Financial Times 18,109 by NEO

22 comments on “Financial Times 18,109 by NEO”

1. Not on your nelly originated from not on your nelly duff where nelly duff is CRS for puff which is in turn another word for life (apparently…).

2. Good blog. I could not see the parsing for TOR; all I could think of was a reversal, which, of course, “from left” would not describe.

3. The unknown British rhyming slang ruled out any chance of getting UXORIAL (which surprisingly I had heard of, somewhere) and NELLIE (didn’t know the song either). The only river in China I could bring to mind was the Yangtze — never heard of the Pearl. GRU & Yggdrasil were a tad obscure, and I couldn’t bring to mind a pannier. I don’t usually attempt Neo’s, so I’m pleased that I 90% finished. It’s about the best I can expect, I suppose.

4. My experience was similar to Loonapick’s in that I found the grid plain sailing until the SW corner. Completed it all but I did need our blogger’s help with a few I couldnt fully parse (NELLIE, GRUYERE).
   I live in the Pearl River Delta so no problem there though I needed the fair wordplay to solve theunknown ASH TREE and NACELLE.
   I liked KID and thought ROSALIND was a lovely clue given that male actors took the female roles in Shakespeare’s day. Meanwhile, 2d was a slyly suggestive surface!
   Very enjoyable overall so thanks to Neo and Loonapick.

5. Liked ALEPH, TOR and EXTRA.
   Good puzzle and great blog.
   Thanks Neo and Loonapick.

6. We’ve had uxor ious, wife-loving, before, so -ial, wife-like, was no prob. As for Nellie, “not on your ..” is common, but the elephant bit was a shrug (not Babar, not Dumbo …). The balloon-basket thingy at 23ac, otoh, was a total jorum. Fun puzzle tho, ta Neo and loona.

7. I remembered Nellie from another puzzle recently and was pleasantly surprised to find that NACELLE actually meant a car, rather than being an obscure Chevrolet. I liked ALEPH and TAKE A BACK SEAT in spite of the slightly convoluted surface.

8. It’s a game of opinions, which often differ; for me, there are a number of loose synonyms/ clue words, which marred what was nearly a super puzzle.
   8(ac), LARGE is too far adrift of MAMMOTH.
   12(ac) PRETORIA doesn’t equate to SA.
   13(ac) Phoenician, OK, but why? Hebrew fairer, and better, given it’s a “beer clue”.
   18(ac) ABRACADABRA has been around for 2000 years, it’s established. It has several apparent etymologies. “GIBBERISH” is pushing it. Better options are available.
   21(d) So, “not on your life” and “not on your nellie” are similitudes. Ergo, “life = nellie”?
   “As bright as a new pin” and “as bright as a new penny”. They mean the same, but I’m darned if PIN = PENNY.
   (Someone will find it in Chambers).

   Setters have the luxury of online synonym lists which extend into the twilight zone. But, may be keep ’em gettable, eh?

   Grumpy old man’s moan, ended: it’s a good puzzle.
   Certainly, 11(ac) was a shoe-in with Yggdrasil as the definition. ( I jest ).

   Excellent blog, loonapick

9. Thanks Neo and Loonapick

   11ac: I knew Yggdrasil from a piece which I think was in the 1970s run of the magazine Games and Puzzles suggesting a mnemonic for the then new colours on domestic wiring in the UK. For the yellow and green stripes, simply(!) remember that YG are the first two letters of YGGDRASIL, the Norse mythological tree, which presumably stood in EARTH. If the criterion for a good mnemonic is that you remember it, I have remembered this one for about fifty years.

   12ac: I took “Link with Pretoria” together as a phrase which gives an example of a South African tie. Is it being over-generous to Neo to accept the question mark at the end of the clue as an indicator for the definition by example? I do not think so.

10. On some of the points you raised E.N.Boll&. As mentioned above “nellie” = “life” is in the dictionaries and is thought to be from rhyming slang. The first meaning of “abracadabra” in Chambers is “gibberish”. I think a “mammoth task” is a large one, so I’m ok with that (but ‘huge’ is closer). A link with Pretoria could be said to be a SA tie, but it is a little loose.

