Financial Times 17,871 by NEO

by

A fun challenge from NEO this Friday.

FF: 9 DD: 8

ACROSS
1/11/18 ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Line three times added to The Waste Land spoiled fine work (4,4,4,4,4)

[ LLL ( line, three times ) THE WASTE LAND ]* SWELL ( fine )
5 IMPALE
Kill vampire? Neo looks like one! (6)

I'M ( neo ) PALE ( looks like a vampire )
9 TRAVESTY
For burlesque go without an undergarment (8)

[ A ( an ) VEST ( undergarment ) ] in TRY ( go )
10 ADROIT
Notice drivel written about one being skilled (6)

AD ( notice ) [ ROT ( drivel ) around I ( one ) ]
12 APHID
Bug concealed by Allan Pinkerton’s beginners? (5)

AP ( Allan Pinkerton, starting letters ) HID ( concealed )
13 ISHERWOOD
Novelist died after bringing female into Irish court (9)

[ SHE ( female ) in IR ( irish ) ] WOO ( court ) D ( died )
14 POODLE
Servile follower duke found in Dorset town (6)

D ( duke ) in POOLE ( dorset town )
16 THIN AIR
What Cockney trichologist may treat for nothing? (4,3)

cryptic def; cockney pronunciation for THIN HAIR ( what a trichologist would treat )
19 NEEDLED
Annoyed as essential to assimilate Latin (7)

NEEDED ( essential ) containing L ( latin )
21 COMEDY
Clowning Buffalo Bill conserves mass and energy (6)

CODY ( buffalo bill ) containing [ M ( mass ) E ( energy ) ]
23 SAN MARINO
An attribute not entirely visible in Chinese republic (3,6)

[ AN MARk ( attribute, not entirely ) ] in SINO ( chinese )
25 DACHA
Boris’s country cottage — I see rotter returning (5)

AH ( i see ) CAD ( rotter ) , all reversed
26 ELIXIR
Anger consuming team sent back for panacea (6)

RILE ( anger ) containing XI ( team, cricket ), all reversed
27/21 D ALEISTER CROWLEY
When rebuilt see it really protects Plains tribe magician (8,7)

[ SEE IT REALLY ]* containing CROW ( plains tribe )
28 LADING
Nick goes after the French cargo (6)

LA ( the, french ) DING ( nick )
29 MYRMIDON
Goodness! Nimrod’s wounded one following Achilles! (8)

MY ( goodness ) [ NIMROD ]*
DOWN
1 ASTRAY
Wrong smoking receptacle hotel’s thrown out (6)

AShTRAY ( smoking receptacle, without H – hotel )
2 LOATHSOME
Abhorrent to Holmes criminally hiding answer (9)

[ TO HOLMES ]* containing A ( answer )
3 WIELD
Brandish blade ultimately slicing bananas (5)

E ( bladE, last letter ) in WILD ( bananas )
4 LATTICE
Large room close to fire and grill (7)

L ( large ) ATTIC ( room ) E ( firE, last letter )
6 MODERNISM
Joyce’s style muddled more minds (9)

[ MORE MINDS ]*
7 AB OVO
Almost over — over from the word go (2,3)

ABOVe ( over, almost ) O ( over ) ; didnt know this word and had to look it up on the internet
8 ECTODERM
External layer red with comet disintegrating (8)

[ RED COMET ]*
11
See 1 Across
15 DALMATIAN
Boy upset runs away from little green man one spotted (9)

reverse of LAD ( boy ) [ MArTIAN ( little green man, alien stereotype, without R – runs ) ]
17 ABDICATED
Rejected ruling? (9)

cryptic def
18
See 1 Across
20 DAIS
Parliament’s not wanting Liberal to make stand (4)

DAIl's ( parliament, irish, without L – liberal )
21
See 27 Across
22 MACRON
Politician from right working with computer (6)

MAC ( computer ) R ( right ) ON ( working )
24 NAIAD
Diana could be one among the Crenaeae (5)

cryptic def; [ DIANA ]*
25 DEISM
Belief in crusade is misplaced (5)

hidden in "..crusaDE IS Misplaced"

33 comments on “Financial Times 17,871 by NEO”

  1. Next time I see Neo, I think I will do the Polymath instead.

    The Crowley clue was completely unsolvable for me. I understood its construction but with the unusual spelling of the first name, I doubt I would have solved it even if I had known the crow as a plains tribe.

