Financial Times 15,665 by MONK

20 comments on “Financial Times 15,665 by MONK”

1. EFIT for 25a.

2. Sorry, missed the hyphen. E-FIT, with dials being slang for ‘faces’.

3. Thanks Hovis. I had not heard of this and would never have got it myself.

4. Salutations Brother Monk. And like PeeDee says in his terrific blog, keep ’em coming.

   And a personal first for me: I spotted the Nina.

5. many congratulations to Monk; and thanks to PeeDee

6. I spotted FT and MONK but seeing DIABLIO creeping up put me off the punch line.
   Great stuff and fine blog. Thanks PeeDee and Monk

7. Another enjoyable (and not too difficult) crossword from my perhaps favourite FT setter (he’s surely in my Top 5).
   I saw ‘for Monk’ but not the top row!
   Actually, I started in the middle of the left column and read ‘I die for Monk’ …..
   Couldn’t be it.
   Just for a moment, but only very very short, I thought the ‘chap’ in BASILICA might be me ….. 🙂
   (after another half-nod at 21d)

   Thank you PeeDee and the Birthday Child for the fun.

8. Missed the top row of the Nina – at least the FOR MONK bit is now explained. Most went in reasonably smoothly though I couldn’t parse a few such as FRENZIED. The Nina helped in the SW corner where I was stuck for a while. I thought E-FIT was an excellent cryptic def and was my last in.

   Congrats to Monk on his centenary and thanks to PeeDee.

9. Congratulations to Monk and thank you for a crossword that kept me working for a long time, even after I’d spotted the Nina.

   Thanks to PeeDee too

10. Congratulations Monk! Very enjoyable crossword. I missed the parsing for FRENZIED so many thanks PeeDee.

    Can someone please explain to me why the cryptic grammar in 4d and 16d is ok? The surface works but cryptically I would have thought this needed adopts/adopting and hosts/to host/hosting – am I missing something?

    I liked the indirect nature of GENEVA and SYLVAN. APOGEE made me laugh, as did FASTEN.

    I wondered whether the two long clues, 4d with 15a, was a political statement – maybe just my mind.

    Many thanks Monk and PeeDee

11. Dutch @10 – I don’t think there is a straightforward explanation. I think one has to conjure up some implied context to get the clues to work seamlessly.

    In 4dn you might read it like a newspaper headline: “police to adopt new tactics”, implying that this is what will happen in the near future (ie when you write in the solution). In 16dn you might read host as the third person plural: “In the solution these previous words host the following…”. I think they are justifiable but as you imply maybe not as pleasing to read as some of the other clues.

12. Not an “anniversary” surely. Monk cannot have been doing this for 100 years.

13. Thanks Peedee@11. I can perhaps see a plural fodder as subject in 16d. 4d is tricky since ‘to’ is in the anagram fodder, hence can’t be part of the indicator without doing double duty. But again, perhaps the school of thought is that the fodder may be considered plural (more than one word or letter?) though I confess that feels strange to me, perhaps naively I think of fodder as a single entity.

14. Interesting question, Dutch.

    In 4d, it is an anagram of MILITANTS and TO that goes around ARIA.
    In my opinion, this only justifies ‘adopt’ if we see the building stones MILITANTS and TO as two things – whatever happens to them.
    However, if you see the clue as (MILITANTS + TO)* around ARIA, with the final anagram as one thing, there is a good reason to find it questionable.
    Personally, I am not sure here (yet).
    Benefit of the doubt, perhaps?

    16d can easily be justified as HIR[e] and OHIO (two things) go together around T.
    But true, it is just the OHIO bit that really does the surrounding.

    You say: perhaps […] I think of fodder as a single entity.
    That is indeed a way to look at it but many (often Ximenean and/or more precise) setters would happily disagree.

15. Dutch ans Sil – quite right about TO being already used, I had missed that. Another case of 3rd person plural then.

16. Richard @12 – oops, egg on face! I had intended “anniversary” in a general sense to mean something like a “significant and regular recurrence”, but now I look Chambers does not support that. The idea was that it was vague and did not give too much away, it could just as easily have been about a (non-existent) theme of the puzzle, a birthday or a historical event.

17. Sil @14, and Dutch – here are two versions of a sentence about baking:

    Take the three ingredients, mix them up and put them into the bowl. They will improve overnight.

    Take the three ingredients, mix them up and put it into the bowl. It will improve overnight.

    It is the version that still treats the mixture as plural that sounds right, even though the mixture is in fact a singular entity. Unless “the mixture” is mentioned explicitly it is still treated in the plural. For example

    Take the three ingredients, mix them up and put the mixture into the bowl. It will improve overnight.

18. I am quite sure we agree, PeeDee.
    Your example is exactly how I look at it.
    The only difference is, perhaps, that you are more confident that ‘adopt’ is right than I would be.
    The third line @17 makes that clear.

    I hope Dutch sees the point too.
    He and I had a discussion on this before, so I know (and see) where he’s coming from.

19. Thanks Monk and PeeDee

    Started off by getting IN THIS DAY AND AGE as the first one in and thought that I’d be in for an easier solve than normal for this setter. That certainly was not the case, taking multiple sessions over a couple of days to get it out!

    Didn’t see the nina – and congratulations to Monk for getting his 100th puzzle published here – enjoy them and hope that there is at least a 100 more to come.

    Lots of really clever tricks used throughout with SYLVAN being the hardest for me to see and once done, my favourite. It was my second to last in, followed by the deceptively hard, but in retrospect quite straightforward FASTEN, as the last one in.

20. Only just found out that this has been published! Many thanks to PeeDee for yet another wonderful blog and to all for not only comments but good wishes. It behoves me to address the conversation raised by Dutch re the cryptic grammar at both 4dn and 16dn.

    4 TOTALITARIANISM Ordered militants to adopt song in advocacy of tyranny (15)
    My notes have this as aria in [militants (+) to]*, thereby utilising an implicit conjunction that admits a 3rd-person jumbling of the combined anagram fodder. I queried this device when solving the Times years ago and was persuaded by the editor that it was OK even if the linking conjunction is implicit (it certainly is when explicit: “A mixes” but “A and B mix”).

    16 HIROHITO Almost let US state host Tokyo’s first emperor (8)
    Analogous argument in T in [hir{e} (+) Ohio], now using an implicitly invited 3rd-person indication for containment etc.

    TBH, I still have more pressing concerns about the frequently used Wordplay *in* Definition/Answer which, though still seemingly unfair IMHO, now occasionally appears in my clues simply through the weight of accepted convention. I can’t help but see it as the answer being “in” the components, and never vice versa. But what do I know?

    Anyway, I’m simply writing to say that the clues were deliberately of the published form, for the reasons given — I’d never lay claim to laying down a standard, formulaic approach 😉

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