Financial Times 18,108 by GOLIATH

13 comments on “Financial Times 18,108 by GOLIATH”

1. Lots of skilful touches, and an interesting grid of solutions.
   Not so keen on DEVALUATED or AUSCULTATE, mainly because they are ugly/clumsy words.
   My bad: I didn’t associate “facetiously” with simpering; (4ac); and I always thought it’s TOP-NOTCH 16(d).
   Got to admire GALL OP, 19(d); very novel. I resisted the urge to search the “chole me thingummyjig!”
   Simply put, jolly good stuff, thanks Goliath & Oriel

2. Happy to see a few of my favourite setters in the space of a week, Goliath among them.
   I really enjoyed this. Favourites were GRUNTS and PARADISE (both for the surfaces), PREFERRED and TOPNOTCH.
   As for AUSCULATE, I presume this comes from Latin; I had the Italian ‘ascoltare’ (to listen) to help me out here.
   Many thanks to Goliath (it has been too long) and Oriel.

3. Good fun. AUSCULTATE was new to me. I rather liked GALLOP, which I deduced despite not knowing the medical term.

4. After yesterday’s puzzle I had anticipated a hard one today but was pleasantly surprised. I fully endorse the positive comments above . Two medical terms that were new to me: AUSCULTATE and cholecystectomy . Always good to learn. Diane @2 my shorter OED gives a Latin root : auscultare.
   Thanks to Goliath and Oriel

5. I similarly enjoyed this with lots of ticks. 1ac was a cracker of a clue to open proceedings. LIBATION and BITTER were both nice clues and on the same line. INCAPACITATE raised a smile, along with DECOYS, and PUMPERNICKEL.

   But then I shared ENB@1’s dislike of AUSCULTATE and DEVALUATED.

   Oriel summed it up nicely: accessible, enjoyable and clever.

   Thanks Goliath and Oriel

6. No problems solving this and it was fun. Like E.N.Boll& @1, I raised an eyebrow at “TOPNOTCH” as one word. My Chambers only gives the hyphenated form and the Shorter OED doesn’t even give that, only referring to it as two separate words (my more recent Concise Oxford does also have the hyphenated form). However, no doubt it can be found as one word out there somewhere.

7. 14dn: “indeed” to mean “in DEED” has been around for decades and is probably the source of the spread of this ghastly device.

   16dn: I could only find top-notch hyphenated in Chambers 2016, Collins 2023, ODE 2010, Pocket Oxford 2013, and SOED 2007. In my copy of SOED, top-notch appears in small print on p 3295 about half way down the first column in a list marked “SPECIAL COLLOCATIONS & COMB.” following about half a page of definitions for the relevant meaning of top as noun and adjective.

   3dn/23dn: I like the way Goliath positions answers like this to join together what would otherwise be isolated corners of the grid.

8. Thanks Goliath for a top-notch crossword. I found this tricky in spots but ultimately doable. My top picks were ORIGIN, AUSCULTATE (common word for a physician), BITTER, PREFERENCE, and GALLOP. Thanks Oriel for the blog.

9. Thanks for that, SM @4

10. I got GALLOP but not the reason. I assumed it must be some veterinary operation that a horse would have done on it, so when running away, it would be galloping.

    No problem with Auscultate but I didn’t know the word and didn’t get to sect = cult so I couldn’t solve it. COMPLEXITY was very good.

11. My first posting here, though I haven’t much to add to the above. I also thought DEVALUATED was a horrible word. It’s strange how one can be misled into thinking “That can’t be the answer; it sounds too ugly.” I recall Azed once apologizing for setting an ugly word but I can’t remember what it was.

12. Welcome Babbler

13. The July 16 FT, at least in the US edition, did not contain this or any crossword!

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