    I liked ECTODERM (nice anagram) and LATTICE

    Thanks Neo and Turbolegs

  2. Disaster. Never heard of MYRMIDON, DACHA, ECTODERM, ISHERWOOD, AB OVO, Crenaeae, ALEISTER CROWLEY, LADING, Crow as a plains tribe. Quite apart from Buffalo Bill’s name nor the Dorset town. Looks like I’ll henceforth be giving Neo a wide berth.

  3. Thanks for the blog , a few new words but fairly clued . ALEISTER CROWLEY is still fairly well known in the UK . He is on the cover of Sergeant Pepper …. , Jimmy Page bought his house and many links to Led Zeppelin and others . He was a friend of Christopher ISHERWOOD in Berlin and features in at least one of his novels.
    DALMATION my favourite among many neat clues.

  4. Tough but enjoyable. FF 9 and DD 8: I go with the blogger’s assessment of the puzzle.
    Thanks Neo and Turbolegs.

    IMPALE
    I think it’s better to take ‘Neo looks like one’ as ‘I look PALE’ (I’M PALE) rather
    than splitting it into two parts.

    Liked LADING, AB OVO and ABDICATED.

  5. 24D: I’m another who did not know “Crenaeae” but the anagram and cross letters made the answer obvious.

    9A: “Travesty” = “burlesque”? Another lesson for me: I have always thought that a “travesty” was a bad thing and that “burlesque” was all about buxom ladies with short frilly skirts and fishnet stockings!

    7D: Despite learning Latin as well as English at school, I did not get this despite the cross letters as I could only remember “ova” as “egg”. Mea culpa!

    Thanks Turbolegs.

  6. Beaten by two: the nho AB OVO which I was nowhere near getting and POODLE for which I had bunged in an unparsed TOADIE (I had checked there was no lurking Dorset town called Toaie but could not think of an alternative solution. Doh!) I agree with KVa re IMPALE – I took it to be a single statement by our setter. I am giving myself a tick for ALEISTER CROWLEY even though I spelled it with two LL’s rather than than the E! I recalled that the first name was unusually spelled but not precisely how and I was doing the anagram in my head. Well, that’s my excuse. I knew there were two L’s in the fodder – but of course they are both occupying the same square on the grid! To my delight, despite the unusual words in both clues and solutions, everything else solved and parsed. The most enjoyable of the three GIFT puzzles for me today.

    Thanks Neo and Turbolegs

  7. Most of this went into smoothly for me with the exception of the nho ‘magician” (despite trying various Alistair spellings) and ‘ad ovo’. It was very enjoyable in spite of those I didn’t solve.
    Think I liked DALMATION, MODERNISM and LADING best. NAIAD was neat; it reminded me of the aptly named long distance swimmer Diana Nyad (née Sneed).
    Thanks to Neo and Turbolegs.

  8. I am shortly going to a wedding in Poole – so that was a help with POODLE.

    As yesterday the bottom half took longer than the top half.

    Lots of neat little clues including, LATTICE, APHID, ADROIT, COMEDY – and DALMATION made me smile

    I think this week has been a really good week for FT puzzles.

    Thanks Neo and Turbolegs (needed your help parsing a few)

  9. Frieda @2, this is two days in a row that I am agreeing with you, this time about “burlesque” and “travesty”.

    Like you, I learned Latin and English at school. Bist du Deutsche?

    Alas, I could not complete the novelist at 13A – although I did recognise (after cheating) that he wrote a novel set in Berlin that was turned into the movie “Cabaret”.

    Thank you Turbolegs and the other contributors.

  10. One of those lucky days where Poole is the first Dorset town you think of and All’s well comes immediately to mind. The 666 man was the only thing that held me up as I was fixated on Cree rather than Crow.

  13. Apart from the magician, I got on really well with this crossword.

    My favourite has to be 5a as Neo really could say this and not be fibbing

    Many thanks to him and Turbolegs

  14. 7d In Latin AB (“from”) unsurprisingly takes the ABlative case of OVUM (“the egg”): OVO. Etymology: ‘…Compare Horace Satires 1. 3. 6 ab ovo usque ad mala ‘from the egg to the apples’, alluding to the Roman custom of beginning a meal with – guess what – eggs and ending it with – guess what – apples…’
    Thanks N&T

  17. Thanks Neo (except for 27ac/21dn) and Turbolegs

    I did not know the answer to 27ac/1dn, but that is not my objection. My problem is the self-intersecting answer, which means that in effect we have a 15 letter answer with only six checked letters and the additional information that the 2nd and 13th letters are the same. I do not like such constructions and I will not thank the setter for them.

