Financial Times 18,001 by BOBCAT

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BOBCAT kicks off the week…

An enjoyable puzzle, but I found some of the parsing a bit tricky (31a eludes me), and I apologise if I’ve made any mistakes or been a bit vague. Always delighted to find a hidden feline presence from this setter.

Happy St Patrick’s day everyone!

Thanks BOBCAT!

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1. Starmer at last fit to contain British mob (6)
RABBLE

[starme]R (at last) + ABLE (fit) to contain B (British)

4. Obscenity cases send well-doers spinning (to some extent) (8)
LEWDNESS

([case]S SEND WEL[ll-doers] (to some extent))< (<spinning)

10. Contralto driving out tenor in extreme anger (7)
INCENSE

INTENSE (extreme, C (contralto) driving out T (tenor))

11. Miss possibly every boring interminable semester (7)
TEACHER

EACH (every) boring TER[m] (semester, interminable)

12. Idiot party games (4)
DOPE

DO (party) + PE (games)

13. We heard Iris briefly barking — like a dog? (4-6)
WIRE-HAIRED

(WE HEARD IRI[s] (briefly))* (*barking)

15. Medical condition in space covered by dictionary article (6)
OEDEMA

EM (space) covered by (OED (dictionary) + A (article))

16. Special constable collars slatterns? (7)
SCRUFFS

SC (special constable) + RUFFS (collars)

20. Cunning tips from successful rowers? (7)
SLEIGHT

S[uccessfu]L (tips from) + EIGHT (rowers)

21. Illusory experience relating to rays reflected on recycled jade (4,2)
DEJA VU

(UV)< (relating to rays, <reflected) on (JADE)* (*recycled)

24. Mellow country club promises to pay after call cut short (10)
EUPHONIOUS

EU (country club) + (IOUS (promises to pay) after PHON[e] (call, cut short))

26. Not enough energy for difficult stage (4)
STEP

STE[e]P (difficult, not enough E (energy))

28. Enjoying success after success at the time of joining A-list (2,1,4)
ON A ROLL

Double (cryptic) definition

29. Native engaged in blazing row needlessly (7)
INGROWN

[blaz]ING ROW N[eedlessly] (engaged in)

30. Boat put back fish by water’s edge (8)
POOLSIDE

(SLOOP)< (boat, <put back) + IDE (fish)

31. Shelter suppresses sign of female occupant (6)
LESSEE

LEE (shelter) suppresses ESS or SSE (sign of female?)

I don’t quite understand this

DOWN
1. Artist in doctor’s surgery under the weather to a little extent (8)
RAINDROP

RA (artist) + IN + DR (doctor) + OP (surgery)

2. Think again: divorcée’s beginning to wear second ring (4-5)
BACK-PEDAL

D[ivorcee] (beginning) to wear (BACK (second) + PEAL (ring))

3. Bridge course cut short (4)
LINK

LINK[s] (course, cut short)

5. Settle Parisian between Norway and Switzerland (8)
ENTRENCH

ENTRE (between, Parisian) + N (Norway) and CH (Switzerland)

6. ‘My behaviour’s OTT’ — Cleopatra or Titania? (5,5)
DRAMA QUEEN

Double (cryptic) definition

7. Number three in order (5)
ETHER

(THREE)* (*in order)

8. Walk like a zebra, not softly, with tail raised (6)
STRIDE

STRI[p]ED (like a zebra, not P (softly), with tail (i.e. the D) raised)

9. Apathetic assembly about to assume power (5)
TEPID

(DIET)< (assembly, <about) to assume P (power)

14. Our Simon’s struggling with unbounded love that’s all-consuming (10)
OMNIVOROUS

(OUR SIMON with [l]OV[e] (unbounded))* (*struggling)

17. Parts in French play opening on 1st September (9)
FRACTIONS

FR (French) + ACT I (play opening) + ON + S[eptember] (1st)

18. Delighted to find personnel outwardly cultivated (8)
THRILLED

HR (personnel), outwardly TILLED (cultivated)

19. American president’s first penetrating impression excited state (8)
SUSPENSE

(US (American) + P[resident] (first)) penetrating SENSE (impression)

22. Second half of chronicle set aside for publisher to make good (6)
RECOUP

REC[ord] (chronicle, second half of set aside for…) + OUP (publisher, Oxford University Press)

23. Slug discovered secure plant (5)
LUPIN

[s]LU[g] (discovered) + PIN (secure)

25. Ancient Greek soldiers working shifts (5)
PLATO

PLATO[on] (soldiers, ON (working) shifts)

27. Fit reason to do away with king (4)
AGUE

A[r]GUE (reason, to do away with R (king))

19 comments on “Financial Times 18,001 by BOBCAT”

  2. LESSEE
    I think it is ESS in LEE with ESS being a sign of female as in tigrESS.
    Edit: Steven@1 has beaten me to it.

    ON A ROLL
    at the time of=ON
    joining—>a link
    A =A
    list=ROLL

  3. I missed the wordplay on incense but had lessee. All in all, I thought it was a little more difficult than the normal Bobcat puzzle, but definitely fair and, as always, a lot of fun. Thank you Bobcat and also Teacow for a great blog. Happy St Patrick’s day to all and please have a Guinness for me.

