Today’s FT puzzle can be found here
There was a lot to like in this puzzle, my favourites being the clues for SPEEDWELL, MIDNIGHT, ARPEGGIO and PREGNANT.
However…
…RIALTO is not an island (except in some dictionaries, it would appear, see comments section below!), and I didn’t like the clue for ALAS. The grammar of the clue doesn’t work because SALAD is getting cut up, not are getting cut up.
Also, the missing indication for 11dn didn’t help as you really needed to finish the rest of the puzzle before working out what had gone wrong. This should have been picked up by the editor.
Thanks, Redshank
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PESTLE | It crushes a bunch of limpest lettuces (6) |
| Hidden in [a bunch of] “limPEST LEttuces” | ||
| 4 | BALMORAL | Royal castle’s lip salve spoken of (8) |
| BALM (“lip salve”) + ORAL (“spoken of”) | ||
| 9 | RUEFUL | Four regularly break new rule, repenting (6) |
| F(o)U(r) [regularly] break *(rule) [anag:new] | ||
| 10 | CARDIGAN | He famously charged for his soldiers’ clothing (8) |
| Double definition, the first referring to the 7th Earl of Cardigan, who led the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War in 19854. | ||
| 12 | MEDICINE | Italian family gets nearly-new drug (8) |
| MEDICI (“Italian family”) gets [nearly] NE(w) | ||
| 13 | RIALTO | Irish backed singer in Italian island (6) |
| <=Ir. (Irish, backed) + ALTO (“singer”)
I don’t think Rialto is an island per se; it is part of one of the islands that make up Venice, so saying it is an island is a bit like saying Scotland is an island. (see comments below) |
||
| 15 | DIET | Regime in parliament, say (4) |
| Double definition | ||
| 16 | DISINHERIT | Cut off? Organise ride in this (10) |
| *(ride in this) [anag:organize] | ||
| 19 | FULL-LENGTH | Achievement in pool, perhaps touching ground? (4-6) |
| Double definition | ||
| 20 | WAIF | Spouse almost hugs a poor child (4) |
| WIF(e) (“spouse”, almost) hugs A | ||
| 23 | GRASSY | Like meadows, windy, covering third of farm (6) |
| GASSY (“windy”) covering [third (letter) of] (fa)R(m) | ||
| 25 | FRIEDMAN | Economist said to be an emancipated slave (8) |
| Homophone of [said to be] FREED MAN (“emancipated slave”)
Refers to American Nobel laureate Milton Friedman (1912-2006) |
||
| 27 | ARPEGGIO | Georgia somehow keeps piano notes in sequence (8) |
| *(georgia) [anag:perhaps] keeps P (piano) | ||
| 28 | SHOVEL | Shift small squalid dwelling (6) |
| S (small) + HOVEL (“squalid dwelling”) | ||
| 29 | PREGNANT | Expecting president’s first ruling (8) |
| P(resident) [‘s first] + REGNANT (“ruling”) | ||
| 30 | ADVERB | Notice very short bishop’s part of speech (6) |
| AD (“notice”) + VER(y) [short] + B (bishop) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PYRAMID | Put up journal page about minute tomb (7) |
| [put up] <=(DIARY (“journal”) + P (page)) about M (minute) | ||
| 2 | SPEEDWELL | Veronica got shot of water in big wave (9) |
| PEED (“got shot of water”) in SWELL (“big wave”) | ||
| 3 | LAUNCH | Throw a meal outside (6) |
| A with LUNCH (“meal”) outside | ||
| 5 | ALAS | Unfortunately greens are cut up (4) |
| <=SALA(d) [cut] [up] | ||
| 6 | MIDNIGHT | When date changes I don’t oddly cut power (8) |
| I D(o)N(t) [oddly] cut MIGHT (“power”) | ||
| 7 | REGAL | Magnificent drink upended (5) |
| <=LAGER (“drink”, upended) | ||
| 8 | LINE-OUT | Yob tackles popular European in rugby restart (4-3) |
| LOUT (“yob”) tackles IN (“popular”) + E (European) | ||
| 11 | ANCIENT | Everyone knows this old course (7) |
| Had to insert this in to the blog as it was missing from the puzzle. | ||
| 14 | HISTORY | Everyone knows this old course (7,7) |
| ANCIENT (“old”) + HISTORY (“course”) | ||
| 17 | ROAD MOVIE | Is one specially made for drive-in cinemas? (4,5) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 18 | FLASHGUN | Briefly expose weapon, using this? (8) |
| FLASH (“briefly expose”) + GUN (“weapon”) | ||
| 19 | FOGLAMP | It’s illuminating playing golf with a politician (7) |
| *(golf) {anag:playing] with A MP (Member of Parliament, so “politician”) | ||
| 21 | FAN CLUB | Make cooler card for organised supporters (3,4) |
| FAN (“make cooler”) + CLUB (playing “card”) | ||
| 22 | METHOD | Came across brick carrier’s way of working (6) |
| MET (“came across”) + HOD (“brick carrier”) | ||
| 24 | APPLE | Some help parcel up McIntosh for one (5) |
| Hidden backwards in [some, up]”hELP PArcel”) | ||
| 26 | KILN | Family takes possession of large cooker (4) |
| KIN (“family”) takes possession of L (large) | ||
So, that’s where Apple Mac gets it’s name.
