Financial Times 18,022 by GURNEY

15 comments on “Financial Times 18,022 by GURNEY”

1. Thanks for the blog , very helpful grid with a full perimeter and every clue having the first letter crossed . Good set of neat clues , I like the FT having a wide range of puzzles and this should be very suitable for newer solvers .

2. I managed to cram this in after The Guardian’s offering before getting up! How luxurious to have those long clues around the edge! Thanks for the puzzle and the blog.

3. Not a stretcher, this Gurney, but carried out with great aplomb.
   As our blogger says, an easy puzzle needn’t be a dull one. And…it gave me time to enjoy the surfaces, and some nicely thought-out definitions.
   The 15-letter perimeter plays were smoothly done, and a kindly assist to us solvers.
   BONANZA (2d), is an interesting play, because ANA= “anecdotes” is not only new to me, but I can’t work out the etymology. In Greek, ανα, is a prefix with multiple meanings, ( e.g. “anagram”: anew-letters ). “Anecdote” itself, is literally, “unpublished”, so that makes sense for “oral tales”.
   I was unsure of SATING in 10(ac), but, my bad. It means both, “to satisfy” ( as in, provide perfectly enough), but also “over-provide”. Another schoolday.
   An easy-going, enjoyable puzzle, in the best sense. Thank you , Gurney & loonapick

4. Thanks Gurney and loonapick

   2dn: SOED 2007 p 74 tells us that the word ana comes from the suffix -ana as in Americana; this in turn is used in the neuter plural form of certain Latin adjectives ending in -anus, where the Latin suffix means “of or belonging to”.

5. PB@4 yes, thanks, you may have it. As a suffix, it’s “a collection of things associated with a place or person”; whether it be prefix, or suffix, I’m mystified by it as a stand-alone word, even more so that “anecdotes” in the plural, ( as the setter correctly uses), is ANA.
   Presumably there is no singular equivalent.
   Interesting to see if it ever crops up again in a clue. IB
   ( well, semi-interesting!)

6. ANA =anecdotes was new to me and I had never heard of TAIGA but otherwise relatively gentle and the four long clues around the perimeter certainly helped

7. What Beak@6 wrote. 1a, 1d and 8d were my first answers. That helped. Most of the rest fell fairly quickly until I seemed to need as long on the last 3 clues as the rest of the puzzle

   Like others, I also enjoyed this for its neat and sometimes clever clues. Favourites were AFTERNOON, EVENT, ABSORBENT, CHRONIC, IMAGINE

   Thanks Gueney and loonapick

8. Agreed this was an easy solve, though not all write-ins. SEATING was our LOI as we were thinking of something more specifically cinematic. No real favourite, though, it was all good.
   Thanks, Gurney and loonapick

9. Many thanks, loonapick, for the excellent blog. Thanks also to all who commented.

10. I’m afraid that I still haven’t seen a satisfactory explanation of how ANA is a synonym of anecdotes. Even if Canadiana can be construed as Canadian anecdotes – a stretch indeed – that makes anecdotes = A, surely. I expect I’m missing something obvious here. Not that it stopped me from solving 2d BONANZA and enjoying the entire elegant puzzle.

    Thanks Gurney and loonapick for the excellent diversion.

11. Cellomaniac@10 , the dreaded answer is that it is in Chambers93 so the setter has full cover . They give two examples , JohnsonIANA and VictoriANA , the first referring to sayings of a person the second mainly from the Victorian era . At some point ANA has split off to be a word in its own right to mean a collection of sayings , anecdotes etc .

12. 2dn revisited: When I wrote comment 4, I was just dealing with the etymology of the word ana, and quoted SOED to show that the an- in ana is completely unrelated to the Ancient Greek negative prefix an- which appears in anecdote. I could, and perhaps should, have noted that Chambers 2016 and Collins 2023 give the same etymology. As I remember from looking it up yesterday morning, the dictionaries that give dates are Collins, which gives ana as a stand-alone word from the 18th Century, and SOED, which is slightly more precise and gives mid-18th Century.
    It never occurred to me that there would be a problem about the meaning of the word ana. As I am now away from home, I cannot check my dictionaries, but I am sure that Roz@11 is correct: if anything, ana has a broader meaning than just “anecdotes”. Possibly an indicator of a definition by example could be included here. Personally I do not think that is necessary, but maybe that is because I cannot think of one that would not spoil the elegance of Gurney’s surface reading.

13. ANA: Gurney would have be guided by Collins. Available free on-line (paid for by advertisers, I think), constantly up-to-date, and including proper names.

14. Thanks, Roz, PB and Gurney for answering my query. A TILT for me, always useful.

    Although, being a naturally argumentative curmudgeon, I would still say that if Victoriana means Victorian anecdotes, and Johnsoniana means Johnsonian anecdotes, it is only the A that stands for anecdotes. Unless of course the AN is doing the dreaded double duty. 😉

15. Cellomaniac@14: I do not find your argument beginning “I would still say that” at all convincing. You appear to be applying the more rigorous rules of wordplay in cryptic crosswords to the formation of words with suffixes in ordinary English, which is a good deal more haphazard.

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