  18. Usually enjoy NEO but couldn’t finish this one. Fun crossword? Quite the oposite IMO, didn’t enjoy it at all. One man’s meat is another man’s poisson.

  19. I take your point Pelham Barton@17 and do not remember seeing a similar construction before.
    I refreshed my memory of the wizard and am sorry I did. What a monster.

    Nevertheless , thanks to Neo and Turbolegs.

  20. I also take your point PB@17 – I felt the same but did not mention it in my earlier comment.

    I read up on the said Crowley, and agree with SM@19.

    On a more trivial note, I learned that Led Zeppelin wrote his motto on the album cover of Led Zeppelin III. That is the very album I was playing as I tried to finish this puzzle. Quite the coincidence! (Although it does not make me any fonder of the clue).

  22. [Roz@21: These days the trains on that route terminate at Bournemouth. There used to be a direct train from Poole to Nottingham which was notable for reversing its direction of travel three times on the journey – at Reading, Birmingham, and Derby.]

  23. We got on fairly well with this apart from having never heard of 27/21 (maybe that’s not quite true but if we had we’ve long since forgotten him. But we did manage to get the answer once we realised the tribe was Crow rater than Cree and googled to confirm the weird spelling of 27. The intersection of the two parts actually helped because the intersecting letter had to be one that was repeated. Not sure about it being a fun challenge, though; a challenge but not much fun.
    Thanks, Neo and Turbolegs.

  24. Contrary to many comments above. I found this crossword straightforward, once I replaced CREE with CROW.
    LoI AB OVO.
    Back on UK time now, my Perth WA 7 hour advantage lost.
    Thanks Neo and Turbolegs.

  25. allan_c@23: Fair point, if it was done deliberately for that purpose. I retain my general objection to self-intersecting answers in the absence of a specific mitigation, but can now thank Neo for the whole crossword in this case.

  26. Thanks Neo for an enjoyable crossword with a few tough patches. I had some difficulty in the SE corner so I resorted to the guess-then-check method for MYRMIDON and ALEISTER CROWLEY as well as AB OVO in the NE corner. All else went in nicely with my top picks being ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL, COMEDY, and my COTD DALMATIAN. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

  27. Roz @3 – thanks for reminding me – I’d forgotten Crowley appears in the Berlin novels.

    To anyone not familiar with those wonderful books by Isherwood… well, all I can say is: your loss.

    Thanks for a splendid puzzle, Neo, and Turbolegs for the blog.

  28. I know about Isherwood, but I have never read his work. I have just about gone through all my novels at home, so I will give Isherwood a crack on your recommendation, Widdersbel@27. Many thanks.

  29. I had a lot of fun with this one even though I have no ability to know many of the references I got some via the parsing. Which I am proud of myself for candidly. I also put on TOADIE which ended up not running any of the crosses. I did put in DIET for parliament and then thought the republic might be SAN Matteo? Or something. I certainly googled ‘famous British magicians’ but being here in America I’m always googling some British thing or whatever (eg ‘towns in dorset’). Thank you all.

  30. We were in Poole earlier this summer for the day, Geocaching on our way home, having exhausted the possibilities where we’d been staying, but I knew it well as a teenager. Lots of sailing clubs there. I went through a few Dorset towns in my head, but Shaftesbury, Dorchester and Blandford Forum weren’t a lot of help.

    ALEISTER CRAWLEY I knew of too, but there are lots of references to him in 1970s culture.

    I looked up Achilles’s followers to get MYRMIDON and AB OVO was a guess.

    Thank you to Neo and Turbolegs.

  32. Enjoyed this immensely. Not really a duff clue among them, and I chuckled at 6D for its deep truth. Tops for me was the Crowley anagram/ charade thingy. I bet Neo is not as pale as Keanu Reeves.

    Crowley was one of the most interesting people ever to have walked the earth in my view. He was born Edward Alexander Crowley according to Wiki, and one of his children is called Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley. So, interesting.

  33. Very much enjoyed this crossword, lots of smiles all the way through.
    COTD for us was IMPALE
    Thank you neo and turbolegs

Comments are closed.