Failed to get 11,14 without using a word fit cheat. Nothing to do with the error, just me not be up to it.
Didn’t object to ALAS. To me, “greens are” translates to “salad is” but I get the point. Personally, my salads are rather colourful.
Thanks to Redshank and loonapick.
I wasn’t too fussed bout 11dn or 5dn either, but was surprised to find the Rialto classified as an island (Wikipedia says that originally it was ‘a small area in the Rialtine Islands’). Was it easier than usual for Redshank? Perhaps the weather put me on good form. Thanks to setter and blogger.
Thanks loonapick
Sorry to disagree with you but RIALTO is an island according to all my references:
Chambers: “A district and island of Venice, with a famous bridge over the Grand Canal”
Collins: “An island in Venice, Italy, linked with San Marco Island by the Rialto Bridge (1590) over the Grand Canal”
ODE: “An island in Venice, containing the old mercantile quarter of medieval Venice”
Thanks, loonapick. I agree with all your favourites, with the addition of FOGLAMP, but not your quibbles. I’m with Hovis re ALAS and I was going to give you this link for RIALTO but Gaufrid beat me to it.
It’s a good day for Duggie Anderson fans, with his Crucible (slightly harder) in the Guardian. Many thanks again, Redshank. 😉
Everything was going swimmingly in this fun Redshank grid till I hit 11d/14d. Figured out that the enumeration for 14d (7,7) included the missing 11d and had all the crossers in place but still didn’t get the answer.
The editorial blip didn’t spoil my enjoyment, however, of what was a very neatly clued puzzle with too many likes to enumerate.
Thanks to Redshank and Loonapick.
Thanks Redshank and Loonapick. LOI was Full Length. Is it McIntosh or Macintosh?
Gaufrid/Eileen
In my defence…
I wear two hats, as a crossword lover and a quiz lover.
In practice this means that I look at dictionaries for common nouns, but refer to encyclopaedias for proper nouns.
I therefore did not check the dictionaries, but none of my encyclopaedias have Rialto as an island. The Encyclopaedia Briattanica refers to Rialto Islands as a group of islands on which Venice is built, but does not name Rialto as one of them.
An online search (in English (islands of Venice)and Italian (isole de Venezia)) brought up the following list of islands (with number of inhabitants, again none of which are called Rialto, so if there is a Rialto island, it must be very small and uninhabited.
Main Island (town center, Centro Storico)
63.000
Lido di Venezia
18.000
Murano
6.200
Giudecca (with Sacca Fisola)
6.100
Burano
4,800
Pellestrina
4.150
Sant Erasmo
700
Mazzorbo
350
Vignole
60
Torcello
20
Mazzorbetto
5
Given that this is a crossword rather than a quiz, I will demur, however, and amend the blog accordingly.
Hovis, Hornbeam and Eileen – if you accept “greens are”= “salad is”, does that mean that in a crossword clue, you would also accept “I am” where a setter wants to use I, for example “I am in normal couple” for PAIR?
Edited to add:
I suppose, technically, if you look at a map, all areas of Venice are small islands, so Rialto, as any other are of the city, could be described as an island, as it is only connected to the rest of the main island by bridges.
Loonapick @7. Yes, I would accept your clue for PAIR. Ok, the surface reading is superseding the cryptic reading where I is in PAR but to disallow such clues would be a shame and the intention is clear. I’m sure some setters would steer a wide berth from such clues but, as a solver, I am happy to accept that many wouldn’t.
Hi again loonapick@7 — Yes, that sounds exactly the right clue to me.
Hovis @8 (and Hornbeam @9, too), I am totally with Loonapick on this matter.
“to disallow such clues would be a shame and the intention is clear”
It is the reason why setters turn to things like ‘I will be normal in couple’ (whatever that means anyway).
This doesn’t ruin the surface and is cryptogrammatically correct.
It is clear that an increasing number of solvers cannot be bothered too much.
Actually, for the same reason, Loonapick could also have said something about the plural ‘break’ in 9ac and or ‘cut’ in 6dn.
But true, you see it a lot, the surface taking over from the cryptic grammar.
In some cases I find it really annoying (especially with setters who cross the line on other issues too).
Funny enough, I can have it when today’s setter is involved (and surely when it just happens occasionally).
Because there’s so much else that’s really good.
