Financial Times 15,383 by BRADMAN

11 comments on “Financial Times 15,383 by BRADMAN”

1. Very enjoyable with trademark Don-oddities such as KIST and TERATOGEN

2. I enjoyed this too though had to reach for the dictionary many times as expected.

   I am all for more scientific words in crosswords if only as balance to Greek nymphs and minor Shakespearean characters.

   Thanks to all

3. The explanation at 28A is not quite right. Strictly speaking, a DEUTERON is a subatomic partice, the nucleus of a deuterium atom, not the isotope itself.

   I’m surprised people found it difficult. For me, it, and for that matter Paul in the Guardian, Phi in the Indy and anonymous in the Times were all on the easy side, taking less than an hour between them. Four very fine puzzles, though.

4. One of the Don’s many strong points is that although he does have a penchant for quite obscure words, the wordplay is correspondingly unambiguous and gettable so you only need the dictionary for confirmation, rather than word-trawling. CRIB SHEET was excellent.

   Please could someone satisfy my curiosity: what does FF and DD at the top of the blog refer to? Fun and difficulty perhaps?

5. cruciverbophile @4: you’ve taken the words out of my mouth in your description of the setter! I’m sure someone else will post before I submit this but the letters record the number of particular types of clue. “DD” stands for “Double Definition” but I can’t for the life of me think what “FF” means. (Can only think of “Fully Fashioned” as stockings use to be described back in the day!)

   Enjoyed this, particularly 1ac, 5 & 6d. Thank you Bradman & Turbolegs.

6. Cruciverbophile @ 4″Fun Factor” Thanks S & B.

7. “DD” degree of difficulty

8. Jmac@: thank you for that; makes more sense than my offering!

9. Hi all,

   Thanks for stopping by. Nice to see some familiar names too! 🙂

   goujeers@3 – Well spotted. I should have prefixed the latter part of my statement with Deuterium.

   cruciverbophile@4 – I do agree with you to an extent. One way of looking at the attractiveness of a clue (and this is purely a personal opinion) is how dependent was the solver (me) on crossers in getting to the solution. The less dependence, the more I like it.

   FF and DD quantify in some sense, my solving experience with the specific puzzle. Sometimes I get lucky and dial into the frequency of the setter pretty quickly, and other times, I am looking at a blank grid for quite a while! 🙂

   Regards,
   TL

10. Well I was half right about FF and DD then, though June’s suggestion for DD = double definition is a good one too – I wondered about that myself but couldn’t find nine of them. Thanks jmac for the confirmation.

11. Thanks Bradman and Turbolegs

    Although the puzzle took an elapsed three days to complete, that was more a result of priorities than difficulty factor. There were the trademark obscurities sprinkled about (along with a couple of instances of Indian geography), but as cruciverbophile comments, one was able to construct the answers from the word play and only needed to verify with references.

    Particularly enjoyed a few of the clues that prescriptively told one where to put the word play components – REGENT, AGRARIAN and DEUTERON and thought that THERMALS was also worth a call out.

    Finished up the top with MYSORE, SUBMISSIVE (caught up working where ED was going before twigging to SUB) and the very clever CRIB SHEET as the last few in.

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