  4. I did not get the ESS trick in LESSEE so thanks to commenters for elucidation. (I guess, in the bad old days, we would also have waitress, actress etc). Faves today inc SLEIGHT for the smoothness; STEP ditto; BACK-PEDAL for the amusing surface; OMNIVOROUS for the definition; RECOUP, again for the smoothness and PLATO similarly – though ‘shifted’ feels slightly more like a movement indicator than deletion so I was thinking along the wrong lines for a while.

    I wonder if the definition for RAINDROP is simply ‘the weather to a little extent’ rather than ‘under the weather etc’? I took the ‘under’ to be part of the WP with the apostrophe S giving us a parse of Artist = RA in = IN doctor = DR has surgery = OP under(neath) = RA IN DR OP?

    Thanks Bobcat and Teacow

  5. Reckon you’re right about RAINDROP, PostMark. I still say ‘waitress’ and ‘actress’. Hope I’m not being sexist. Glad ‘waitron’ never caught on.
    Didn’t have a problem with ESS.

  6. For 31a oed.com has: “-ESS suffix ¹. Forming nouns denoting a female person or animal, as authoress n., tigress n., etc.
    Now often avoided in favour of use of formations ending in ‑er or ‑or with gender-neutral reference; see the etymology.” …
    “< French ‑esse < post-classical Latin ‑issa < ancient Greek ‑ισσα …”

  7. In 28a “A-list” has been misleadingly capitalized and hyphenated, and is just “a list”: A ROLL. Cheeky!
    Parsed 1d RAINDROP as PostMark@4: “doctor has surgery under” = DR+OP. — [I’m having one tromorrow.]

  9. [Re the above discussion: I remember Paul doing a clue in which ASSESS was a female donkey. And yes, most of the human -ess words (poetess, waitress, stewardess, etc) are being or have been phased out, but it’ll be a long time before we shed actress from our vocabulary. All the awards shows still have separate categories for actors and actresses, and the call to alter that has not been taken up. (And it’s the one profession where gender does still matter, as we do usually expect the gender of the actor to match the gender of the character unless there’s some good artistic reason otherwise, with apologies to non-binary actors, who don’t need me to tell them how rough it is out there for them.) Oh, and we won’t lose countess, marchioness, etc., either, until we lose the nobility entirely, which will probably be sooner.]

  10. I did not find this easy – BACK PEDAL eluded me for ages as did POOLSIDE (I had never heard of a fish caked an IDE). But a good workout for the little greycells

  11. Beak @10: store the IDE away for future use–that fish is more commonly seen in the crosswords than it is in the water! (And I agree the puzzle was tricky.)

  12. IDE agree with you on that. In crosswordland, the most common instrument is the ‘ocarina’, the most common golfer is ‘Els’, possibly the only gangster is ‘Al’ and the list goes on.

  13. Ouch! If I may quote Teacow, re 31(ac)…..”I don’t quite understand this”.
    In my case, it applied to 5 or 6 clues. Or more.
    For example, I found PLATO (25 dn), but “working shifts” just seems too poor?
    I found RAINDROP, too, but it’s a laboured charade for a lame result…..” the weather to a little extent”.
    ESS= sign of female. Really?

    Some enjoyable stuff, ( number = ETHER 7(dn), the zebra play in 8(dn) etc.,) but I really struggled to get on the setter’s wavelength. My bad. I must try harder on the next Bobcat, and forewarned is forearmed….I hope!

    Thanks to BC, and more so for the blog, Teacow, which I certainly needed!

  14. Thanks Bobcat. Bobcat is becoming one of my favourite setters due to great clues like TEACHER, DOPE, EUPHONIOUS (liked EU as ‘country club’), STEP, BACK-PEDAL, TEPID, FRACTIONS, and SUSPENSE. I had trouble parsing INCENSE and LEESSE. Thanks Teacow for the blog.
    [PostMark @4: I’m afraid we’ll have ‘actress’ for quite some time if Hollywood keeps giving Oscars for ‘Best Actress’.]

  15. IAN@13 What is weak about “working shifts” as a wordplay indication to delete ON in 25A, given that Chambers has “go away” as an instransitive verbal meaning of “shift”? And as far as the meaning of the suffix “ess” is concerned, that’s given in Chambers as “denoting the female of a specified species, occupation etc”. FrankieG @4 has already provided the OED reference.

  16. Re 10a INCENSE, I have only seen A as the abbreviation for contralto, as in SATB. I understand the gender component of contralto – a contralto is a female alto, while a male alto is a (wait for it) male alto – but I have never seen C as its abbreviation.

    (Male altos are a subset of countertenors, whose range is more often that of a mezzo-soprano, with some having a soprano range.)

    I don’t have a Chambers, so I don’t know if there is dictionary support for C. It isn’t in the SOED, nor is it in my Groves music dictionary (which gives A for alto or contralto.)

    I enjoyed this puzzle, and especially liked the clever wordplay for 26a STEP, once Teacow explained it. Also “country club” for EU at 24a. Thanks both for the fun.

  18. Cellomaniac@16: Searching for “verdi requiem vocal score ricordi”, I found an advertisement for various copies on sale on ebay, One of the copies has photographs of several pages, on one of which the chorus parts are marked respectively “S.”, “C.”, “T.”, and “B.” These are definitely English language abbreviations. The Verdi Requiem was the first major choral work in which I sang (in 1970), and we used that edition to learn the work, which is why SCTB was at the back of my mind. I agree that SATB is far more common.

  19. Rudolf
    Thanks for correcting me.
    You hold the rein, dear.
    And I have been given a bloody nose.
    I consider myself, sleighed.

    It’s all about fun and opinions, though, don’t you think?

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