Financial Times 17,787 by Neo

24 comments on “Financial Times 17,787 by Neo”

1. Getting the two long ones first helped a lot with what I found to be a tricky puzzle. I thought many descriptions were misleading so there were a lot of aha moments.

   Liked: TRUMPETED, BELLY FLOP, EXIT POLL, CLICHE, EXCAVATED, ESPALIER, AGNOSTIC

   Thanks Neo and Pete Maclean

2. I think 27 across is A and S (small) in CREE and the definition is wrinkle

3. I agree with the assessments of Pete and Fiona – a pleasant solve and a tricky puzzle in parts. The NE corner in particular took me quite a while, but opened up once I solved BELLY FLOP. A few new words, and a few sneaky devices, such as SALT = SAILOR = AB in 12. I thought SPECIES sneaky too, as I went through just about every breed of tailless animal before realising the answer.

   There were some nice clues, with my favourites being TRUMPETED for the orange man, EXCAVATED for its surface, TARZAN OF THE APES for its fabulous anagram, ditto for PSYCHOTHERIPIST and SAINT MALO for its construction and surface

   I share Pete’s doubt that CREATURE equates to instrument in 1d. Also a question – why is prechristian times I BC? Is that one BC? If so, it is a bit weak. 1000 BC and 15 AD are also pre-christian times.

   Thanks for the puzzle Neo and thanks for the great blog Pete

4. Thanks Neo for a paradigm of masterful setting. I thoroughly enjoyed solving this over several sittings with my top picks being BELLY FLOP (great definition), HOTEL, MATISSE, TRUMPETED, CLICHE, PSYCHOTHERAPIST, HECATE, SPANDEX (great definition), and AMUSE. Thanks Pete for the blog.
   BTW — Collins lists ‘instrument’ as a synonym for ‘creature’ in the sense of ‘minion’; the clue has solid dictionary support.

5. For 18a GO DUTCH, I got this earworm: “There ain’t a lady livin’ in the land as I’d swap for me dear old dutch”
   and was pleased to find it cited by oed.com – ‘?1892 … A. Chevalier, My Old Dutch (song sheet)’.
   [Not CRS – that would be TROUBLE – but an ‘Abbreviation of duchess’.]
   Thanks N&PM

6. Martyn @4 1bc is “latest pre-christian” time, not any old pre-christian time.

   I liked this clue a lot, not.least for the definition.

   Points deducted for ordeal: if clueing DE as “notes” isn’t phoning it in then I don’t know what is. But overall very good indeed.

7. Just to add: definition 4 of CREATURE in Chambers has ‘… dependant, instrument, or puppet’.

8. Lovely, tightly-clued puzzle with neat, succinct and meaningful surfaces from one of my favourite FT setters. Favourite clues inc BELLY FLOP, STOOGE, MATISSE (haar-haar), CHARACTER, TRUMPETED, EXIT POLL, CLICHE, PSYCHOTHERAPIST and ORDEAL. I’m with earlier commenters on instrument = CREATURE.

   Thanks Neo and Pete

9. Thanks Neo and Pete

   1ac: Further to Tony@4 and Hovis@7, ODE 2010 gives
   creature “a person or organization considered to be under the complete control of another: the village teacher was expected to be the creature of his employer“; and
   instrument “a person who is exploited or made use of: he was a mere instrument acting under coercion“.
   To me, that makes sense of the definition in Chambers.

   Tony@4: Which edition of Collins are you using? The best I can find under creature in Collins 2023 is “a person who is dependent ; tool or puppet”. This fits with instrument 4 “informal a person used by another to gain an end; dupe; tool”.

   21dn: I thought the use of “notes” was perfectly fair, and gave an excellent surface. I do not normally mention favourite clues, but that would be a very strong candidate if I did.

10. NB trouble and Dutch are both CRS as far as I know.

    TROUBLE is the obvious one (rhyming word STRIFE, as if you didn’t know) whilst DUTCH is ‘one of those’, i.e. having a somewhat more oblique reference, which is DUCHESS OF FIFE.

    3 down my favourite in this one.

11. “Duchess of Fife” as the origin of “dutch” for “wife” is a later invention:

    https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/my-old-dutch.html

12. Would someone please explain how “Dutch” rhymes with “wife” in 18A?

    20D: how does “showing fibre” equate to “spandex”? If you had seen me running several years ago, in spandex, you would have loved my fibre! Alas, no more.

