Financial Times 18,117 by Mudd

11 comments on “Financial Times 18,117 by Mudd”

1. My heart sank reading 1ac – what a convoluted mess. But I was happy to see the puzzle open up from there.

   Liked AT IT, ON THE STUMP, SPACE CADET, BELOW THE BELT, LOTTO, and SPAWN (which took me ages to solve).

   CLEVER CLEVER was a complete mystery. I could parse it, but needed crossers to confirm the answer. Thanks for the explanation Pete. ATTENDANCE just seems wrong to me and does not equate to “all there”.

   Thanks Mudd and Pete

2. Thanks Mudd and Pete

   19ac: I could only find latecomer in the dictionaries as suggesting someone who has arrived late, but will be delighted if someone can give a respectable source for the meaning used here.

   27ac: I had to go to SOED 2007 p 148 to find the definition attendance 8 The body or number of people present at any proceedings. The single volume dictionaries only seem to give the number, and we need it to be to the people themselves to be defined collectively as “all [who were] there”.

   8dn: Collins 2023 and ODE 2010 both give the plural as petits fours following French grammar. However, Chambers 2016 does not give an explicit plural for petit four, so I think it is reasonable to regard it as a phrase adopted into English, and give it an English plural.

3. Thanks Mudd. I found many clues to my liking including TICKER TAPE, PRINCIPLE, RICH, and SPACE CADET. I revealed the nho PORTCULLIS ; since I didn’t know ‘strop’ as ‘temper’ I couldn’t even guess that one. Thanks Pete for the blog & the help in parsing CLEVER-CLEVER & PAWN.

4. As often with Mudd (and Paul in the Guardian) I find there are always a couple I get from the description but am not able to parse like PORTCULLIS – my FOI – so thanks to Pete for help parsing.

   Liked TAHOE, ON THE STUMP, SPACE CADET (not a phrase I have heard before)

   Thanks Mudd and Pete

5. Generally enjoyable. This setter seems to be better in the FT than as Paul in The Guardian, where there is often a sense of him trying to hard. Though the surface of 1a is indeed ghastly.

   I rather liked “all there” for attendance, and that was my favourite clue.

6. It’s really interesting how we vary: I wrote PORTCULLIS in from the clue, I knew the word and have seen them – there’s one at Old Wardour Castle, where Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was filmed. And didn’t have any problems parsing it as I knew the components.

   Pelham Barton @2 – I’ve been at events when someone arriving – as in car drawing up or seeing them from a distance – gets a comment of “Here comes the latecomer!”. Usually something where we’re waiting at a designated meeting point and the party can’t move until the last person arrives or says they aren’t coming, e.g. a walk, or a guided tour.

   Thank you to Mudd and Pete Maclean

7. I have heard CLEVER-CLEVER in expressions like a dismissive “a bit too clever-clever”, of, say, one of Paul’s puzzles in the garden. PB if you are on time, then the latecomer hasn’t arrived yet. I think you could just about equate “all at” to “the total of” to justify ATTENDANCE.

8. I missed TAHOE as I’ve never heard of it, but now I see that the tester of water is a toe and not some modern piece of technology I see what a clever (but not clever clever) clue it is.
   I didn’t get PAWN either. Is a pawn a man? I have a vague recollection that in chess there is a distinction between pieces and pawns, and that chessmen are the pieces, pawns being sui generis, but I may have got that completely wrong.

9. 19ac revisited: Thanks Shanne@6. I think that covers it. Petert@7: my concern is that if someone has not arrived, you do not yet know if that is a latecomer or an absentee, but perhaps I am being too fussy.

   22dn: ODE 2010 gives us
   p 1073 man noun 4 “a figure or token used in playing a board game”;
   p 1344 piece noun 5 “a figure or token used to make moves in a board game” and then specifically in Chess “a king, queen, bishop, knight, or rook, as opposed to a pawn”.
   The first of these is enough to justify the clue, but the whole thing fits with my memory that in Chess each player starts with sixteen men, of which eight are pieces and the other eight are pawns.

10. (Either Pete corrected the two typos from the clues or they weren’t there in other formats. In an arena where precicion is important and pedants congregate, it seemed a shocking oversight for those to have slipped through.)

    I went through this puzzle quickly until being held up by two 4-letter words at the end. Both of which were fairly and precisely clued. Sometimes I feel desperation setting in on unsolved short words as there’s less to work with. I got there in the end though.

    I’d never heard of ON THE STUMP but it was easily confirmed.

    It’s an online rule that anyone raising spelling mistakes will make one of their own, so, apologies in advance if I’ve done that. I’ve already made one on today’s Guardian thread.

    Thanks Mudd and Pete.

11. Martin@10, I assume that you intentionally typed “precicion” in your first paragraph in order to comply with the rule set out in your last paragraph, so no apology is necessary. 😊

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