Financial Times 18,148 by Rosa Klebb

28 comments on “Financial Times 18,148 by Rosa Klebb”

1. Thanks Rosa and Pete

   1ac: No problem here. Collins 2023 p 1054 gives jolly as a noun meaning a festivity or celebration. The definition is marked informal, chiefly Brit.

   9ac needs to be T (Tesla) in anagram of BUS LANE.

   19ac: I took this as “regularly going” to indicate the alternate letters then “off” as a verb to kill.

   21ac: Here I had the philosopher as A J Ayer, so AYER’S.

2. Thank you, Pelham. But how does ‘Tesla’ clue T? Just because Tesla cars have a T symbol on them?

3. Pete@2: A tesla is a measure of magnetic flux density, symbolized by T.

4. 9ac: T for tesla works as “the derived SI unit of magnetic flux density” (Collins p 2042). When solving unaided I can always remember that tesla is the unit for something, and it doesn’t usually matter what.

5. IMAGINARY, THERE, LATITUDE and the subtle PRESIDENT were favourites in an enjoyable grid.
   I knew Ms Riley but not that philosopher though the ‘y’ of 6d was enough to net the ‘crime writer’.
   I parsed UPSKILL and UNSTABLE as did Pelham @1.
   And I’m more accustomed to ‘welly’ and ‘eerie’ than their iterations here though they couldn’t have been anything else.
   Thanks to Rosa Klebb and Pete.

6. I am a great fan of Ross Klebb and I did enjoy this one.

   For their wonderful surfaces, I ticked UNSTABLE, TAINT, MESSIEURS, IMAGINARY, LATITUDE, EERY, PRESIDENT (and so succinct), and QUICHE

   I had no clue how to parse JAMBOREE or AS IT WERE. No idea who is Riley and what is OP ART. And WELLIE is new slang to me – my guess is it is unique to UK yet again?

   Thanks Rosa Klebb and Pete

7. Thanks Rosa for another gem full of natural, seamless surfaces. A few of my favourites were TAINT, QUICHE, DARING, ECLIPSE, LATITUDE, EERY, and ADEPT. For me this was fairly straightforward with no parsing issues. Thanks Pete for the blog.

8. Liked quiche, good puzzle!

9. Minor error in blog for 8d. Should say L[ectur]E.

10. Give it some wellie, quirkish expression, one I didn’t grow up with. Nice puzzle Rosa, ta, and ta Pete. Can’t quite think how to swap re for subject without saying “on the subject of” or similar.

11. 29ac: RE is Religious Education, a subject on a school timetable.

12. Thanks PB. Another thing i didn’t grow up with! But silly me anyway, given that it’s a cw staple, like PE for gym.

13. Very much enjoyed this; smooth as ever. Only QUICHE held out at the end – why do I never consider a Q as one of the missing letters? Especially when there is a U in place!!!

    Two things that surprised me: I can never quite get my head around ‘wearing’ as a container. If you wear something, it is surely on the outside rather than inside. I recall a discussion on a G puzzle where someone suggested you wear a pacemaker inside but that didn’t feel like a convincing argument. The other query was don = D in LATITUDE. That is not an abbreviation I have encountered before. What am I missing?

    Thanks Rosa Klebb and Pete M

14. PostMark @13. But BORE is on the outside of E. I couldn’t find D for ‘don’ either so just accepted that it can be found in some dictionary or other.

15. Splendid Hovis, thanks. I had read it the wrong way round.

16. I do not think that D is short for a university don but for a Spanish gent.
    Splendid puzzle . Thanks to Rosa and Pete.

17. 8dn: D for “Don (a Spanish title)” is in Collins 2023 (p 503). That still leaves the lower case “d” in the clue to explain. Collins has don² 3 “a Spanish gentleman or nobleman” and then separately Don¹ “a Spanish title equivalent to Mr“. Can we say that a don (a Spanish gentleman) is necessarily a Don (one who holds this title)? I think we can. Alternatively, the usual expectation is that false capitals are allowed, but not the reverse. Is Rosa simply allowing this to work the other way?

18. Martin @6,
    Op Art (Optical Art) was coined by the sculptor, George Rickey, in 1964 to describe abstract paintings that created the illusion of movement (from ARTSPEAK by Robert Atkins). As mentioned in Pete’s blog, British artist Bridget Riley was prominent among them.

    And yes, ‘give it some welly/wellie’ is a UK term from Wellington boot. Some suggest it’s putting your foot down on the accelerator/gas for more power but there’s also the game of ‘welly wanging’ which I remember from the 1970s (on Nov 5th) when people competed to throw a welly as far as possible. All very eccentric, I know!

19. Diane – welly wanging is still very much a thing. I wanged one at a village fete this year. It was about the only use of a welly I made all summer.

20. 3d contains a wonderful piece of misdirection, with the reference to Countdown (the TV quiz show) leading me to believe it was about Rachel Riley, who is one of the presenters (and a star, a few years ago, of Strictly Come Dancing – like Countdown, not something I ever watch but do hear about) – she does the job formerly done by Carol Vorderman, who became quite a star on the back of it. All that makes it rather Brit-centric, but that’s forgiveable as it only means the misdirection will not bother a lot of solvers.

21. [Ooh, Postmark, I need to get some training in, then!]

22. Re “re for subject”
    I take this as meaning “with REference to”.
    For example when replying to an email, the subject in the reply is commonly RE:original subject

23. I enjoyed this puzzle but was defeated by three clues, partly because I’ve never heard of the (ghastly) word UPSKILL. As I’m fairly late contributing to this blog, I’m surprised not to see more comment on “off”, or perhaps “going off” as a synonym for “kill”. It’s not one I’ve ever encountered.

24. 19ac: Collins 2023 p 1382 has off 27 to kill (someone) – this is the only meaning it gives for off as a verb.

    29ac: Collins p 1657 has re² as a preposition meaning “with reference to”, as the ablative of the Latin noun res, not the first two letters of “reference”, and I believe that “RE:” as a prefix to the subject of an email stands for “reply” – compare “FW:” for “forward”. I can only find subject as a noun or verb, so do not see any justification for “subject” on its own to define “re” through this route. I still think the setter’s intention is as I gave it in comment 11.

25. Correction to 24 re 29ac: I should have found subject also as an adjective or adverb, but that still does not justify it defining a preposition. Note that I deliberately said that I do not see any justification for “subject” to define “re” through the meaning “with reference to”. I try never to claim that such justification cannot exist, and I am open to further argument that could give such a justification.

26. I used to really enjoy Rosa’s crosswords. Sadly this one has finally proven to me that she has lost her touch. Sad.

27. I’m a big fan of Sarah’s but this was one I didn’t enjoy. LATITUDE was an excellent clue though.

28. and I am getting to appreciate Rosa Klebb more, even though I didn’t get the SW corner.(apart from ‘upskill”)

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