word is used with its normal meaning. So what do we do?
   1. Find fault in my checking of the dictionaries?
   2. Ban “flower” in that sense”?
   3. Allow “verger” as used today?
   4. Find some justification for allowing the cryptic use of “flower” but not “verger”?

   I have gone through the relevant parts of each of the dictionaries twice, but would still be happy if someone can find fault.

9. Pelham Barton@8: fair point – I had not considered the “flower” analogy, so I think we go with your 3 and move on. Thanks for your diligence.

10. Similar to above.

    I also found it had to get on Guy’s wavelength, but in the end I got it all in and most of it parsed, even the unknown WINCEYETTE. No real favourites, but I agree with the “solid cluing” comments above. I also had same comments as above for ISLE and HIRE CAR.

    I am not going to answer PB@8, but I also questioned the use of verger, particularly after looking it up. I will venture as far as reminding PB of previous statements that there needs to be an objective test for acceptability, and that test is whether a given meaning in is the dictionary.

    Thanks Guy and Teacow

11. Thanks Guy and Teacow.
    Regarding the verger issue, someone once commented that there is only one rule in crossword land, the setter sets, and the solver solves. I will file away verger as an equivalent of flower, and no doubt forget about it until it’s too late again.

12. As “verge” as a verb is in all the dictionaries, I think you can have any regular derivation such as verging or verger without them having to also be in the dictionary.

13. I cannot let pass unchallenged the statement by Martyn@10 which I quote in full again here:
    “I will venture as far as reminding PB of previous statements that there needs to be an objective test for acceptability, and that test is whether a given meaning in is the dictionary.”
    I do not recognise the words following “previous statements that” as at all a fair summary of my position, or anything said by anyone else with which I have intentionally expressed total agreement. If Martyn feels that it is important to refer to any previous statement of mine, perhaps he will give my exact words and the reference, so that I can be sure that he is not quoting out of context.

    I have certainly on many recent occasions argued that the setter is entitled to use any meaning given in one of the standard dictionaries, but I am happy to confirm my view that this is a sufficient condition for use, not a necessary one.

14. I still do not really understand HIRE CAR, even as a (barely?) cryptic definition? (I would call this a “rental car,” but that is not the problem.) The view changes because one is driving around??? OK.

    Tough solve.

15. PB@13 – someone recently listed four different dictionaries and stated a word is acceptable if it is in one of these. And I interpreted that as also meaning the opposite. Anyway, apologies as I remembered you as writing it, obviously wrongly, or perhaps I just interpreted it the wrong way.

    In the end, I think Macmorris@11 summed up well the actual situation – the only rule is the setter sets, and the solver solves.

16. Thanks for the blog, very good set of clues , I thought ISLE was very neat .
    Macmorris@ 11 , you are partially quoting me – the setter sets and we try to solve, but we can grumble about clues we do not like.

17. Martyn@15: If it is a recent comment listing four dictionaries, it is very likely to be one of mine. Perhaps you are thinking of this one, which I wrote last Friday with regard to FT 17,601:

    “Personally I do not want setters to be bound by a standard which I cannot verify, and so I am happy with a rule that says that any abbreviation appearing in any one of the four dictionaries mentioned in comment 17 could be used, or possibly just the first three of them, which can be called the main single volume dictionaries. Anyway, the FT policy appears to be along those lines.”

    Please note that was about abbreviations. The four dictionaries referred to in the above remark were the same four as listed in comment 8 on this blog (in the same order). To clarify the last paragraph of comment 13, my view is that the presence of a word or definition in one of those dictionaries is a sufficient answer on a question of validity, but never on a question of obscurity. In particular, if a word only appears in the two volume SOED, and none of the others, it could well be regarded as obscure. I do sometimes quote definitions from the SOED, but generally only if they are more clearly worded than a similar definition in one of the single volume dictionaries. I mainly use the SOED as a reference for when a word came into the language.

    Certainly I only ever meant the explicit presence of a word or meaning to be a sufficient condition for validity, not a necessary one.

18. There are many examples of words employed in crosswords in a playfully cryptic sense which differs from their dictionary meaning. Apart from “flower”, which Pelham has cited, the list includes, for example, “banker” (for river), “barman” (for composer), “linesman” (for poet), “disheartened” (as a middle letter(s) deletion indicator), and “discovered” (as an ends deletion indicator). These are well-established elements of the setter’s arsenal of misdirection. The use of “verger” in this puzzle is surely something to be applauded for its originality.

19. Agree with Rudolf above. Filled it in and moved on with no sense of a problem.

20. Adding to Rudolph , winger is often used for birds. Verger may be new, I do not recall seeing it before , and it may become established in the future.

21. I’ve enjoyed the discussion about the words used cryptically. Personally, I like the penny dropping moment when you get it, because that, to me, is the whole point of a cryptic crossword. If every clue works by some kind of unspoken rule book then one might as well let AI take over and solve it for you, in which case it becomes like Sudoku.

22. Say what you like, but I think some of the wordplay was horrible. For example, if 21D was worded “Complete millions removed from cinema by thug” it would have made sense. As it now stands it looks like a clue that has had its’ words shuffled.

23. Jay@22: Thank you for giving an example of your dislike. I know tastes vary, but I thought that 21dn was a particularly well constructed clue. For the cryptic reading I have a mental image of a small strip of card with the letters LOUT generously spaced being placed to hide the M on a similar card saying FILM. For the surface reading, I picture a complete thug as someone who repeatedly commits robbery with violence showing no mercy to his victims, and concealing his ill-gotten gains in an apparently disused cupboard in a back room of his local cinema. A neat feature of this is the way that the two words either side between definition and wordplay in the cryptic reading form a phrase in the surface reading.

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