Financial Times 18,002 by GOZO

13 comments on “Financial Times 18,002 by GOZO”

1. 15a – screed synonym border? Dubious IMHO

2. Michael@1: From Chambers, third definition: “a border”

3. The ‘unsteady steady’ and ‘unsettled settler’ are very Gozo-y. I liked them along with URTICARIA and SLURRY.
   Thanks for the fun, Gozo, and to Cineraria for the blog – agree that 9d is probably a typo.

4. I found this an interesting mix of straightforward and very much not so. Quite liked the clue for VITRIOL when I finally figured out what was going on. Among the simpler ones, I thought LENTO was both elegant and clever. Regarding TYPIFIES, there is a convention thar “most of” a word is all but the end, but I suppose there’s no reason why it can’t be all but the beginning. But that did hold me up for a fair while.

   Of course, in American English, a COMFORTER is similar to a duvet. We rarely if ever see the scarf meaning, and never the “dummy” one, which we don’t call a dummy either–it’s a pacifier. Two countries divided by a common language and all that.

5. Like mrpenney, I’ve seen ‘comforter’ in the sense of ‘duvet’ but also in the sense of ‘shawl’ or ‘tippet’. I’m also more familiar with ‘pacifier’ for ‘dummy’ but I see that ‘comforter’ has gained currency as both a dummy and blanket combined, or as baby shops have it, the inelegant ‘dumforter’!

6. Having confirmed that the state of Senegal is indicated by SN, I had SCREEN instead of SCREED with a screen being either a partition or, better, a row of tall shrubs/trees planted to either hide something or provide a windbreak. Both are arguably a border.

   I had big ticks for ROCK – a lovely DD not marred by including a directional link like ‘of’ or ‘for’; DIAL TONE which is superb and COTD for me; URTICARIA for the ‘double ‘air cut’; INELASTIC which is beautifully succinct in using anagram fodder to create what looks like a link; and SCORED – another neat DD with a neutral link and a lovely play on a well known phrase.

   Shame about the typo – I assumed it was a mistake and used the Check button after entering that one. Amusing to see a similar device twice employed with the funds raised for SLOOP and the kitty backing for STOP.

   Thanks Gozo and Cineraria

7. Thanks Gozo and Cineraria

   9dn: The nearest I can find for sloop as a plural is in SOED 2007 p 2875 which has “one of the smaller classes of anti-submarine convoy escort vessels in the Second World War”. However, I read that as meaning that a sloop is a single vessel in one of those classes, not the class itself.

   19dn: I think the order of the words in the clue allows us to rearrange the letters of “tragedians” to form ANGRIEST AD (or AD ANGRIEST etc) and then drop the (now consecutive) letters AD.

8. A not too challenging puzzle, although somr thought was needed. Like Diane we liked the ‘unsteady steady’ and ‘unsettled settler’. We had to check the ‘border’ meaning of ‘screed’.
   ‘Comforter’ for ‘scarf’ occurs in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol where we read of Bob Cratchit “with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat) …”.
   Thanks, Gozo and Cineraria.

9. Thanks Gozo. Except for COMFORTER all of this fell into place thanks partially to the number of easy-to-see anagrams. My top picks were SLURRY, STOPPAGE, PLAYPEN, SCREED, DIAL TONE (nicely written clue), and MENU. I wondered about ‘mostly’ deleting the first letter instead of the usual last one but as mrpenny @4 said ‘there’s no reason why it can’t be …’ Thanks Cineraria for the blog.

10. As it is late in the day, I will make a rare contribution to today’s discussion. I am highly delighted to have hoodwinked all the commentators today. My puzzle is thematic , as many of my FT crosswords are.

11. Gozo@10: Hidden musical terms?

12. I do not agree that using “mostly” to indicate first letter removal is playing fair. It is a standard tail-deleter, and is not listed in any source I’m aware of as a head-deleter – I’ve consulted the Clue Clinic, Chambers Crossword Dictionary, Clue Unclued, and Cryptipedia. If the line is to be taken that “mostly” can mean merely that all but one of the letters is to remain then that would permit the deletion of any letter at all in the word in question without further specification. That would render the indicator unhelpfully imprecise.

13. I admit it, Gozo, you ‘punk’ed me!

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