Financial Times 18,079 by JASON

by

Jason is today's compiler.

I thought I was going to complpete this blog in record time when all but one of the down answers went in first time, but the south east corner was very chewy. I may be missing something obvious but are FLAT and DRUM synonymous? I had never come across STUMER for a fraudulent cheque before either. What was a very straightforward puzzle became quite challenging because of EN, STUMER and THEW. I'll need help with the parsing of the aforementioned DRUM though.

Thanks, Jason,

ACROSS
8 ARCANE
Hidden shopping area, new for daughter (6)

ARCA(D)E ("shopping area") with N (new) for (i.e. instead of) D (daughter) becomes ARCA(N)E
9 REPEATED
Compost in grass mentioned once more (8)

PEAT ("compost") in REED ("grass")
10 HOLD
Keep husband of long-standing (4)

H (huband) + OLD ("of long-standing")
11 HEADSTRONG
Wilful male with publicity firm (10)

HE ("male") + AD ("publicity") + STRONG ("firm")
12 PASS
Disregard soft dullard (4)

P (piano in music notation, so "soft") + ASS ("dullard")
13 SEPARATION
Doctor parties on a parting of the ways (10)

*(parties on a) [anag:doctor]
17 STYE
Swelling — type learner ignored (4)

STY(l)E ("type") with L (learner) ignored
18 LLAMA
A walk back to find supplier of wool (5)

<=(A MALL ("a walk"),back)
19 RICE
What’s essential to curry run? Reservation (4)

R (run) + ICE ("reservation")

Questionable whether rice is essential to curry? It may be an accompaniment, but it's not part of the curry.
21 MALT WHISKY
Why milk sat boiling for drink (4,6)

*(why milk sat) [anag:boiling]
23 LAND
Country boy going round north (4)

LAD ("boy") going round N (north)
24 MONTE CARLO
Rat with monocle upset the resort of gamblers (5,5)

*(rat monocle) [anag:upset]
28 DRUM
Duke with strange flat (4)

D (duke) with RUM ("strange")

I can't think of a situation where DRUM and FLAT are synonymous?
29 CAREFREE
Mostly rush round umpire without worry (8)

[mostly] CAREE(r) ("rush") around REF ("umpire")
30 ENVIES
Nut in print shops fights grudges (6)

EN ("nut in print shops") + VIES ("fights")

"Nut" is another term for an en space, a short space in print.
DOWN
1 ARGONAUT
Note gold in slang for one of Jason’s crew (8)

N (note) + Au (chemical symbol for "gold") in ARGOT ("slang")
2 CANDESCENT
Glowing prison caps decline (10)

CAN ("prison") caps DESCENT ("decline")
3 METHUSELAH
He must heal sick old patriarch (10)

*(he must heal) [anag:old]
4 AREA
District in the Near East (4)

Hidden [in] "neAR EAst"
5 APES
Primates when full of Papa’s energy (4)

AS ("when") full of P (Papa, in the NATO phonetic alphabet) + E (energy)
6 PAIR
I’ll come between mean couple (4)

I will come between PAR ("mean")
7 LEAN-TO
Express an inclination for shack (4-2)

LEAN ("express an inclination") + TO ("for")
14 PEARS
Unusually spare fruit (5)

*(spare) [anag:unusually]
15 READY MONEY
Handy dough (5,5)

(slightly) cryptic definition
16 TURTLE-DOVE
True old vet, possibly a gentle sort (6-4)

*(true old vet) [anag:possibly]
20 CONSUMER
Shopper’s scam with worthless cheque — time’s wasted (8)

CON ("scam") with S(t)UMER ("worthless cheque") with T (time) wasted
22 ANORAK
An old playboy for the most part is obsessive (6)

AN + O (old) + RAK(e) ("playboy", for the most part)
25 THEW
Article on wife’s virtue (4)

THE ("article") on W (wife)
26 CARP
Beef or grouse? (4)

Double definition
27 REEL
River fish whirl about (4)

R (river) + EEL ("fish")

31 comments on “Financial Times 18,079 by JASON”

  1. NHO stumer but it is in Collins and as for thew also NHO, Collins, Cambridge et al have it as muscular strength. Odd virtue IMHO.
    Tx Jason and loonapick.

