Financial Times 18,054 by JASON

21 comments on “Financial Times 18,054 by JASON”

1. I had a very similar experience. Trouble-free, apart from a couple of stretched synonyms not justified by my dictionary and needing time to parse IAMBI. SATELLITE, CUP OF TEA, and PETIT FOUR all received nods of approval.

   Good thing I pay attention to the blogs – I only know Morse from crosswords. But NHO adit.

   Thanks Jason for an enjoyable crossword and loonapick for a nice blog

2. Martyn @1 – one of the reasons that Inspector Morse is so beloved by crossword setters is that in the books and in the TV series he was an avid crossword solver; his creator, Colin Dexter, even set crosswords, see here.

   ADIT for mine entrance is one of those technical words I’ve come across walking the Pennine Way – lots of old lead mines up there. It’s not just UK, there are mines all over the world.

   Thank you to Jason and loonapick for an enjoyable puzzle

3. Many years ago, ADIT used to appear remarkably often but haven’t seen it for a while now. Maybe this is the start of a comeback.

4. ‘Blocking’ is an interesting indicator that can go either way; you can block something in or block something up.

5. I always enjoy Jason’s offerings and this was no exception. Plenty of enjoyable clues. FELL is tricky – I always think of Lake District hills and pasture makes me think of rather less rugged rural landscapes. But then there were plenty of sheep on those fells so ‘grazing’ they certainly were. SWINGEING, PARLIAMENT, CUP OF TEA, SATELLITE and BALLERINA were my biggest ticks.

   Thanks Jason and the busy loonapick

6. My faves: EMIRATE, BALLERINA (CAD falling short of an &lit by ‘for me’), CUP OF TEA, SATELLITE and IAMBI.
   Enjoyable puzzle. Excellent blog.

   Thanks Jason. Extra thanks to the busy (as PM rightly observes) loonapick.

7. Thanks Jason and loonapick

   28ac: I think “for me” can be taken as relevant to the wordplay interpreted as “rearranging the letters of ARENA and BILL gives the answer”, so this clue works as a complete “& lit” clue for me. However, let us not get bogged down in details of classification – it is a good clue, and that is all that really matters.

8. Pelham Barton@7
   BALLERINA
   We agree it’s a good clue. We differ on the other aspect.
   No offence meant.

9. Hovis @3: I was thinking the same thing! When I started solving crosswords as a teenager (about 4 decades ago now) I used to see this word so much that it was seared into my brain. It doesn’t seem to be accepted in games like The Times’ polygon, so I was questioning whether it still existed. Nice to have it surface again.

10. I agree with KVa on BALLERINA (sorry PB) but, as you say, such nitpicking shouldn’t detract from the quality of the clue (and, of course, the setter makes no &lit claim).

11. Thanks Jason. I enjoyed this with BALLERINA, BROGUE, and SATELLITE as my top three. I ticked SATELLITE even before solving it just for its wonderful surface. I couldn’t parse IAMBI. Thanks loonapick for the blog.

12. I’m with PostMark in always enjoying Jason’s neat, fuss-free clueing style. The “opening” made me think a bit but yeah, it’s one I’ve come across in crosswords often in the past.

    I have no truck with “&lit” as a designation – it’s a nasty bit of shorthand jargon invented by Ximenes some 60 years ago and no one ever seems to know what it really means. The clue works, and that’s all that matters – but if we’re being picky, I would say the definition is simply “me” (being a pronoun that stands for a person) and the rest is a kind of supplementary hint as to the kind of person we’re looking for but not actually part of the definition.

13. What Widdersbel said re “& lit”!

14. “Adit” was a word I learned during my long-ago days as a geology student. An adit is specifically a mostly or nearly horizontal mine entrance; if it’s mostly or nearly vertical, it’s a shaft. Anyway, they’re adit again, I see. (I think that pun might only work in an American accent.)

    I didn’t parse AGES: I knew exactly what was going on–we were instructed to find a word meaning “reports”, lop off a word meaning “trouble,” and be left with AGES, which was clearly correct. But both “report” and “trouble” have so many synonyms that I never hit on a pair that worked, and I decided to stop trying. I hate clues like that one.

    Good to see IAMBI clued without reference to coming out of the closet for once (to be clear, it was funny the first time…)

15. Oh, and it doesn’t help that the equivalence of “messages” and “reports” is fairly loose, and “mess” is hardly the first thing you think of for “trouble” (and vice versa). A fairer but still tricky clue: Long time items in inbox–must declutter? (4)

16. […and in that clue, (and sorry for the triple post) I omitted the hyphen in “Long-time” that would be expected for the surface reading (to make an adjective) for the sake of the definition (to make it define a noun). I’m not super happy about that, but there are people with bad enough grammar to write it that way. There are also setters who would just write “Long-time” or even “Longtime” and expect you to give those words a divorce while solving, but I’m not happy with that either, certainly not in the definition half of the clue.]

17. Thanks for the blog , neat set of clues , I was glad to see the innocent use of SWINGeING . Azed still uses ADIT quite often .

18. An enjoyable solve and fairly straightforward despite a couple of stretched synonyms as mentioned by Martyn@1. A couple of nitpicks, though: in 13ac the game is ‘darts’ (plural), and 29ac should be enumerated 5,3 – SWEET PEA is two words in both Chambers and Collins.
    Thanks, Jason and loonapick

19. 28ac revisited in answer to Widdersbel@12: I do not think that the use of “me” in a clue carries any implication whatsoever that the answer has to be a type of person. Consider the classic
    Blow me, I carol riotously – X has slipped up
    (I have adopted the modern convention of putting spaces either side of a dash)
    Ximenes gave this clue the second prize in a competition where he had mistakenly defined CLARIONET as a stringed instrument and a down clue was required. In my view, that clue should still be regarded as valid today and I am confident that editors would accept the principle.
    Returning to 28ac in today’s puzzle, in my view, the word “me” simply represents the answer, and it is the whole of the rest of the clue which carries the substance of the definition.

    Incidentally, Ximenes did not invent the term “& lit”. Here is an extract from the chapter on “& lit” clues in his book Ximenes On The Art Of The Crossword
    “I should like to think that Afrit was the originator. He was most certainly a master of the sentence that can be read in more than one way, and he very well may have been the first to write one.
    “He certainly did use the method, long before I did; but whether he was the pioneer I cannot say.”

20. Lots of fun. Slightly hard for me. Thanks Loonapick and Jason

21. PB – yes, you’re right, “me” doesn’t have to stand for a person, but in this case it does. I’m not satisfied that “dancing arena with bill” in any way defines ballerina but in the context of the whole clue, it’s enough of a hint to point the solver in the right direction. So it works.

    Thanks for the clarification re the origin of &lit. These days, the term has no place outside the Azed slip, where the audience is advanced solvers and brevity is required. We can be more expansive and use plain English in these blogs.

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