Financial Times 17,806 by MOO

24 comments on “Financial Times 17,806 by MOO”

1. Always embarrassing to admit one’s ignorance in a public forum but I don’t get SOUTHGATE. Why is that the ‘right way out’? PASCAL, CRETACEOUS and DISCIPLINE my podium today.

   Thanks Moo and Teacow

2. Was wondering that myself, PM@1. oed.com has ‘Old English– south, variant of sooth, adj.True; in accordance with truth; not false or fictitious. In predicative use.’
   And Chambers says ‘southsay, etc. Same as soothsay, etc.’ – A TiLT for me. [Or maybe it’s the right way because he’s in a down clue?]

3. That would be Gareth Southgate who up until recently was the England football team’s manager.

4. I entered POTTER for 1a (p for r in rotter {rouge}). Beatrix Potter was a natural scientist as well as the writer of delightful children’s books. End result, I dnf the NW corner. Otherwise a very enjoyable solve> did not know “Southgate and would never have come up with ASIF.

5. 29a SHEBEEN is !rish, but I appreciate that it’s emigrated to Soweto and has ‘Descendants→ Afrikaans: sjebeen→ Xhosa: ishibhini’
   Thanks M&T

6. Regarding SOUTHGATE, I just took this a whimsical reference to his recent resignation as England manager, but there is perhaps some wordplay that eludes me.

7. Thanks for the blog, very clever John @4 but I do not think Beatrix Potter claimed to be a man.
   SOUTHGATE my favourite variety of trailing fuchsia but that is no help.

8. I figured out who Southgate was with a bit of googling, and that he was a former manager, but I did not really understand the joke(?) about “the right way out.” I assume that a stadium might have a south gate, but that really does not explain very much (or give much of a hint to the solution in the wordplay), even with the “?” tacked on at the end. On a compass, “right” would normally be “east,” not “south.” I found the NW corner was a lot harder to complete than the rest. Fair clues, though.

9. I take your point Roz @7. I had entered Potter and then went to the web to try to justify it! Nowadays one can be scorned for being too set on the man/woman or male/female difference. Unfortunate!

10. Liked all double (cryptic) definitions. The ‘South’ bit of SOUTHGATE: assumed right=SOUTH & didn’t know why.
    FrankieG@2 seems to have the right explanation (right=true=SOUTH).

    Nice puzzle & good blog.

    Thanks Moo and Teacow!

11. An excellent and enjoyable puzzle, with thanks to Moo and Teacow.

    For SOUTHGATE (2d), in addition to FrankieG@2’s explanation, because it’s a down clue, could the right way out be the south gate, that is, in the direction of the clue and the answer? Just an idle thought on my part, but possibly a little obscure.

12. Thanks Moo and Teacow

    I don’t follow football, but I simply assumed that the reference to ‘right way out’ was because he resigned rather than was sacked, and that the south gate was a whimsical allusion.

13. Thanks Moo (except possibly for 2dn) and Teacow (for the whole blog)

    2dn: I have been following the earlier discussion. I cannot accept any of the explanations so far for right=south as really satisfactory. The reference Frankie gives to oed.com is to a word labelled “Old English” and I think that would need some indication. Nor can I accept the fact that Chambers gives southsay as an alternative for soothsay, or anything found under the headwords southsay and sooth, as a definition for the word south on its own.
    I cannot find anything helpful in Collins or ODE. The best I can get from SOED (2007 p. 2930) is the way south is defined in terms of “the direction of the part of the horizon on the right-hand side of a person facing east”. At least this is not part of a circular sequences of definitions, as east is defined (p 789) as “that part of the horizon or sky where the sun rises”. Still, it is a long way from satisfactory.
    I think the best suggestion so far is to do with the correct end of a down clue, but in my view there is still a large gap between the clue and the answer.
    From memory, Moo does not normally drop in to these discussions, so we may never know what was really intended here.

14. 3dn: I think the Muslim boy is ASIF, as noted by John@4. This technically makes it wordplay, as the enumeration is different from the answer.

15. Thanks Moo. I found the SE the most difficult and I eventually revealed the nho SHEBEEN. I couldn’t parse SOUTHGATE and I support the explanation given by Simon S @12. I thought there were many fine clues such as ROUTINE, EMOTION (top pick), PERVERSE, DISCIPLINE, and PRUDENCE. Thanks Teacow for the blog.

16. I know this has been commented on multiple times, but why do we keep seeing Finacial Times in the headers?

17. Regarding the SOUTH GATE being the right exit, Welsh has the same word, ‘de’, for both ‘south’ and ‘right’ (as in ‘right hand’). We don’t know if GS has any Welsh connections but the name Gareth is of Welsh origin.
    As for the puzzle, we found it most enjoyable, and we parsed everything except EMOTION, Favourites were PASCAL and, out LOI, CRETACEOUS.
    Thanks, Moo and Teacow.

18. Re 2d SOUTHGATE, the significance of the word “right” in the parsing remains without a consensus explanation among the blogger and commenters, and as PB@13 notes, unless Moo tells us what he meant we’ll never know. Might this be a (rare) case where Teacow and/or the FT crossword editor could ask the setter to explain?
    As others did, I entered the correct answer without fully understanding the first part of the clue, thus avoiding a DNF by the skin of my teeth.

    I suspect most of us think of Ireland when we see 29a SHEBEEN, so the South African reference was an excellent misdirection.

    Thanks Moo and Teacow for the fine puzzle and blog.

19. The points of the compass are all at right angles. So south goes straight down and some setters use it to mean down in a down clue.
    Southgate has recently stood down as England manager. This means that it would have been wrong to put him in an across clue.
    Thanks M&T

20. Frankie@19: An interesting idea, but I am not convinced that one can make the jump in meaning of the word “down” from the way it is used in “stand down” to the topographical use in terms of down clues on a crossword grid.

21. Fairly flew through this compared to some recent FT trials.

    DNF because I missed Furore.

    Southgate was my first one in. I took the clue to be a reference to the expression “going south” meaning Failing. (Google if you are unfamiliar with the expression). And where Right in the clue = Correct.

    Southgate ultimately failed as England manager since he reached two finals, but lost both

    So the correct gate in the ground for this failed English manager to depart through is the South Gate.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle.

22. Moly@21: Thanks for that. ODE 2010 p. 1706 gives go south marked “informal, chiefly N. Amer” and defined as “fall in value, deteriorate, or fail”. I still think it is a bit of a stretch, but to me it is far more convincing than any of the other suggestions.

23. I’m sorry to have caused such head-scratching over the SOUTHGATE clue.

    It was really just whimsy on my part. I suppose my thinking was that the right way out for the England manager could only be the south gate. The north, east and west gates wouldn’t do, would they?

24. Moo@23: Thanks for popping in and explaining your thoughts.

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