Financial Times 17,636 by BOBCAT

32 comments on “Financial Times 17,636 by BOBCAT”

1. I’d never heard of SCARLET WOMEN. I must lead a sheltered life. Some clues that I didn’t warm to included NIECE (definition “she”?!), and fastidious isn’t “nice”. SPARE RIB was the only thing that seemed to fit for 16d, so thank you Cineraria for explaining whence it came. I had to reveal ALLOA & WEST MIDLANDS, the latter with its convoluted wordplay, as probably anyone this side of the English Channel would have had to have done.

2. Thanks Bobcat and Cineraria!
   Liked WEST MIDLANDS, PRIVY COUNCIL, SCARLET WOMEN and EPILEPSY.
   ALLOA and ENDUE were luckily guessable from the wordplay.

   DOOMSDAY: I parsed it as Cineraria did. R is changed to D-no indicator.
   W…M: Can we say ‘position taken’=STAND, STAND by WE=WE-STAND?
   NIECE: Couldn’t find anything to justify an extended def. It may be just She!

3. After several days of struggling with every puzzle, this one rolled off in no time. And I thought some of the clues were fantastic. This is no criticism of Cineraria who struggled: I never cease to marvel at how we all experience crosswords (and other things) differently.

   I loved SCARLET WOMEN (sorry GDU) and had virtual ticks against many including IRANIANS, ACTION REPLAY (great anagram), BUTTER (wonderful surface) and LUCRATIVE (anything with Lucretia Borgia gets my vote)

   I parsed DOOMSDAY the same way as Cineraria, with the same “?”. I agree with GDU@1 about NIECE – I thought that was a weak clue amongst many gems. I am glad to see from KVa’s post @2 that not everyone knows ALLOA and ENDUE

   Thanks to both Bobcat and Cineraria

4. GDU@1
   The mother of all fictional works says NICE=fastidious (in my mobile app entry no.9 under ‘nice’). 😉
   Seen this equivalence before in some puzzles.

5. BUTTER
   I am not sure it’s an &lit clue.
   CAD. Yes. The wordplay doesn’t need the ‘this’.

6. GDU@1: I think that this sense of “nice” comes through in “nicety” and “nicey-nice” (or is the latter just an American expression?).

7. KVa @4 That “the mother of all fictional works says NICE=fastidious” doesn’t surprise me at all. 😉

8. 🙂

9. Martyn @ 3, I didn’t say I didn’t like SCARLET WOMEN, just that I hadn’t heard of it.

10. GDU@9 -agree. I misinterpreted. I would love to write “I am glad you liked it too”, but you did not write that, so I will refrain.

    While I have you, let me say I really enjoy your posts.

11. Thank you, Martyn. Here in Crossword Land, a Chambers basher needs all the friends he can get!

12. Nice puzzle and blog
    Thanks

13. Thanks for the blog, very good puzzle with neat wordplay throughout, ALLOA my favourite for the primes, 1 is not considered to be a prime at the moment.
    NIECE a bit week with just She, nice has had so many meanings, foolish or ignorant to start with. It meant fastidious for a long time and still used for this in some senses. ” She has too nice a palate to enjoy cheap wine ” .

14. Of late, I have struggled with Bobcat’s crosswords but I was on the right wavelength today and finished fairly quickly (helped, perhaps, by living in the West Midlands). Some really good clues, I thought.

15. Thanks Bobcat and Cineraria

    22dn: I agree that “She” is a very vague defintion. In terms of the definition of “nice”, ODE 2010 gives “fastidious” marked as archaic, and Collins 2023 marks it as rare. SOED 2007 gives it without any special marking.

16. Re ‘nice’ : I’m sure I have seen it used in this sense – as in ‘That is a nice distinction’ meaning that the difference is very slight and requires a very strict/ fastidious interpretation to work.
    Enjoyed the puzzle and the blog. Thanks both.

17. Thanks Bobcat and Cineraria.

    Agree about 9ac that there’s no way to see what letter the R is supposed to become, I’ve seen similar “change this letter, but we won’t tell you what it’s changing to” clues a few times, but I’m still not really keen on them. I like the old “you don’t have to say what you mean, but you must mean what you say” rule, and to me that means the wordplay element should give complete instructions in itself.

    My other slight quibble, 6dn, the on seems to be doing double-duty: [ALL]’s on [On tAp]. Otherwise what is the ‘s doing?

    But only a couple of minor annoyances in an otherwise good crossword. Particularly fond of LUCRATIVE.

18. Tom@18
    ALLOA
    I think …
    for the surface reading: ‘everything is on tap….’
    but for the cryptic reading: ‘everything has O A.’

19. Tom@18: I remember the “golden rule” the other way round, and it is indeed given as “You need not mean what you say, but you must say what you mean” at the following
    https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/05/afrits-armchair-crosswords.html
    I have never really understood the logical distinction between “mean what you say” and “say what you mean”. However, I think the rule as a whole can be interpreted properly. Whichever way the rule is written, I read the first half as saying that the surface reading need not bear any relation to the answer, and the second half as saying that the cryptic meaning must include full information about the answer. I think we can easily agree that those are the two principles involved in the writing of cryptic clues, and that is what really matters.

