Financial Times 17,832 by FLIMSY

21 comments on “Financial Times 17,832 by FLIMSY”

1. Looking back though the archives, Flimsy appears in the FT either 2 or 4 times per year, depending on the year. Exceptionally, he appeared once only in 2022 while 2020 was a prolific year with 6 puzzles. This is his second puzzle of 2024 and I enjoyed it.

   There were lots of great surfaces and I agree with Cineraria’s witty flourish comment. My favourites were MUNICH, ELEMENT, SAFEST, APPROACH, INCLINE, and MAINTAIN

   This was a relatively quick but pleasant solve. I needed Cineraria’s help for LEAGUE, and thanks too for explaining why canine is “c”. I parsed OFTEN the same way as the blog.

   Thanks Flimsy and Cineraria

2. It’s a shame we see Flimsy so infrequently.
   I too thoroughly enjoyed this for its many smooth surfaces and neat wordplay.
   For their pleasing simplicity, I liked MUNICH, ACHE, MADE UP and CHINA. For their not immediately obvious definitions, I picked TOTALLY and MARGIN. The wordplay for 21a clearly pointed to MARGIN though it also reminded me of MARVIN as in the film Marvin’s Room, starring Streep and DiCaprio.
   Very enjoyable indeed.
   Thanks to Cineraria and Flimsy. Guess we’ll see you again sometime next year then, according to Martyn’s observations.

3. Thanks Flimsy and Cineraria!
   OFTEN: Can’t see any problem with your parsing, Cineraria.
   MADE UP: My top fave.
   Other faves: CHINA and CHECK.

4. I parsed OFTEN the same way.

   Great cluing and surfaces.

   Thank you to Flimsy and Cineraria

5. Totally/clean was my only headscratch. Is a thorn a plant? I thought it was an unpleasant bit of one. I won’t mention the misspelling of “ukulele” as I’ve been guilty of same myself. In fact, there are enough of us by now that some dictionaries are showing it as an alternative.

6. Very enjoyable for my first attempt at a puzzle by Flimsy but I would like someone to explain 19A. The solution was obvious from the clue and the cross letters but I cannot work out why “totally” and “clean” have the same meaning. Does it relate to cricket? Or shaving?

   I also don’t understand the explanation in 4D: “LINE (crow’s foot, i.e., a wrinkle)”.

   I would appreciate being enlightened.

   Thank you all.

7. Annabelle: tiny wrinkles appearing as lines to either side of the eyes are often referred to as ‘crows’ feet’

8. Thanks Flimsy and Cineraria

   14ac: I originally had NESTLE here, which I think works, with the sense of nest as in nest of tables.

   16ac: Further to Geoff@5, all the dictionaries I regularly cite give ukelele as an alternative spelling of the original ukulele.

   19ac: ODE 2010 page 322 gives usage examples he was knocked clean off his feet and I clean forgot her birthday. At least the second of these justifies clean=totally.

   28ac: I originally had SANEST here, but I do not think nest = party really works.

   3dn: ODE p 1850 gives thorn 2 “a thorny bush, shrub or tree, especially a hawthorn”. I knew this from Wordsworth’s poem The Thorn, the original version of which contained the delightful couplet (relating to a pond):

   I’ve measured it from side to side:
   ‘Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.

   4dn: Further to PM@7, I was familiar with the expression crow’s feet in the plural, but ODE p 419 allows us crow’s foot a branching wrinkle at the outer corner of a person’s eye.

9. Thanks Flimsy & Cineraria

   Further to PB @ 8, the OED has ukelele (sic) as the first use of the word, in 1896, with the first appearance of ukulele being in 1900.

10. Thanks, PostMark for the “crow’s feet” explanation. Now excuse me while I go and look in the mirror! I just hate getting older…

    Thanks, Pelham for the “clean” and “totally” explanation. They are not expressions that I would use but I accept that others would.

11. [Annabelle: they are surely a sign of people who have smiled and laughed a lot …]

12. Thanks Flimsy and Cineraria

    Lovely crossword – lasted just a bit less time than Revolver which is just finishing up now . Clues all out together beautifully

    Great way to spend time.

13. Wiktionary, being multilingual, has an entry in Hawaiian for ʻukulele – (Note the single opening quote at the front. I don’t know what that means though): ‘Etymology:
    Compound of ʻuku (“flea”) +‎ lele (“jump, jumping”), literally “jumping flea”, possibly in reference to the motion of the player’s fingers.
    There is one theory tracing this to the nickname of Edward Purvis, a resident of Hawaii and noted ukulele player in the 1880s. … probably only a folk etymology.’

14. Oed.com has it as ukulele, with ukelele as a variant. This quote contains both spellings:
    ‘1957 The machete was heard one day by the vice-chamberlain of King Kalakaua’s court, who..asked to be taught to play it… This vice-chamberlain was a British army officer named Edward Purvis; but the Hawaiians..called him ukulele because his lively playing and antics and his small build suggested a leaping flea. The new instrument became a great success,..and someone started calling them ukeleles.
    American Speech vol. 32 309′
    [Previously Rupert Brooke had had “an eukaleli” in 1914, and P.G. Woodhouse had spelt it ukalele in 1919.]

15. machete ‘… 2. 1850– Music. A small chiefly four-stringed form of guitar played in Portugal, Madeira, etc., which is the forerunner of the ukulele.’

16. [Frankie@14: While we are discussing correct spellings, do you mean P.G. Wodehouse?]

17. Frankie G – the quotation mark at the start of ‘ukulele indicates a glottal stop in the Hawaiian language (as also seen in the spelling Hawai’i).

18. An enjoyable experience but over too soon. A pity we don’t see more of this setter, who is also Nitsy in the Indy – but appears just as infrequently there.
    Thanks, Flimsy and Cineraria.

19. Pelham Barton@16 😐 – Doh! Why didn’t I just paste the quotes, as I usually do?: ‘
    1914 Somewhere an eukaleli thrills and cries. Rupert Chawner Brooke (1887–1915) in New Numbers August 117
    1919 You see the handsome sophomore from Yale sitting beside her on the porch playing the ukalele. Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881–1975)
    A Damsel in Distress vi. 93′
    Andrew@17 – Thanks for the info. 😉

20. Frankie@19: Thank you for that. I have no reason to doubt that you have given an accurate representation of what is on oed.com, although the link in coment 14 did not work for me. However:

    My copy of A Damsel in Distress is a Penguin of the generation which was typeset with a ragged right margin, and chapter headings consisting simply of the chapter number, without even the word “Chapter”. I found the quotation in Chapter 7 on page 74 with the spelling “ukulele”. No surprise that it is a different page number, but I would expect the chapter numbers to match. I had a look in Waterstone’s while out shopping this morning. They had the Arrow paperback and the Everyman Wodehouse hardback. These also had the quotation in Chapter 7 with the “ukulele” spelling.

    I should probably stop there and say “make of that what you will”, and it is of course entirely possible that modern editors have chosen to amend the spelling, but I am beginning to have doubts about the reliability of oed.com. I would be interested to know if anyone has access to a print edition of OED, and how the quotation appears in it (if at all). Better still would be if anyone can find a printed first edition of the book. In the latter case, moving four sentences on from the quotation given, there is a sentence beginning (in my copy) “If there are ukuleles in the world”. I would like to know how that appeared in the first edition.

21. My 1944 copy of the Shorter OED has ukulele 1900 also ukelele but no quotation .

    Much enjoyed the puzzle which was a swifter solve than usual for me.

    Thanks to both

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