Financial Times 17,829 by SOLOMON

19 comments on “Financial Times 17,829 by SOLOMON”

1. I thought the BE DIM could be split to give something that looked like “feel dozy”, but I needed the blog for GASSY, even though I knew about the SS Great Britain.

   Thank you to Turbolegs and Solomon.

2. Solomon continues to impress – though for those familiar with his work from elsewhere, that should come as no surprise. A few classic left-field definitions like ‘smoking pot’ for CHIMNEY, ‘bed-wetter’ for SPRINKLER and the probably-politically-incorrect-but-let’s-hope-solvers-aren’t-too-prickly ‘One fat lady’ for EIGHT. Mind you, ‘a pass, just’ for THIRD seems a tad harsh! I feel I’ve seen the BONKERS clue before but it still made me smile.

   Faves inc those already mentioned plus HANDBAG, NEOLOGISM, DOG COLLAR, YORKSHIRE and REHAB. I feel ‘boxer’ probably needs a DBE indicator in HET UP and I may be missing something but don’t quite see BEDIM = ‘feel dozy’. (Ah – I see Shanne has addressed that. I ‘think’ that works)

   Thanks Solomon and Turbolegs

3. [14d YORKSHIRE – SHIRE short for Shire horse. We don’t need to know the Star Wars equivalent. (I didn’t, by the bye).]
   LOi – by quite some way – 28a DISEASE 😉
   Thanks S&T

4. I thought the clue for TROLL was a bit iffy. Knew not the centre nor the Scotsman for REHAB, which I only got because it’s about all that fitted the crossers. Address/building was a bit of a stretch. Didn’t know shire/horse (Collins says it’s British), and I didn’t think that THEREWITH meant “for that reason”. Never heard of BEDIM.

   I liked SPRINKLER, BONKERS, HANDBAG & a few others.

5. I became 1dn by this crossword when I realised that Solomon had used Great Britain to define ‘SS’. I was already wondering why handbags are all stylish too – also I think bananas are fingers not the hand. Bedim wasn’t clued well, either was it? If you dim lights you turn them down not off. A balloon doesn’t ‘take your breath away’ you voluntarily exhale into it. Prototype = model is also questionable – they are distinctly different things – a prototype car isn’t a model car for example.
   I’m glad we don’t see Solomon very often.

6. After 28 I binned this.
   Shocking taste, not at sll funny

7. After 28 I binned this.
   Shocking taste, not at all funny

8. I think the &lit in 9 across is a reference to the Norwegian fairy tale “Three Billy Goats Gruff”, who want to cross a river by a bridge, but are stopped by a troll. Two of the goats trick the troll into letting them pass, while the third and largest knocks the troll into the river with his horns.

9. Like Geoff Down Under I wasn’t too sure about TROLL but I particularly liked YORKSHIRE and the crossword as a whole

10. I’m pretty much on the same page as Postmark today in terms of favourites and add RETCH for the smooth and clever surface.
    I dare say ‘legs eleven’ would cop it too these days but I remember being fascinated by bingo parlance as a child. My own personal favourite then as now is ‘clickety click’ as it refers to the shirt won by one of my football team’s players – decidedly first team despite the crazy number.
    Thanks to Solomon for the entertainment and to Turbolegs for demystifying GASSY.

11. The Three Billy Goats Gruff is such a well-known thing to me – I used to tell it complete with goat finger puppets and a troll hand puppet, plus cardboard bridge – that I didn’t think of TROLL as being a problem, just thought “trip, trap, trip, trap, over the rickety bridge”. In Geocaching, caches hidden under bridges are often clued with reference to trolls. (I started building a cache series under bridges with a set of trolls hidden inside, but gave up when I found it was impossible to keep said trolls from disappearing, even when glued into the containers.}

    I’m afraid I laughed at DISEASE when I’d worked out which clap was meant. We used to have a nurse who came regularly in to youthwork sessions with self-testing kits (for chlamydia and gonorrhoea, the clap) a few years back – not that rates have dropped, it’s still a huge problem in the 13-18 age group, it’s just another service that got cut with local authority austerity cuts. Dealing with teenagers, there’s no point getting upset by the terms used around facts of life like STIs, it’s more getting them the right help,

12. Thanks Solomon for an enjoyable crossword. There were bits and pieces I couldn’t parse but I managed to complete this nonetheless. My top picks were PROTOTYPE, MUSICAL, and BALLOON. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

13. My favourites are NEOLOGISM and COHABITATED for their surfaces.

    Like others, there were a few clues I could not parse and I thank Turobolegs for explaining. Perhaps it is just that I have a different sense of humour to Solomon, but I thought many cryptic definitions were stretches and missed their mark. My FF score would be lower than our blogger.

    Thanks Solomon and Turbolegs

14. Thanks to Turbolegs for the blog and to those who have commented. It’s been quite an emotional rollercoaster reading the comments as they’ve come in. This site is the only way I can gauge solvers’ reactions to my puzzles, so I do engage with it – however, I shall have to learn to be less affected by comments such as 5-7. As my work colleague-cum-counsellor put it, ‘most people found something to enjoy’, and from that I take heart.

15. Thanks for the blog, I loved it, Solomon you will never please everyone.
    TROLL is brilliant , I agree with Tom @8 , it reads as a perfect description of the troll being charged by the third Billy-Goat Gruff .
    Bed-wetter is a very neat definition , initially I thought of Coldplay but the wordplay did not work.
    BONKERS/ bonk etc now very out of fashion but the clue is fine. I can say to my students that Super-symmetry is bonkers and they do not even smirk these days.

16. Just finished this at afternoon tea break – I enjoyed immensely. I have no problems with the clues others quibble with and I think the majority of the complaints are incorrect. There have been much worse clues in all three cryptics I complete over the weeks.

    Thanks Solomon and Turbolegs

17. Solomon@13, I got 1d het up by the comment at 5. All the complaints are easily answerable and all those clues are sound – including the one I didn’t get. I’m glad we don’t see that commenter very often.😉

    The commenter at 6/7 must have the lowest shock-threshold I’ve seen. As Shanne says at 11, STIs are hardly shocking.

    Thanks for the excellent puzzle, and thanks, Turbolegs for the helpful and much needed blog.

18. Solomon@13 as Cellomaniac@16 et al.. I feel crosswordland allows us to use language as it is used, and also as recorded in dictionaries. So nothing out of the ordinary in this puzzle.. I shall not be able to see disease henceforth, without reading Di’s ease, n think of the clap. We’re all adults here, I hope.
    I really enjoyed this puzzle, not a quick solve, but all worked out.. I enjoyed the GB for SS, probably cos on 2nd reading the penny dropped. I immediately thought of TROLL on reading 9ac but hesitated as I associate trolls with being under the bridge.. the Bingo codes fascinated me also as Diane@10, so 27ac wasn’t too hard… REHAB, DOGCOLLAR, n CATALOGUE all made me smile… BALLOON was a good case for lateral thinking, cos not only do you breath into it, so breath gone, but also balloons tend to float away, altho I grant that’s mostly when filled with helium. Which is more fun when inhaled from a balloon. I digress, suffice to say I enjoyed this.
    Thanks Solomon and, for usual sound blog, Turbolegs

19. I had GUSHY (bubbly) for 4d – being a GB puzzle, I saw GB as “US”. I also thought of GASSY but could not deal with SS any more than GHY!

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