Financial Times 18,140 by NEO

25 comments on “Financial Times 18,140 by NEO”

1. Got there with a couple of googles. I got Bolingbroke and when wars of the roses went in was looking forward to finding clues for York, Lancaster, Percy, etc etc, but that was the limit of the theme as far as I could see.

   So after tit on Wednesday, then bum and moon yesterday, today we have arse and bog. Where is this going next? Is this a theme?

   Liked cutlery.

2. I couldn’t see anything else on the WAR OF THE ROSES, either, having found BOLINGBROKE, vaguely remembered they were linked and looked him up.

   Thank you to Neo and Turbolegs.

3. I ticked IN HOUSE.

   Perhaps Neo should do some Polymaths, rather than require so much GK of his cryptic crossword solvers.

   Thanks Neo and Turbolegs

   PS for the online version, there was no way of knowing WAR OF THE ROSES was 6/15/13, rather than the logical order down the page (6/13/15). An unnecessary time waster. FT editor, please take note.

4. I looked at the paper version before trying to solve the clue for WARS OF THE ROSES but I agree with Martyn@3. The online version should have been the same.
   Thanks Neo and Turbolegs.

5. After finding Wednesday’s beyond me, and yesterday’s a bit run-of-the-mill, this was right in the sweet spot for me. Particularly enjoyed “dad to Paris” and “Le RY” (albeit the latter I put in from the crossers without even thinking about the wordplay until after). And I like a little GK in a crossword.

   Thanks Neo and Turbolegs.

6. Thanks Neo and Turbolegs

   1dn: This was easy enough to solve unaided. I could not find lightsaber in any of my print dictionaries, nor in Collins online, but that is of course no reason for Neo not to use the word. Perhaps it exists only with the -er spelling, and of course the construction with LIGHTER as the outside of the word forced that spelling on to us without needing to rely on the checked letter from 22ac. Still, I would have preferred to see an explicit indication that the word was formed from the American spelling of saber if that could have been done without making the clue too unwieldy.

7. Pelham Barton @6 – OED online has it, with both spellings.

8. I liked BOLINGBROKE, CUTLERY and PRIAM. I don’t mind having to do a bit of research (Loch Leven, today). Slight quibble with soft and smooth, but a pleasant solve.

9. This was exactly at my level today. I couldn’t parse IMPUGN. I assume “from south” is doing double duty here, both meaning “upwards” and “up M1” because anyone north of Leeds would presumably be going “down M1”. (One talks of going “up to London” or “down from London” but like Neo I think when it comes to the M1 “up” means “from the south”.)

10. Tom@7: thank you for that. If a word can only be found in OED online, and not any of my usual sources, that generally means it is either very new or very obscure. Presumably here it is very new. One of these years I really do intend to sort out my library membership and hence regain access to OED online, but I have been saying that for a lot longer than 24 months.

11. Wasn’t Bolingbroke Henry IV, whereas the Wars of the Roses were Henry VI? Maybe NEO realised this halfway through and abandoned an intended theme.

12. PB @ 10

    Lightsaber is from Star Wars: the first film was released in 1977, so it’s hardly very new or very obscure.

    Thanks Neo and Turbolegs

13. Could you argue for an internecine war theme, with LIGHTSABER, PRIAM, SPARTA, GALAXY, WEIMAR, ARSENAL?

14. Always thought impugn had to do with character, which you can’t really ‘oppose’, rather than fact, which you can. But it seems it can apply to either; hey ho, always learning.

    Le r[ailwa]y was très cute, and the puzzle was fun, ta Neo and Turbo.

15. … with a supereclectic genre mix, Petert.

16. Thanks Neo for a great crossword. I couldn’t parse CUTLERY but all else made sense. I was able to solve the rest so the GK needed must have been the optimal amount. 😊 My top picks were WHITMAN, RESIDUA, PIPER, WARS OF THE ROSES (liked ‘row of houses’), and GALAXY. I sensed a loose theme of war, violence, & weaponry but nothing that I could pull together definitively. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

17. It was a good crossword. I enjoy the GK.
    Digger@11. You are right the WARS OF THE ROSES started under Henry VI but ended when Henry VII defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field. But the origins go back to Richard II and his deposition by Henry IV ( Bolingbroke). Historians continue to debate the causes of the wars.
    I have no idea whether a theme was intended.

18. 1dn revisited: Thank you Simon@12 for that information. So why could I not find lightsaber in any of my print dictionaries, the oldest of which is SOED 2007? The obvious thought is that the word is there but somehow I failed to spot it. I did look carefully under both light and saber/re, but I am not infallible. If I have missed it, I would like to be told. Failing that, maybe the word is missing because it is considered too specialised in meaning for the smaller dictionaries. I could imagine that the word might not qualify until it had entered the language with a generic meaning as a weapon – presumably hypothetical – or as a type of toy, but not one specifically based on the Star Wars films. Speculating still further, it could be that such a generic meaning is usually written as two words, and would not be in the dictionaries because it was felt to be a natural combination of the two words.

    None of the above is intended in any way as a suggestion that the word LIGHTSABER should not have been used as an answer in the crossword, and I am putting this statement separately to emphasise that point.

19. Very pleasant, with the right amount of challenge. I liked SPARTA, PRIAM and CUTLERY, but my favourite, since ‘Henry’ was neither ‘H’ nor ‘Hal’ was BOLINGBROKE.
    Thanks, Neo and Turbolegs.

20. 26dn was very clever. However I’ve never heard of atacama or exordia and I’ve no idea what the connection is between snow leopards and ounces, so I only give this 6/10.

21. Ursula @20: From Chambers —
    “ounce2 /owns/
    noun
    Formerly a lynx
    Now generally the snow leopard, a big cat of Asia with markings similar to a leopard’s
    The jaguar
    The cheetah
    Sometimes vaguely any moderate-sized wild beast of the cat tribe”
    Cat=ounce is very common in crosswords

22. Babbler @9 the M1 ends at Leeds so you can only go up it to Leeds

23. Hello. Thanks all, esp turbs.

    There is no theme. There is no abandoned theme. Also I object to accusations of requiring GK when I am setting for intelligent people who have read a book. FT puzzles usually get it in the neck on these grounds as the FT is seen on 225 as an international solve, but that’s what wordplay is for really: to get the answer if you can’t BIFF the bloody thing.

    LIGHTSABER is how you spell LIGHTSABER. In Star Wars Land they do not use LIGHTSABRES, because LIGHTSABRES do not exist. The use of LIGHTER was a conscious effort by yours truly to help you get the spelling right. And yes, Henry IV died 42 years before the WOTR started.

    Cheers
    Neo

24. I’m not one to enter these discussions and am usually trying to catch up to the latest crossword so feel I’m too late to comment. However Neo @23 sounded peeved at some of the comments on requiring general knowledge and I wished to spring to his defence. I agree completely with his opinion. We do not all have the same knowledge set and so, if a crossword is to present any form of challenge, there must be elements that we do not all immediately know and so require further thought or research.

    Personally I relish the learning element. If Dickens and Shakespeare inventions are fair game then surely “lightsaber”, which has reached a vast modern audience, is also kosher? I very much enjoyed Priam as “dad to Paris” and have never heard of Henry Bolingbroke but now I have and am happy for the slight increase in my knowledge (until I forget).

    A top crossword.

25. A fine crossword with one minor quibble. Could have a moratorium on “ounce” for “snow leopard”? This is a usage I have only EVER encountered in cryptic crosswords.

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