Financial Times 17,925 by ZAMORCA

17 comments on “Financial Times 17,925 by ZAMORCA”

1. Lovely puzzle – and knowing that it would be a pangram helped me get UNIQUE – the SW was the last area I solved.

   Liked: ACROBAT (made me laugh), WONDERED, LADYBIRD, JOCKEY (had forgotten the term Joey for kangaroo), EXECUTOR, INFANT, CURLEW

   Thanks Zamorca and Turbolegs

2. Entertaining puzzle and I’m pretty sure it’s a pangram too.

   Thank you to Zamorca and enjoy your travels, with additional kudos for blogging while away, Teacow.

3. Well done Turbolegs blogging from Bukhara . We greatly enjoyed our visit about twenty years ago.
   For 5d I had :and ET( and in France) plus CH.

   Fun puzzle so thanks to both.

4. Thanks Zamorca and Turbolegs

   5dn: I failed to spot this while reading the blog but I agree with SM@3.

5. Thanks SM@3 for spotting the error. Fixed now. 🙂

   Regards,
   TL

6. Thanks Zamorca for the entertainment. I found this on the tougher end of the Zamorca spectrum but was able to complete it (with a few parsing gaps) in two sittings. Favourites included UNIQUE, LADYBIRD, FIREWORK, DOZE OFF, ACROBAT, and HIDDEN. In SAFFRON, what is the anagram indicator? Is it ‘special’? If so how does that work? In PANICKED, is ‘when’ a linking word? That seems odd. I guess these are minor quibbles in a generally solid puzzle. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

7. You are really going beyond the call of duty blogging while on the road, Turbolegs.

   NE corner yielded quickly but then I slowed considerably.

   This was a mixed bag for me. UGLY gets a tick simply because it alludes to the Goon Show. I also liked DISLOYAL (clever anagram and nice surface) HIDDEN, and FEDORA. Like Tony@6 I also had problems parsing a few clews, and thanks to TL for filling the gaps. I also had some quibbles, but of the shrugging-my-shoulders kind rather than serious issues.

   I am keeping my fingers crossed that we get a Jumbo from a favourite setter tomorrow.

   Thanks Zamorca and Turbolegs

8. Tony@6 re 20ac: There is an eight page list of anagram indicators in the Wordgame Companion that appears in the middle of Chmabers 2011. I believe the same list appears in the Chambers Crossword Dictionary whose date of publication I do not remember. This list includes the word “special”. I am not sure that I am prepared to apply the same principle to inclusion on that list as I am to inclusion in the main body of the dictionary itself, but the list is there. The nearest I can find from the entry for special in Chambers 2016 (p 1495) is “peculiar”, which seems to me to be a stretch, but not an impossible one.

9. Hey-Ho.
   Setters can throw a dart at any page in Chambers, and it’s going to land on a random anagram indicator that somebody thinks is justifiable. Anything goes.

   [ to bust/ groomed/ special/ dreadful/ carved]. Ho-Hum.

   Ditto for one-letter abbreviations. Down = D.
   Doubtless, Chambers page 606, line 23.

   The syntax of some of the clues here seemed out of kilter to me, too.
   All those [ ‘s ]; “France and” = et; ” students crossing river” where the river crosses the students. Oh…they were young, too, so obviously that = Y. etc.,etc.

   A curate’s egg for me, or rather, not for me, sorry to say.

10. Thanks Pelham Barton @ 8. I usually refer to clueclinic.com for anagram indicators and I didn’t see ‘special’ listed but I can see how ‘special’ can be ‘peculiar’. I wouldn’t use it, however, and I would expect ‘raised eyebrows’ if I did.

11. E.N.Boll& @9 – we use D for down all the time in crosswords – 1D or 1A – you know immediately whether I mean the clue for PHONEY or the one for PHASE OUT.

    As for anagram indicators, my Chambers Crossword Dictionary (2003 reprint) lists 700 or so, base words only, but says it’s incomplete: “Almost any word or phrase meaning or suggesting disturbance or an abnormal state can be used as or as part of an anagram indicator in a cryptic clue.”

    Y for young appears in the YMCA or YWCA

12. Actually, D for down does not appear to be in Chambers 2016, not even on page 388. I cannot find it in Collins 2023 or ODE 2010 either, but Shanne@11 has given a good argument for its use. I give page numbers mainly to confirm that I am using the print editions, which I regard as more reliable than online sources. We had some discussion not long ago about the need to use considerable caution with online sources, with particular reference to Collins.

    As I said recently, I do not claim to know every word in reasonably common use in current English, and certainly not every meaning that is used. While I do not claim that dictionaries are infallible, I believe that, in case of conflict between a verifiable entry in one of the standard printed dictionaries and an unsupported comment made here, the balance of probabilities is overwhelmingly in favour of the dictionary. I have said on previous occasions, though less recently, that, as a matter of practical necessity, I do not expect setters to overrule standard dictionaries.

    Shanne@11: I do not think it is a good idea to allow single letters to be taken from multi-letter abbreviations. My view is that, if you do that, you really may as well allow any word to stand for its first letter. Y can represent YMCA or YWCA, but taking the word “young” out of that is a step too far for me. There could be an alternative justification for Y = young, but I have not found one.

13. Further on 8dn: To repeat that I have not found a justification for Y = young that I can find satisfactory, but “students crossing rising river” works with cross meaning “to obstruct” (Chambers p 369).

14. Pelham Barton @12 – that was the only justification I could find for Y = young, but it is not uncommon: YA for young adult books, YAC for the Young Archaeologists Club, YOC for the Young Ornithologists Club, and etc

    Dictionaries also don’t give all the suits of cards in their abbreviations (C, D & H, no S – I looked it up to blog) or H and C for hot and cold on taps, or R, D and N from gear sticks (reverse, drive and neutral), or E, L and N from electrical plugs (earth, live and neutral). N for neuter is in my Chambers, but not N for neutral.

15. Shanne@14: Thanks for coming back on that. Chambers (p 694) and Collins (p 889) both have entries for h and c, Chambers also has them separately, but Collins does not seem to do so. A lot of your examples are seen on specific objects, and so not picked up in text in a way that would get them into the dictionaries. I always regard presence in a standard dictionary as a sufficient condition for validity, not a necessary one, and agree that any abbreviation that is regularly seen on everyday objects can be regarded as fair.

    Thanks also for the remark in the middle paragraph of comment 11. I seem to remember that Azed was asked to compile the list of anagram indicators for one of the Chambers publications, but declined to do so because he felt that it is impossible to give a list of specific words that could be anywhere near exhaustive (my words, not an attempt to recall his).

16. Shanne and PB passim N = NEUTRAL is omnipresent on the gearshift of automatic-gearbox cars

17. Very enjoyable and very speedy by my standards.

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