Financial Times 17,644 GOZO

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Gozo provides the FT Thursday challenge.

This is not a puzzle for the faint-hearted. There are several unusual words in here, possibly due to the setter deciding to make it pangrammatic. I managed to complete the puzzle without recourse to reference books, but did have to look up a couple of words afterwards to check they were right, SEA PINK and BETONY being new to me.

I gave ticks to the clues for LYNX, JONQUIL, CONFLICT, ENMITY and BANJO, but there were a few clues where I had some issues.

I think IN is doing double duty in INVADERS (5dn). Is it fair to use "covers" to indicate two letters at the beginning and end of a word rather than one letter at the beginning and end (ANON, 27dn)? Are "confirm' and DIAGNOSE (4ac) synonymous? Dies anyone write the time 1010 (14dn) like that? None of these detracted from the enjoyment in solving the puzzle and it was satisfying to put in BETONY as my final answer, even if I then had to check that BETONY was in fact correct.

Thanks, Gozo. You certainly got the old (and getting older by the day) grey cells warmed up today.

ACROSS
1 CANDLE
Some critic and leading light (6)

Hidden in [some] "critiC AND LEading light"
4 DIAGNOSE
Confirm changes in dosage (8)

*(in dosage) [anag:confirm]

Not sure diagnose and confirm are synonymous.
10 NOT ONCE
Never ever improper by church (3,4)

NOT ON ("improper") + CE ("Church" of England)
11 VIETNAM
Five in team going round country (7)

V (five, in Roman numerals) + *(in team) [anag:going round]
12 LYNX
Left city, rejected by wild cat (4)

L (left) + <=NY (New York "City", rejected) + X (multiplied "by")
13 IRIDESCENT
Many-coloured flag briefly going down (10)

IRI(s) ("flag", briefly) + DECENT ("going down")
15 COINED
Made money, having added to lexicon (6)

Double definition, the second referring to inventing a new word or phrase.
16 GRANITA
Poor rating given to a dessert (7)

*(rating) [anag:poor] given to A

Granita is a grainy-textured watery iced dessert, a bit like sorbet.
20 SEA PINK
Thrift as variety of spikenard. No way (3,4)

*(spikena) [anag:variety of] where SPIKENA is SPIKENA(rd) without the Rd, (road, so "no way")

Sea pink is another term for the thrift plant.
21 BETONY
Medicinal plant back at rear of nursery (6)

BET ON ("back") at [rear of] (nurser)Y
24 OCCASIONAL
Periodic table (10)

Double definition, the second referring to a small side table brought out when one has informal guests, and upon which they can rest their cup, mug, small plate etc.
26 FINN
European Forte hotel (4)

F (forte, in music notation) + INN ("hotel")

(Rocco) Forte Hotels is a British hotel chain with hotels across Western Europe.
28 UN-LATIN
Atypical of Tacitus until a new review (2-5)

*(until a n) [anag:review] where N = new
29 JONQUIL
Narcissus on bedding that’s timeless after First of January (7)

ON + QUIL(t) ("bedding") without T (time), so timeless) after [first of] J(anuary)
30 STEINWAY
Grand brand, yet was in trouble (8)

*(yet was in) [anag:toruble]

Steinway is probably the most famous brand of grand piano.
31 INHERE
Stick to suggestion of nearby containment (6)

IN HERE ("suggestion of nearby containment")
DOWN
1 CONFLICT
Dispute working with French policeman in court (8)

ON ("working") with FLIC ("French policeman") in Ct. (court)
2 NOT UNLIKE
Similarity is doubly negative (3,6)

NOT + UNLIKE are both negatives
3 LINZ
Nothing about unknown Mozart symphony (4)

<=NIL ("nothing", about) + Z (unknown, in mathematics)

Mozart's Symphony No 36 in C major is also called the Linz Symphony as it written while he and his wife stayed a few days in Linz on the way to Vienna in 1783.
5 INVADERS
They conquer lady’s heart in short work by Keats (8)

L(ad)Y ['s heart] in VERS(e) ("work by Keats", short)

Unless Keats wrote a poem called "In Verse" this doesn;t work as IN is having to do double duty, as the container indicator and as part of the solution. Also, in my opinion, there should be a question mark at the end, as "work by Keats" is a definition by example.
6 GLEE SINGER
Old minstrel, redhead, absorbs sediment (4,6)

GINGER ("redhead") absorbs LEES ("sediment")
7 OUNCE
Snow leopard carrying little weight (5)

Double definition
8 ENMITY
Deep-seated hatred met in turbulent year (6)

