Financial Times 17,728 by SLORMGORM

16 comments on “Financial Times 17,728 by SLORMGORM”

1. LAUGHING GAS: Lovely cryptic def. Toothsome!
   TOP-DRAWER: Storing shirts instead of pants would have been punnier? Liked it anyway.
   Someone will be happy that the ‘pants’ in the clue is not an anagrind.
   RE-ALTERING: Liked the surface.

   Thanks Slormgorm and Cineraria!

2. Brilliant anagrams from Harry today. Thoroughly enjoyed this. I’ll be chuckling all day at the wobbly belly and the (presumably) Tory supporters getting an earful from a friend who’s knowledge of bats is lacking.

   Just the right level of difficulty too some easier ones for a good foothold in the grid and a few that needed a little teasing out and a second cup of coffee.

   More please.

   Thanks both.

3. Yes, KVa, I was happy re 15a for the attempted misdirection but I wasn’t fooled for a minute!
   A common use for the top drawer (drawers, by the way, being another word for pants, in the UK, anyway!)
   Like Blah, I was amused by the surface of BY ALL MEANS.
   Thanks to Slormgorm and Cineraria

4. Thanks Slormgorm and Cineraria

   6dn: I took SORE in the sense that a sore thumb might be red in appearance.

5. Thanks for the blog, very enjoyable with the usual high-quality clues throughout.

6. An excellent and enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to Slormgorm and Cineraria.

   I had a different parsing for 7d. I got TIN from S (Congress back, that is, the last letter of Congress) + n (foremost of nationalists, that is, the first letter of nationalists), giving Sn, the chemical symbol for tin.

7. Needed A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700) for Chambers’ SORE = ‘A. adj. 1. Of a horse: Sorrel, light chestnut-coloured…’

8. Couldn’t find it on oed.com (but it does have † SORE ‘n.⁴ A red herring. Obsolete. rare. 1600‘)
   In any case I parsed it as Pelham Barton@4.
   Thanks S&C

9. I had considered that an inflammation might be both sore and red, but to draw the equivalency that “sore” = “red” or that “red” = “sore” on that basis seemed a bit of a stretch. That said, I was not entirely satisfied with the parsing that I provided either, although the connection seemed a little more direct.

10. Well soreness is usually accompanied by inflammation which is typified by redness but not sure why Red was capitalised… 9ac caused the most trouble, didn’t make sense till the blog..
    Incidentally 2dn was the first documented anaesthetic administered for a “pain free” operation, for tooth removal…
    Thanks Slormgorm n Cineria

11. 6dn, further to Frankie, Cineraria, and Undrell: The main problem I have with using sore = “sorrel, reddish-brown” (as in Chambers 2016) is that the dictionaries which contain that meaning (or similar) seem to have it marked as obsolete. Is that an obsolete meaning not indicated, or is “aged” doing double duty? I do not like either of those possibilities.

12. I was inclined to go with the SORE=red thumb idea @4 or any inflamation @9 .
    Maybe it is the sorrel , even if this is obsolete. In the daily crosswords there is not always an indication for “old” words, it is only Azed who seems to be very fair about this.

13. Thanks both.

    Re 1d the SAS is a British regiment and not exclusively English.

14. Missed Stuarts.

    Bah.

    Generally enjoyable

    Solve and Sass took me far too long.

    I found this the most difficult of the last several days, though more enjoyable than Bobcat

    Thanks for solving a few of the parsing mysteries

15. Thank you Cineraria and Slormgorm. Nothing to add. But I did enjoy it! Liked BY ALL MEANS and LAUGHING GAS most. Also NEWSCASTERS

16. The detail detailed by Bracoman@13 led to a dnf with both SASS and STUARTS in absentia. Inclined to cry ‘foul’.

    But otherwise all a body could want from a cryptic entertainment. Thanks both.

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