  2. I could not parse DRUM either but googling revealed that it Cockney slang for a home.
    Another option is chicken leg which has a drum stick and a flat. All rather obscure.
    A very quick solve but enjoyable. I expect we will have a head scratcher tomorrow.
    Thanks Jason and loonapick.

  3. When solving, I wondered if ‘drum’ could be a shortening of ‘humdrum’ (flat in the boring sense) but, as SM mentions, a quick look in Chambers gives ‘house’ as a meaning.

  5. Drum and bass = place in cockney rhyming slang, as in ‘come round to my drum’. Have never come across stumer before though.

  8. Same thoughts and quibbles as previous posters: THEW seems to be an archaic expression for strength, but it seems also to extend to moral conduct/ good manners, so that may the setter’s route?
    DRUM = FLAT. Who knows? Doldrums? Humdrum? It may be modern rhyming slang, Drum & Bass = your place/ my place, but it’s an iffy clue whatever.
    I’ve been an accountant since Adam was a lad….never heard of STUMER.
    1(d) “one of Jason’s crew”: I’m not fond of self-reference clues. I rest my case.
    A gentle but nicely set puzzle, slightly spoiled by unnecessary mis-fires.
    Thanks J and loonapick

  9. A gentle solve from Jason. My favourites were the self-referential 1d (an old classic regularly featuring on TV in my youth) and CARP – I liked the idea of three different food items all meaning ‘complain(t)’.
    NHO THEW, STUMER or DRUM in the sense of ‘flat’ (I thought chicken snacks like SM but agree that ‘drum and bass’ must what we’re after – thanks, miserableoldhack!) The first two were gettable from parsing and crossing letters.
    Thanks to Jason and Loonapick.

  11. Agree re the unbalanced mix of write ins and difficult clues

    Loved the anagrams – METHUSELAH, MALT WHISKY and MONTE CARLO. AREA is a nice observation and I liked REEL and HEADSTRONG

    And like others i finished simply not understanding a few clues.

    Thanks Jason and loonapick

  12. James P @10,
    I thought of it as to keep something ‘on ice, ‘reserve’ or ‘hold back’ for a time in the future.

  13. Adding to what Diane@12 said
    ice=reservation in the sense of reserve/reticence (all nouns)

    Dictionaries give reserve and formality as meanings of ice.
    Also, under reservation, reserve is given as a meaning.

  14. Thanks Jason and loonapick

    28ac: ODE 2010 p 538 gives this explicitly “drum noun 3 Brit. informal a house or flat.” SOED 2007 p 770 has this meaning dated late 18th century, and with the origin marked as “Uncertain: perh. from Romany. Cf. Romanian drum, Greek dromos street.”

    30ac: Regular readers of the FT blogs may remember that Roz mentioned this meaning in the comments on FT 18,071 by Peto. Thanks Roz for bringing it nearer to the front of the mind for today.
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2025/06/03/financial-times-18071-by-peto/#comment-692004

    26dn: I was not so keen on this one. In my view, double definitions are best when two words of different origins have converged in spelling. At the very least, I like to see two substantially different meanings of the same root word. It seems rather feeble when the two definitions in the clue also define each other with same one meaning as is needed for the answer. As usual, I have no quarrel with those who think differently.

  15. IMHO 28A should have a ? at the end, as a “flat” is one of the types of the “place” at which one lives (could also be a house). Other than that, “drum” was quite commonly used in older police procedurals … e.g. “we will go over and give his drum a spin” meaning to go and search his house.

    I parsed 7D as a DD. To “ Express an inclination for” is also to “lean to” a point of view.

  16. I found this exactly as everyone else: a mix of the very straightforward and then a tricky SE corner with a few Nho thrown in.