*(met in) [anag:turbulent] + Y (year)
9 HENRY
Boy and bird on railway (5)

HEN ("bird") + Ry. (railway)
14 TEN PAST TEN
11 up to 20 = 1010? (3,4,3)

The digits eleven to twenty are the first ten after ("past") ten, and 10:10 is ten past ten, but I think the clue would have been fairer with a colon or a dot between the two 10s.
17 TWO-MINUTE
Time to unwind. Not half! Could be such a short break (3-6)

*(time to unw) [anag:could be] where UNW is UNW(ind) missing half (not half)
18 INSOMNIA
There’s a problem getting off here (8)

Cryptic definition
19 CYAN BLUE
Any unusual touch of brown in hint of this shade? (4,4)

*(any) [anag:unusual] + [touch of] B(rown) in CLUE ("hint")
22 DONUTS
Deep-fried treats for party. Crazy! (6)

DO ("party") + NUTS ("crazy")
23 BANJO
Instrument from Juliet at ferry port, cycling (5)

J (Juliet, in the NATO phonetic alphabet) at OBAN ("ferry port") cycling

To get this clue to work, you have to "cycle" J OBAN, so imagine the letters written in a circle, and instead of starting at J, start at B and JOBAN necomes BANJO.
25 COLNE
Coming up from some barren location to town near Burnley (5)

Hidden backwards [coming up from some] "barrEN LOCation"
27 ANON
Covers of Annunciation — author not known (4)

[covers of] AN(unciati)ON

"Covers" would normally indicate the first and last letter, rather than the first and last couple of letters.

37 comments on “Financial Times 17,644 GOZO”

  1. Gozo kept me well entertained today – as well as on my toes.
    Smiles throughout and the suspicion of a pangram to confirm a few like 19’s ‘shade’.
    I particularly liked ‘improper’ cluing ‘not on’ (10), SEAPINK, GLEE SINGER and JONQUIL (such a lovely word). 18d was my last entry as it took a while to cotton on to the correct definition.
    Thanks to Gozo for the fun and Loonapick (minor point: there’s an ‘s’ missing from DESCENT in the blog).

  2. Hmm. Over and above the comments made by loonapick, does ‘changes’ work as anagrind before the fodder in DIAGNOSE, should there be a DBE for OCCASIONAL table, are GLEE SINGERS old, does ‘carrying’ work as link in OUNCE, should DONUTS have a US indicator … ? And it’s a small point but I’m not a huge fan of full stops appearing midway through clues. Frustrating, as this is clearly a capable and experienced setter but today’s puzzle felt like it missed its test solver.

    On the positive side, I very much enjoyed CANDLE, GRANITA, CONFLICT, LYNX and ENMITY.

    Thanks Gozo and loonapick

  3. I see your point, Loonapick, with INVADERS and DIAGNOSE. 1010 does have a question mark and ANON, well, sheets and blankets, perhaps? None of them bothered me, really, in terms of getting to the answer.

  4. I did enjoy this challenge , although Loonapick makes some valid criticisms. I agree that diagnose and and confirm are not synonyms. Loonapick’s comments about INVADERS seem right too.
    But there were some great clues:SEA PINK, INSOMNIA GLEE SINGER were my favourites. I thought 1010 with no colon or dot was a fair deception.
    Thanks to Gozo and Loonapick.

  5. Liked SEA PINK, JONQUIL INHERE, CONFLICT and TEN PAST TEN (1010 instead of 10:10–some setteristic license).

    INVADERS
    Agree with loonapick’s observation.
    DIAGNOSE
    loonapick must be right. I am not aware if the word means ‘confirm’ in some context.
    ANON
    I have seen ‘cover’ being indicative of the first and the last letter of a word. The ‘covers’ idea is cool, I think.
    (With Diane@2 on this).

    Thanks Gozo and loonapick!

  6. Some time keeping conventions leave out the colon, and of course we sometimes omit it by implication in eg ‘eleven hundred hours’, although I found having the time written in numbers in the clue for the word version in the solution pretty underwhelming.
    Azed had [cr]azine[ss] recently by removing ‘outer elements’
    PM@2 Solution changes fodder seems OK to me as a sentence. For OCCASIONAL, I’d disagree about DBE, because table is not an example of occasional. Nor for that matter is occasional a table. An occasional table is a table. Also, periodic and occasional are different, but I think that is something you regularly prefer to ignore ;-

  7. [James @6: ha and touché. Glass houses and all that. I’m not sure whether I ignore it regularly, occasionally, periodically or now and then … ]

  10. Odd how general knowledge works, I wrote in SEA PINK as I know thrift by both names, and knew BETONY, although I needed the crossers, wrote it in and then parsed it.