20. Pelham@20 My interpretation of the maxim differs from yours, although I certainly agree with what you say about the surface reading. My understand is that, in cases where there is wordplay, the maxim is that the intended cryptic reading of the clue must lead unambiguously to the answer. But that does not mean that the crytic reading has to contain full information about the answer. There are plenty of examples – eg “regular” to mean letters chosen which appear at regular (unspecified) intervals, and “50%” of to denote a half of – which do not specify exactly which choice of letters has to be made. In practice, it’s a question of how many different possibilities need to be considered by the solver which determines whether or not a clue such as 9A is fair.

21. Rudolf@21: Fair enough. For “full” read “sufficient”. There is then room for differences in personal taste as to whether the cryptic reading should lead unambiguously to an answer in itself, or whether it is acceptable for ambiguities to be resolved by checked letters. My preference is for the former.

22. Rudolf @21, the examples you offer are not the same as this case. In your examples, while there is uncertainty at the outset as to which letters the instructions refer to, once the solution is found every letter can be seen to be confirmed by wordplay. In 9A there is no information about the first letter.

23. Thanks Bobct and Cineraria

    While I understand the disquiet about the unindicated change-to first letter in 9A, if you’ve got as far as ROOMS & DAY there is only one letter that the R could be changed to (unless you are James Joyce, I suppose).

24. James@23 I thought I had said that. The reference which I made @21 to 9A was separate from the examples I provided in response to Pelham’s point. Perhaps that would have been clearer if I were to have put it in a new paragraph?

    Pelham @22 I agree with you on the question of self-containment. In particular, clues that do not make it clear which of a word or its reversal are to be entered are not playing fair, in my view.

25. 9ac: I would agree with Simon@24 that the wordplay alone gives an unambiguous answer in this case, as D is the only possible first letter that makes a valid word when followed by OOMSDAY. However, we do not normally require that much. For example, take this from Monk in FT 17,404
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/05/03/financial-times-17404-by-monk/
    18. Entire triangle requires reconstruction (8)
    The wordplay tells us that we need an anagram of TRIANGLE, and the definition (Entire) tells us to pick INTEGRAL rather than ALERTING or RELATING.

    Certainly all that I am asking for is that the definition plus wordplay should give an unambiguous answer between them.

26. Thanks Bobcat for the challenge. This took two sittings and I still needed a nudge to get both ALLOA and URCHIN. My favourites included CHORDS, SCARLET WOMEN, and AGEING. Perhaps DOOMSDAY could have been clued ” …. entrance to rented property Romeo left for daughter” but that might make the wordplay too obvious for a Bobcat clue. Thanks Cineraria for the blog.

27. Rudolf @25 you said ‘that does not mean that the cryptic reading has to contain full information about the answer’ and then proceeded to give examples of types of clue where full information about the answer is in fact given. Your whole comment is in reference to 9a, and I can’t see where you’d insert a paragraph break to make it otherwise.
    Pelham Barton @26, the Monk clue is also a strange example, since every letter is given. If there is a point to made about different possible anagrams, it’s a quite different point to whether it’s OK not to indicate part of the solution.
    I don’t have a problem with the clue, by the way, except for cluing the DAY in DOOMSDAY by day in the clue.

28. oed.com has 14 definitions for nice as an adjective including 3.a to 3,g: ‘
    3.a. c1387– Precise or particular in matters of reputation or conduct; scrupulous, punctilious. Now rare.
    3.b. c1400– Fastidious, fussy, difficult to please, esp. with regard to food or cleanliness; of refined or dainty tastes.’
    Latest citation: ‘1952 Nobody, seeing her then, could have been so nice as to complain of such blemishes. – M. Kennedy, Troy Chimneys 60
    … 3.e. 1594–1841 † Fastidious in matters of literary taste or style. Obsolete.’
    Latest citation: ‘1841 To do him justice, he is a very nice critic, and not unskilled in poetry. – W. Allston, Monaldi ii. 3′
    [I’m surprised GeneratePress didn’t mess up the dagger, obelisk, or obelus]

29. Knew ALLOA (Athletic) from the classified football results on Saturday afternoons – “East Fife 4, Forfar 5”
    Thanks B&C

30. Thanks Cineraria and others who added to the clarification of nice/fastidious. I align with Pelham Barton in my view of DOOMSDAY and the crosser that resolves the uncertainty, also on the interpretation of the setter’s ‘maxim’: they don’t have to (always) mean what they say, so there could be many ways to read the surface that lead to nonsense or red herrings, but they always have to say what they mean, so that one such interpretation of the clue does lead unambiguously (ideally) to the solution. The mad hatter could put it more clearly I expect! Thanks for an enjoyable challenge Bobcat.

31. So, FrankieG @ 29, my criticism of nice/fastidious would have been unjustified centuries ago. 🙂

32. Thank you Frankie@29. We can see that meaning 3.e for nice is marked obsolete, and given a terminating range of dates, and 3.b is given an unending range of dates. We conclude that oed.com is agreeing with the latest editions of all of Chambers, Collins, ODE, and SOED. There really is no room for any doubt at all: “fastidious” is a currently valid definition for “nice”.

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