    Favourites were Argonaut and Carp

    Thank you

  17. A very easy solve but with a couple of real obscurities thrown in that seemed out of place with the rest of it

  18. for the last few days i’ve been getting this frequently when trying to connect to this page. anybody else??

    “Error establishing a database connection”

  19. I have a minor amendment to comment 14 on the origins of the slang term drum with the meaning used in 28ac. According to SOED 2007 p 770, the word originally meant “a street”, with the possible origin as I quoted it. This meaning lasted from late 18th to late 19th century. The current meaning, given as “A house; a lodging; a room; a flat;” (etc) dates from the mid 19th century.

    In any case, the use of drum to mean a house or flat goes back far too long for it to have been derived from “drum and bass”, which SOED p 769 describes as “originating in Britain during the early 1990s”.

    This could be one of those cases where a term whose original meaning was nothing to do with rhyming slang gained in popularity when a rhyming slang origin was suggested for it. Compare scarper which SOED p 2687 gives as “Prob. from Italian scappare escape, get away; reinforced during or after the First World War by rhyming slang Scapa Flow go.”

  22. Definitely heard drum, most prob in Brit tv, Z Cars maybe, or Minder? But thanks to MOH @5 for ‘drum and bass’ in CRS, it sounds valid.

  24. I have been unhappy with the definitions of drum and home and something in the back of my mind led me to think that the link of home to a house or flat was wrong and that somehow it was the noise that a drum makes was more relevant A search led me to this:
    Longman Dictionary
    Drum something home
    To use repeated arguments or messages in order to make sure that people understand something
    Certainly more poetic!

  25. Trenodia@24 and others: Perhaps this will help. There are three completely different nouns in English with the spelling drum.
    The first relates to the musical instrument and appears to be derived from Middle Dutch and Low German tromme which imitates the sound it makes.
    The second comes from a Gaelic word and is defined as “A long narrow hill often separating two parallel valleys”.
    The third appears to come from Romany for a street, and originally meant a street, but the meaning changed to a single building (possibly house or flat) in the mid nineteenth century, far too early to be rhyming slang from “drum and bass”. This is the meaning needed for 28 across in today’s puzzle.
    All of this is taken from pp 769 -770 of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary latest edition (2007).

    Concluding that drum must be wrong as a definition for “flat” because it is a musical instrument is a bit like saying that bark cannot mean the covering of a tree because it means the sound made by a dog.

  26. I certainly was not saying that it was a misuse of drum nor was I saying it was a misuse of flat. What I was trying to explain, and of course not succeeding, was the connection of drum to flat in the context of sayings and in essence that it had nothing to do with a Cockney expression.

  27. Trenodia@26: I was not really meaning to get at you, but taking your posting as an excuse to reinforce the point I had made earlier, which does not yet seem to have been fully accepted by some people other than you. I was particularly pleased with the way you ended comment 26.

  28. Pelham Barton – that’s really interesting about the derivation of drum from a Roma word for street. That would certainly make a lot more sense of its C19 (and earlier) usage in the sense we’re discussing here. I’m sure you’re right, that drum and bass is a kind of back derivation. What I’m not sure about is to what extent that usage is connected to London – certainly the people I’ve known who use it have all been Londoners born and bred, but perhaps it’s more widely known/used than that?

  29. MOH@28: Thank you for that. SOED does include two meanings for drum³ that are marked US, namely “a saloon, a nightclub”, but there is nothing about the geographical spread of its use within the UK, or anywhere else for that matter.

  30. PB @14: I see your point about 26d, and normally I’d agree with you. But it’s sort of fun that three different animals/meats can all also mean “complain,” isn’t it? This is sort of a one-off clue type, not a traditional double definition (for the reason you identify).

  31. mrp@30: I appreciate your thinking, and indeed that of many others. I would agree with you if I could be sure that setters and editors could be relied upon to regard this as an exception not a precedent.

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