11. I agree it was a good puzzle, and in my case it was the SE corner that held me up. I made some careless errors, principally PEARL DIVER for PEARL RIVER as I too had never heard of the river. That answer was then impossible to justify. I had heard of Yggdrasil though, having first come across it in John Buchan about 60 years ago. I agree that “gibberish” is a rather strained definition for ABRACADABRA.

12. Also stuck in the SE corner.

    Should have got PEARL RIVER as I live in HK, but would never have got NACELLE.

13. Thanks Neo for a wealth of good clues including AT LARGE, ASH TREE, ALEPH, DARK WEB, CADGE, ROSALIND, and EXTRA. I couldn’t parse EDINBURGH or NELLIE; thanks loonapick for the help.

14. Solved it all, even parsed it all, except for the baffling NELLIE, which depends on two pieces of knowledge that I did not have (similar to GDU @3). So thanks to Loonapick for explaining. I think that one can be chucked in the “guess you gotta be British” bucket.

    “Dutch” for wife, though, is one that’s come up in these puzzles so often that I’ve learned it.

15. An enjoyable puzzle with quite a few write-ins but otoh a few head-scratchers as well, mostly over parsing. We got NACELLE from the wordplay but took a while to remember it can be a car as well as the engine housing of an aeroplane. A lovely aha moment when we saw the parsing of TOR.
    Thanks, Neo and loonapick.

16. I enjoyed this a lot. I have seen “Nellie” for “life” somewhere recently, which helped.

    Solvers are undoubtedly entitled to their own opinions, but when we stray into the ‘could do better’ genre as above, perhaps we should provide alternative clues that we believe would be sound. Setting is, as I understand it, a complicated (and uneconomic) business that many good solvers simply do not grasp from the other side of the fence, and such comments seem entitled or setting impossible standards – at best.

17. Nacelle (which I have distantly heard of) and Pearl River (which I have definitely heard of) were my last two in, after several visits and blind alleys. Otherwise, I generally enjoyed this one although concur with some of the grumbles above. I thought it at the slightly easier end of the Neo spectrum.

18. The second “acerb” I have encountered in two days – previously in the Guardian, so it must be a complete coincidence: but it’s a word that I have never previously seen, except with “-ic” at the end.

19. Re wombat, I find the sort of post you refer to (by a Mr Bollard) amusing more than anything else, so no problems for me. I’d just like to welcome Mr Bollard to World of Synonymy, a new theme park that’s just opened at Wrotham Park on the M25. There he might consult a dictionary, lexicon, wordbook or wordfinder with consummate ease. And have a coffee, correto or cortado, quad, red eye, or ristretto while he’s doing it.

    OTOH I do appreciate non-UK solvers having a bit of a run-in with Nellie, or indeed Nelly, Duff. My own take is that solvers know they’re doing a British and therefore UK-centric puzzle, and thus expect, if not completely dread, the occasional Britishism, but really that’s just one of my assumptions. I’ll only say that I think it galling to have to normalise puzzles for international solving. Maybe it’s because I hate Americanisms with such a vengeance.

    Cheers all, inc road furniture, and Loona.

20. Like Neo (thanks!) I want my UK crosswords to be UK-centric, and not pander to globalism. They are a part of our heritage, and should not be diluted that way.
    The other problem is that so many solvers seem to recoil, from any clue where they are not already familiar with the answer. You will not get far in crossword solving in that case; it is what the wordplay is for. Everyone is going to come across unfamiliar words, nobody has such a vast vocabulary that they never get surprises. So dealing with it is key, as any Mephisto/Azed solver will confirm.

21. Unlike the Times the FT haS a more international audience perhaps? and so a little less UK isms seems appropriate for this papers puzzle. As non brits, certainly we have learned and accept and enjoy many British terms. Though when you ask think the puzzle is easy imagine how un-doable it could be for us even after learning the answers!

22. 12A could be better worded like this perhaps:
    French composer with link to Pretoria?

Comments are closed.