    I’m with Diane @3 for INSOMNIA being my last in, but cryptic definitions usually take me longer. And I also wasn’t convinced by DIAGNOSE to mean confirm, I usually hear something like testing confirming a diagnosis.

    Thank you to Gozo and loonapick.

  12. Postmark@ 2,
    I was going to say that I thought Dunkin’ Donuts stores were probably so widespread in the UK (don’t know for sure as I’m not based there) that the US spelling is more than familiar but I see that they just call themselves Dunkin’ now so perhaps I can understand your grievance!
    Maybe I’ll go and spraypaint ‘Doughnut’ on the sign during my next visit!

  14. Diane @12: whether I’d go so far as to say ‘grievance’, I’m not sure. They are small points – and more queries or surprise than grievances. One or two on their own would not have really merited comment – as James points out, we are none of us perfect. But, together with the points raised in the preamble, it all combines to give a looser puzzle than one might expect. Or I just got out of bed on the wrong side …

  16. PostMark@2 – re DONUTS:
    DONUT is allowed on Countdown – most recently in Episode 8061 on 14 July 2023 in Series 88. (TODGER also featured.)
    Here’s the reason: Oxford Dictionaries Premium ‘… A rough guide to word validity …
    Spellings labelled US English are identified as American spellings, and these words and inflections are not allowed (e.g. color X, moldier X). However,
    spellings labelled mainly US English are allowed, as ‘mainly’ implies it can be found in the UK (e.g. DONUT).
    Spellings labelled North American are also allowed as they are also used in Canada and other countries in North America (e.g. LUPINES).’
    If it’s good enough for Susie Dent…

  17. Thanks Gozo and loonapick

    I’ll add a pedantic technical quibble to those mentioned above: Juliet is not the NATO spell-out word for J, it’s Juliett, to ensure that (eg) native French speakers pronounce it with a hard T.

    All in all a good puzzle, though, and I enjoyed it more than some Gozo / Maskarade offerings.

  18. ENMITY often misspelt and/or mispronounced as EMNITY – going back as far as 1609 and Shake-speares (sic) Sonnets 55 ‘Gainft death, and all obliuious emnity’

  19. FrankieG @18, as William Shakespeare spelt his name 6 different ways in the 6 extant signatures, and English spelling didn’t become standardised until the advent of dictionaries – Samuel Johnson’s appeared in 1755 – colour me unconvinced.

  20. Being from a scientific background, I didn’t like 24A much.
    PERIODIC is not the same as OCCASIONAL.
    One is cyclical the other is random.

    Apart from that, some good clues.
    never heard of Betony before.

  25. As above. Some enjoyable clues and some dodgy ones. Favourites have been mentioned.

    Thanks Gozo and loonapick

  26. I bristled a bit at “inhere” as a synonym for “adhere”. As I understand it, to inhere is to be inherent to something (and Collins doesn’t seem to disagree).

    Not that it stymied my solving; my total ignorance of botany saw to that.

  28. 28A un-Latin? Tacitus was Roman ergo spoke Latin and the last time I looked, atypical meant untypical. What have I missed?

  29. Thanks Gozo. I found this slow going and I was defeated by INSOMNIA and BETONY and I only guessed at a few others. I liked many of the clues including GRANITA, STEINWAY, CYAN BLUE, and NOT UNLIKE. When I saw the crossing of NOT ONCE and NOT UNLIKE I thought there might be a theme of expressions beginning with ‘not’ but that was not to be. I didn’t notice the pangram and I have no idea what Gozo @27 is hinting at. Thanks loonapick for the blog.

  30. Yes, Tony, I went back and looked at the grid and I too could not work out what Gozo meant.

    In cases such as this, I usually miss the blindingly obvious, so I hope it is not too late for someone else to drop by and let us know.

  31. I spotted early on the every solution contained an N and soon realised that the whole alphabet appeared after them thus giving NA NB NC through to NZ
    Seems blatantly obvious to me

  34. I am now “Nlightened” having “Njoyed” solving the puzzle and failing to “Ngage” my trick radar while doing so.

  36. Sigh! Great device, but it is times like this that I wonder whether the setter enjoyed the puzzle more than the solver

  37. Respect! Taking it to another level….didn’t spot it but definitely impressed.
    Thanks loonapick ,Gozo, and Ad Abber

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