13. Annabelle, DUTCH or My old Dutch aren’t rhyming slang, but they are Cockney dialect – one I’ve heard in real life – the link above suggests possibly a corruption of Duchess. It’s come up in the Quick Cryptics to much bemusement.

    I didn’t get to this until yesterday and really enjoyed it.

    Thank you to Pete MacLean and Neo.

14. Pelham Barton @9: I often go to onelook.com, put a word in the search box, and then select Collins as the dictionary. I don’t know what edition the online version uses but what I found as the fourth definition of ‘creature’ is:
    countable noun
    If you describe someone as someone else’s creature, you mean that they are controlled by or depend on that person.
    We are not creatures of the Conservative government.
    Synonyms: minion, tool, instrument [informal], puppet

15. Thanks AndrewB@6 for pointing out “latest” before prechristian times. I had missed it. I confess I am still struggling to equate “latest pre-christian times” and 1 BC.

16. Martyn @15: it’s ‘… pre-Christian time’ in the singular – which is important. It’s a whimsical suggestion that 1 BC, being the last of the years before the birth of Christ, might be the ‘latest pre-Christian time’. It’s the last possible member of that string of years and the most recent of those years; both work.

    Annabelle @12: I think Neo has moved the link word, ‘showing’ to the front. It equates to ‘In order to show fibre, criticise Democrat in Congress’. Not everyone likes that construction but, particularly with the comma being in the right place, I don’t object to it at all. So the def is deffo ‘fibre’, not ‘showing fibre’.

17. Most enjoyable; we particularly liked the TARZAN anagram. No problems with 1ac; we’ve encountered both CREATURE and ‘instrument’ a number of times to mean a person ‘controlled’ by another.
    Thanks, Neo and Pete.

18. Tony@14: Thanks for that. It is clear that the definition you have quoted is in a very different style from the one I found in the print edition. Perhaps it is from a different dictionary within the Collins stable.
    The print edition I have does not include the synonyms list you quoted. The main definition of synonym in Collins 2023 is “a word that means the same or nearly the same as another word, such as bucket and pail“. It is those words “or nearly the same” that make me reluctant to rely on synonym lists, but I think the problem can be resolved by quoting the definitions of both words, as I did in comment 9. By comparing the two definitions, we can judge for ourselves whether the meanings are near enough the same (I think they are).

19. Hello all. Thanks for comments. Thanks Pete for blog.

    As pointed out above, Dutch was added to proper CRS from approx 1889, as before then there hadn’t actually been a Duchess of Fife. Unless those jolly old East-enders invented her so as to provide the rhyme artificially. However Dutch is a contraction of duchess: apparently ‘showy women’ were called duchesses from at least 1700, and Goldsmith uses it to describe a Drury Lane singer (in the theatrical sense, presumably, a showy woman) in 1773. Some other people think it might be Dutch house for spouse, but I am not swayed.

    Cheers
    Neo

20. PM@16

    I think it’s far more likely that showing fibre is the definition. A whimsical one perhaps playing on the qualities of Spandex being skin tight and rather revealing or ‘showing’.

    Great puzzle from Neo as usual. Orangeman made me laugh particularly as the day I solved this I was avoiding going out so as not to get caught up in the yearly parades.

    I’m surprised so few highlighted STOOGE as a favourite. That really stood out for me in a very strong field.

    Thanks both.

21. I’ve done Orangeman to clue Trump a couple of times now, so I’d better watch it. The crazy bastard will probably come for me, even if the DUP doesn’t.

    That spandex clue is intended to be defined by FIBRE, with showing added to provide a way of getting the surface to work. But as the clue mechanics do show the answer, I’m going to have to claim that the grammar works unproblematically:

    Showing answer, PAN/ D in SEX

    Yes? YES! (Borrowed from Bargain Hunt, obvs.)

22. Probably a bit late now for you to read my response PM@15. The point is that Jesus was likely born between 4-6BC. So 1BC is not pre Christ and it is certainly not the latest year before Christianity emerged

23. Thank you, Neo. I have corrected the definition for SPANDEX.

24. Martyn popped in.

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