Financial Times 16,462 by CHALMIE

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A brisk solve, squarely in the FT Tuesday tradition.

Chalmie gives us a neatly-themed puzzle this morning. Very satisfying. Thanks to him.

image of grid
ACROSS
1 CRICKET Painfully twist alien insect (7)
CRICK (‘painfully twist’) + ET (‘alien’).
5 OCEANIA Orc remains in an oddly large group of islands (7)
Alternate letters of 1st 4 words.
9 MASON Mother with child who is on the square (5)
MA + SON. A member of the Freemasons.
10 ARABESQUE Lincoln opens strange square artwork (9)
ABE (Lincoln) in anagram (‘strange’) of SQUARE.
11 OLD FOGEYS Squares of gold? Yes, could be (3,6)
Anagram (‘could be’) of OF GOLD YES.
12 DEBAG Remove trousers with wrong badge (5)
Anagram of BADGE.
13 TIMES By square familiar to 17 . . . . (5)
Double definition, ref Times Sq in New York.
15 SEMITONES . . . . back with nose broken at regular intervals (9)
Reversal of TIMES from previous clue + anagram (‘broken’) of NOSE.
18 CENTRES ON Revolves around rents once revised (7,2)
Anagram (‘revised’) of RENTS ONCE.
19 DOWNS Penny has swallows (5)
D (old UK penny) + OWNS (‘has’).
21 DRAWN Medical man with beard all square (5)
DR + AWN, the ‘beard’ of the barley plant, Chambers tells us. New to me.
23 EIGHTY-ONE In square, I get honey ordered (6-3)
Thematic again. Anagram of I GOT HONEY.
25 IN AMERICA CIA remain problematic where they are based (2,7)
Anagram of CIA REMAIN. Not sure if this is a ‘thing’ or not, apart from in ‘only in America’.
26 OAKUM Chinese leader goes round country backing tarred rope (5)
MAO around UK, all reversed.
27 MILLION Square mark on the Italian hero (7)
Another square number. M[ark] + IL + LION (‘hero’).
28 HUNDRED Area of local government once square (7)
And again. Double def: once an area of 100 families, now only used in the ‘the Chiltern Hundreds’ to which disgraced politicians fly. (It’s complicated).
DOWN
1 COMPOST Manure’s price limiting order pressure (7)
C.OST around O[rder] of M[erit] + P[ressure].
2 INSIDE MAN Popular jazz musician who helps criminals (6,3)
IN (‘popular’) + SIDEMAN (jazz accompanist to soloing lead musician).
3 KENDO Fighting with sticks to finish in knockout (5)
END in KO.
4 TRAVERSES Comes across poetry after erecting sculptures? (9)
VERSES after reversal of ART.
5 OVALS Nothing against a liberal society giving Australian grounds for 1 across (5)
0 (‘nothing’) + A + L[ib] + S[ociety].. Many Aus. sports grounds are ‘ovals’ on the pattern of the [Kennington, now Kia] Oval in London.
6 EMENDATED Corrected errors European people saw (9)
E + MEN + DATED (‘saw’, ‘went out with’).
7 NIQAB Veil primarily needed in Qatar and Bahrain (5)
1st letters of last 5 words.
8 AVENGES Squares accounts with senior churchman in time (7)
[The] VEN[erable] in A.GES.
14 SERENGETI Calm note about German national park (9)
SEREN.E + TI (sol-fa ‘note’) contain G[erman].
16 MONOGRAPH Detailed article in Gramophone cut short and mangled (9)
Anagram of shortened GRAMOPHONe.
17 NEW YORKER Knee worry sorted out by magazine (3,6)
Anagram of KNEE WORRY.
18 CADMIUM See promo silent about independent element (7)
C + AD (‘promo’) + MUM (‘silent’) around I[ndependent].
20 STEAMED Cooked for horse to eat in the morning (7)
STE.ED ingests AM.
22 AT ALL American not believable in any way (2,3)
A[merican] + TALL (as in ‘tall story’).
23 EVIAN Water from stone via nuclearisation (5)
Inclusion in last 3 words. Unusually, not here clued as a reversal of NAIVE.
24 THORN Square instrument making a sharp point (5)
T [-square] + HORN.

11 comments on “Financial Times 16,462 by CHALMIE”

  1. Had to use google to see the meaning of the definition for MASON.

    Couple of typos in blog. In 23a, GOT -> GET and 5d is missing V (‘against’).

    Nice use of theme. Thanks to Chalmie and Grant.

  2. To Hovis:
    You’re right to pull me up on that. The 5 letters of OVALS are individually clued to produce a coherent sentence, which must have taken some head-scratching.

  4. Thanks Chalmie & Grant.

    It does help to spot the theme.  Kind of you to revert to a colour legible on Apple computers!

  6. We may be a couple of 11, but not so square that we couldn’t solve this lot.  In fact it all went in quite quickly although we found the NE corner slightly tricky.   We needed to check EMENDATED – ’emendate’ as a verb isn’t in our dead-tree Collins, but we found it in Chambers; and having got ARABESQUE we resisted the temptation to write in a U in 7dn realising it was a word of arabic origin.

    SEMITONES was our LOI once we realised that the link between clues 13 and 15 was actually necessary and not just to improve surfaces.

    Thanks, Chalmie and Grant.

  7. @allan_c

    I never use ellipses to improve surfaces, although sometimes I wish I did. Other people differ, which they’re entitled to do, but I regard it as unfair misdirection, so I don’t. I expect most setters know a device or two which they wouldn’t personally use.

  8. Thanks Chalmie, I prefer crosswords with themes and this was a satisfying one. Especially enjoyed ARABESQUE, OVALS, and OCEANIA. I was unaware of HUNDRED as an area of government and “d” being penny so thanks Grant for that enlightenment.

  10. Thanks Chalmie and Grant

    Breezed through the grid-fill, surprisingly for this setter.  Having said that, there were a number of terms that I had to check up on afterwards, including the definition of ‘on the square’, DEBAG, HUNDRED (although there was a vague memory of having seen it before), SIDEMAN and EMENDATED.  The word play was clear in all of them.

    Enjoyed the varied usage of ‘square’ throughout.

    Quickly started off with KENDO and finished in the SW corner with MILLION and SERENGETI.

  11. It’s not a part of the local government, but several communities around Wilmington, Delaware are called Hundreds. Now I know where the name came from.

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