Financial Times 17,935 by AARDVARK

21 comments on “Financial Times 17,935 by AARDVARK”

1. I don’t play bridge so was defeated by 7d – is North designated as the player who challenges bids? If not, then how does one distinguish between NORTH SHIELDS and SOUTH SHIELDS? Needless to say, I plumped for the latter, being the town name with which I was more familiar.

2. Thanks Teacow

   7dn; It will be interesting to see how this is printed in the PDF accompanying tomorrow’s puzzle. I was expecting you to put SOUTH SHIELDS, which I would have thought was the slightly better known of the towns on either side of the River Tyne, near the mouth of the river. (Edit; PostMark@1 seems to agree with this.) I have travelled more than once on the ferry connecting the two towns – all right, possibly no more than three times, but that is enough.

3. I put in SOUTH SHIELDS having never heard of the NORTH version. In 9a, it should be LAM (unusually appearing twice) + P. In 1d, I had TM + I (one from the clue).

4. I put in NORTH just because it’s the first in my mental list of bridge players. I was partly thrown by the use of “picked up” as a reversal indicator in an across clue.

5. I went for South Shields too. The FT app has North as the answer but I’m none the wiser. Also agree with Hovis on 9a. On toast was a new one for me.

6. Petert @4. I also didn’t much care for the “picked up” reversal indicator in an across clue.

7. By no means a doddle, this, but well worth persevering.
   Favourites included MERGANSER, ARSENIC and RENE MAGRITTE.
   Not knowing the tennis player in 3d, I flipped between Lettie and Lottie; the surface was suggestive of the former while the parsing of the latter seemed more likely. I put in NORTH – luckily as it turns out – for the same reason as Petert@4.
   Like Hovis, I was surprised to see ‘lam’ twice in the sense of ‘hit’ (9a and 2d) – I parsed 9a as ‘lam’ from ‘hit’ and ‘p’ for ‘softly because I thought if you ‘lamped’ someone, you hit them hard.
   Thanks for the workout, Aardvark and to Teacow for the blog.

8. I agree with Hovis@3 on the parsings.

   I found this puzzle quite hard. The clues for 7D and 14A seemed ambiguous–not impossibly so, but 7D in particular, since either option fits. (I don’t know the towns, but I do play bridge.) But overall a fun challenge.

   How exactly does “a bit” = “penny”? I know that there were some coins called bits (and not Bitcoin), but I was not sure about pennies in particular?

9. I must admit that I thought ‘bit’ and ‘penny’ were US for a ‘cent’ but I see a bit is somewhat larger with two bits being 25 cents (if Chambers is to be believed).
   1d reminded me of the person who, rather than having a local anaesthetic at the dentist, preferred to go into a trance and ‘transcend dental medication’. I’ll get my coat.

10. I too found this quite difficult. I share favourites with Diane@7. I agree this was fun in places, but it needed a bit too much GK for my liking.

    Talking of GK, I also wondered why bit = penny. My dictionary gives me a few options for a bit coin, but none are the equivalent of a penny. Perhaps the answer is in a dictionary I do not have?

    Thanks Aardvark and Teacow

11. 10dn: Collins 2023 p 210 has bit as 3 US and Canadian informal the value of an eighth of a dollar: spoken of only in units of two: two bits 4 any small coin.
    Chambers 2016 p 157 has “a coin” followed by the more specific one where two bits equal 25 cents.
    ODE 2010 p 171 has the more specific meaning, but I did not find the more general one.
    All three of those dictionaries also have threepenny bit, a pre-decimal coin of which you needed 80 to make a pound. This has been out of use as a coin since 1971, but I remember using them as a child. That makes sense of the general meaning, but I have found nothing to make a bit specifically equal to a penny.

12. Some better editing might have helped here. I agree with the reservations about 25a and 7d.
    “Penny” went in with a shrug, but I see the OED does give one meaning of “penny” as “the type of a coin of small value”, which I suppose could get one to bit at a stretch.
    While in pedantic mode, the FTSE is not an exchange, it’s an index. The exchange is the LSE.

13. Two bits is 25 cents. There is a classic US football cheer that goes:
    “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar!
    All for the [insert team name here], stand up and holler!”

14. Thanks Aardvark. I found this on the difficult side and I concur with Martyn @10 regarding the amount of GK needed to solve this. As a result I did a fair amount of guessing. (My guess was wrong in 7d where I put in SOUTH only to be overruled by the ‘check word’ button.) I also questioned ‘picked up’ as a reversal indicator in an across clue; in my mind any combo with ‘up’ is reserved for down clues. Gripes aside this was a decent crossword with CHARLIE WATTS, EIGHT, FOOTSIE, ONE-TIME, and DRAMA being top picks. Thanks Teacow for the blog.

15. Having been able to solve every FT crossword I’ve attempted over the past week, I was very disappointed to encounter this utterly impenetrable ***** of ****. Unforgivably bad clueing. Catmint? Lottie Dod? Appalling.,

16. Having been able to solve every FT crossword I’ve attempted over the past week, I was very disappointed to encounter this utterly impenetrable ***** of ****. Unforgivably bad clueing. Catmint? Lottie Dod? Appalling.,

17. Fun puzzle—thanks Aardvark! My favorite was 1A, perhaps because I am a fan of the Stones. Happy New Year to all.

18. Solved, but not totally satisfying, for reasons already discussed, viz:
    (a) the ambiguity over North or South Shields – I spent several minutes in a fruitless search on Google to try and identify the challenger in bridge;
    (b) the reversal indicator in 25ac is more suited to a down clue;
    (c) I doubt if many younger solvers have ever heard of the tennis player in 3dn; even as an octogenarian I had hardly ever heard of her!
    But I did like the long answers at 1ac and 26ac; RTE for ‘Irish media’ was very neat.
    Thanks, Aardvark and Teacow

19. Yvette – what an unpleasant comment. Plenty of people (including me) managed to construct both CATMINT and LOTTIE DOD, despite never having heard of them. That to me is a sign of rather clear cluing. Perhaps it’s not the setter’s fault you couldn’t get them? Just a thought.

    I agree with what others have said about the unfortunate unresolvable ambiguity in 7d, and ‘picked up’ in an across clue, but I did enjoy the puzzle – particularly RENE MAGRITTE.

    Thanks both.

20. allan_c So you’re saying your Google search didn’t come up trumps 😀

21. I’m behind on solving but in case replies show up in your inbox, I can explain the “bits” in American slang. It’s from the old Spanish dollar which was known as a “piece of eight”. Two of those eight bits would make up 25 cents.

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