Financial Times 15,739 / Julius

11 comments on “Financial Times 15,739 / Julius”

1. Quite a treat, thanks Julius, Turbolegs

   LOI, LINSEED, kept telling myself, it can’t be cricket, it can’t be cricket.  Also liked WARHEAD, UNDERCLOTHES, XENON, FINAL

   Good for a change not having the first letters given, which can make things rather easy, but extra help from the grid by having all the initial letters checked.  I imagine that makes the grid quite hard to fill.

2. I must have dry–solved half of the clues befoe I dared to enter anything-in pencil.Then it was fun fun fun with no T bird.

   Thanks to Julius and turbolegs.

3. Virtuoso stuff indeed.  I got into it fairly quickly, by accident really.  By way of a joke a candidate for the top row,  and having final, journal and keenest already solved, took a punt and stuck the long answer across the top.

   Enjoyed this a lot, though my mojo was nearly exhausted, and I haven’t started the other four I usually do.

   Respect to Julius, and congratulations to Turbolegs for such a good blog.

4. Yes, another great puzzle from Julius with plenty of wit and invention as always. I found it pretty tricky to get far enough to enter anything in the grid, but the last few fell quite quickly, with WARHEAD last in. For me the 9-letter solutions were the ones that cracked the jigsaw.

   Thanks (and Happy Christmas) to Julius and Turbolegs

5. I enjoyed this a lot. Thanks to copmus for directing me here from the Guardian site. I think it was you. I don’t see anything that makes linseed more plausible either. And very much thanks to Julius.

6. Thanks Julius and Turbolegs

   Re LINSEED, I think it’s somewhat oblique, but linseed is the seed (of the lin/flax plant) that when processed would have produced the oil that, back in the day, Geoff Boycott would have used on his bat*.

   * He probably used it on his grandma’s pinny and stick of rhubarb too.

7. I suspect that the paucity of comments on this remarkable puzzle is due to its difficulty. I started in-filling with about two thirds of the clues solved.  Fortunately, I had all of the 9s and saw a linkage applicable to to only  “impudence” and “The Louvre.”  “Gravlax” was one of my missing 7s and I found it with a word wizard.  My x-word dictionary was of no use because it is not a fish any more than a kipper is.  It’s a way of cooking salmon in Scandinavia.  As to linseed oil, my cricketing days were well before Boycott’s and all bats needed to be oiled to prevent cracking in those days. Incidentally, “oil” is doing double duty, though that seems to be OK by some folks some of the time.

    

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8. Just got around to this. I don’t normally tackle the alphabetical puzzles – the ones I’ve done have the clues listed in alphabetical order which is an aid to the solver, but to my dismay that was thrown out the window at my first clue XENON. I must have had 2/3 of the answers before I realised there were two B’s, which gave me an entry into the grid – and was able to place all the clues i had so far. The rest went more rapidly with help from the grid. took a while to finish the right hand side, didnt see the wordplay for UNDERCLOTHES for ages, a lovely clue. LOI was VOLPONE because I didn’t know it, but it had to be.

   I didn’t understand lindseed, though now i vaguely recollect having seen boycott the cricketer in puzzles before

   I enjoyed it, these puzzles have a long incubation period and a sudden rush of fun at the end.

   Manythanks Julius and many thanks Turbolegs

9. A really super puzzle.  It took bit longer than the average FT but it is holiday season for most and a bit of extra time is available.  I Entered BY WAY OF A JOKE on the top line as it put B,W,Y,F,J and K as first letters of down solutions.  This looked so much like a setter trying to get as many of the difficult starting letters out of the way in the first clue that it just had to be right.

   I am mystified by LINSEED.  If is is just a Geoffry Boycott reference and nothing more then the clue is a dud.  It seems out of place in the puzzle.  No big deal as the rest of the puzzle more than makes up for it.

    

   Thanks Julius and Turbolegs

10. Thanks to turbolegs and to those who have commented. I’m sorry the clue for LINSEED didn’t wow the punters; the surface was supposed to evoke some kind of misdirection invloving an eco-warrior, Swampy Gove boycott of Big Oil whilst really referring to a young, hirsute Boycs in his owlish specs rubbing oil into the blade of his Gunn&Moore.

    @James

    if filiing a grid generally takes me x minutes, this takes 10x. Yet it’s strangely pleasurable.

    Merry Christmas to everyone and happy solving in 2018.

    Rob/Julius

     

11. Thanks Julius and Turbolegs

    When I first saw this, I thought that the FT must’ve mixed up the Christmas Special and printed it early.  It is the first alphabetical that I’ve done with the clues not in order and I liked the additional challenge which took between 3-4 hours to solve spread across a couple of days.  Agree with the description that dutch@8 gives to the incubation and sudden rush at the finish experience of doing these type of puzzles.

    Needed more than half the clues solved before I found the second H word in HAZEL to start the grid entry.  Needed the blog to finish off the parsing of QUADRIC – couldn’t get past QUADS as the muscles and couldn’t work out the RIC part.  Didn’t see BY WAY OF A JOKE until quite close to the end.

    Am old enough to remember Geoffrey Boycott making life hard for the Aussies way back when, but it was still a stretch to get from the cricketer to what he may have applied to his bat for the answer here.

    Chuckled at UNDERCLOTHES and thought that most of the clues were really cleverly constructed.  A brilliant lead up to Christmas …

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