So, who is the one that is inconsistent here …. ? 🙂
Sil van Hoek@10
Thanks for the support. I didn’t pick up on the “break” in 9ac, but I initially read the “cut” in 6dn as being in the past tense, so OK, although reading again, it is in the present (or possibly future) tense, so is “wrong”.
I suppose people’s views on this will depend on their own preferences, but I personally believe that a surface is not just a sentence, but a kind of formula, which should produce an answer following certain rules, in the same way that a mathematical formula leads us to a solution, and these three clues fail in that regard.
Intention is irrelevant in my opinion if rules are not followed.
I don’t think we are really that much at odds here. I agree that setters should make every effort to “follow the rules” when constructing surfaces. But, just as authors should follow the rules of grammar, breaking rules is sometimes justifiable. Whether that should be to form clumsier surfaces or to break cryptic rules, I leave to the setter’s judgement. As to whether Redshank made sufficient effort is for him to answer but I’m happy.
Thanks Redshank for the fun. Favorites were GRASSY, ALAS ( how many ways can one clue that simple word?), MIDNIGHT, FAN CLUB, and FOGLAMP with its apt surface. Thanks Loonapick for the write-up.
Thanks to both. Enjoyable and doable. My quibble is FULL-LENGTH as neither definition seems to quite fit. Both can be argued for but neither is unequivocal.
Thanks to loonapick and Redshank
If Rialto is an island then so is Ealing.
If we are not to distinguish between surface and cryptic readings (9a, 5d, 6d etc), then cryptic crosswords are doomed.
4a “of”?
My battered Chambers says
“RIALTO A district and island of Venice with a famous bridge over the Grand Canal”
No entries for Ealing alas. Eel Pie Island maybe
The Rialto discussion has been very interesting.
I strongly believe that the crosswording community have placed far too much reliance on dictionaries, the role of which in my view should be to explain the meaning and etymology of words in the English language. That brings to question whether Rialto should be in the dictionary at all, it being a specific part of Venice (but see *). This not being the case, its proper place is in a gazzeteer, an atlas or an encyclopaedia. I wouldn’t go to a cookbook to find out about a carburettor, so why would I refer to a dictionary for a definition of Rialto?
*(The issue is confused even further by the inclusion of “rialto” without the capital letter in Collins meaning a marketplace, so could Redshank have changed the clue to “Irish backed singer in marketplace”? I would argue yes, but those who rely on Chambers would potentially call foul.)
This reliance on dictionaries, and especially the BRB, also means that we can’t use certain abbreviations that are perfectly valid in the real world. Take the letter L, which can be indicated by numerous words (Chambers lists more than 30). One example given by Chambers is “length”, but not “long” or “large” (although, to complicate matters further, both Collins and Oxford include “large” under L), and yet when I go shopping for clothes, L is a useful abbreviation (I wear large, but don’t want long trousers (36R is my size, my legs being of a regular length). Why, therefore, shouldn’t a setter use “long” in a crossword clue to indicate L or “regular” to indicate R, or S to indicate “short”? Only because some editors and solvers would cry foul.
I would be interested in other people’s opinions, especially those of setters and editors.
Thanks Redshank and loonapick
Interesting puzzle and even more interesting blog. Was able to finish the grid-fill of this one off a little quicker than normal, albeit with a word-finder to finalise ANCIENT HISTORY (more about already running a day behind again – although still not sure whether I could have got it with pure perseverance). As others have said, lots of very good clues throughout.
I’ve always come down on the more lenient side of setting standards – the main outcome to be achieved is can I fairly fill the answers into the grid without ambiguity that it is the only answer that will fit the clue. Can understand others who do want it to be more ‘correct’ with the cryptic grammar – I personally look more at the experience of gaining new knowledge in the 30-60 minutes it takes to get them done, whilst acknowledging the clever and innovative tricks that a setter lays out to make the brain stretch to get that answer. John Graham was a master of ‘stretching the rules’ to achieve just that.
As for the dictionary / encyclopaedia / atlas / recipe book topic, I believe that wiki has muddied the waters as to what the boundaries are of each of these traditional books purposes were with them all morphing into a general knowledge base of all sorts of referential information. I’ve noticed thet some of the traditional dictionaries, especially Collins has started to follow suit in this regard. Just another example of disruption to the way that things used to be.
Copmus @16
Collins also has Rialto as an island, but the Venetians don’t seem to agree. The area the dictionaries must be referring to is actually called San Polo. If a small part of San Polo which contains the Rialto market can be called an island simply because it is surrounded by water channels then Ealing qualifies.
On abbreviations, I’m happy to accept whatever is in the major dictionaries , or any common abbreviation which their researchers have unaccountably missed – e.g. “L” for “long” as loonapick suggests.
I don’t like “once removed” abbreviations such as “L” clued by “novice”, especially when clued by words which have their own abbreviation – e.g. “volume” cluing “L” or “CC”.