Financial Times 16,812 by ZAMORCA

16 comments on “Financial Times 16,812 by ZAMORCA”

1. Must have gotten on Zamorca’s wavelength as I found this straightforward with only BEQUEATH holding me up for a bit (too many French words that can translate to “that”). Slight error in the parsing for JUMPER. I took E = Key.

2. Forgot to say how much I enjoyed this outing. Answer – a lot.

3. To Hovis:
   Spotted the ‘E’ late. Already fixed, but thanks, Eagle Eyes.

4. Nice puzzle but completely lost on JUMPER

5. Happily, I found this straight-forward too, involved parsing notwithstanding, and thought it rather more accessible than yesterday’s offering. A pangram was the cherry on top of a most enjoyable solve and helped me spot JUMPER.
   Thanks to Zamorca and Grant.

6. Meant to say how much I admired the following SNUBBED, ARPEGGIO and BEHIND BARS.

7. I too found this enjoyably straightforward with BEQUEATH holding out until the end and the parsing of TAKE TO eluding me. I didn’t notice the pangram but did have a tick against JUMPER amongst others. Thanks to Zamorca and GB.

8. I just entered WELL DONE from the def, but managed to get the rest of the at times quite complicated parsing. Favourite was SNUBBED; one of those ones where you’re not sure if you’re dealing with the present or the past.

   I’d heard the word often enough without knowing its meaning, but I now know what an ARPEGGIO is – I think.

   Thanks to Zamorca for an enjoyable puzzle + pangram and to Grant

9. Lovely puzzle and I am grateful to fifteensquared: before I started looking at the site it never occurred to me to look for eg pangrams, but today as I mused finally over 4a I realised that I had put in Z, X, J etc., so thought “where’s the Q ?” and BEQUEATH became obvious. The rest had been pretty straightforward, though some I did not completely parse when the answer was clear, so my thanks to Grant for tidying those up for me.

10. Thanks for the blog. Diane @ 5 and 6 says it all for me, but I totally missed the pangram.

11. A game of 2 halves for me.. left hand side completed in record time… but then just couldn’t find a way into the other half.. mildly disappointed has to be said…
    Thanks to ZAMORCA n Grant Baynham

12. One person’s toughie is another’s straightforward walk through – we completed this in one session with no help and only KEEP IN MIND unparsed. Not sure that ‘last lob’ for B and ‘third brandy’ for A are quite fair but the clues were clear enough.
    Most enjoyable. CHAPATI, SNUBBED, JUMPER and UP AND ABOUT were our favourites.
    1 down, Zamorca and Grant.

13. Like Undrell @11 I found the right half tougher than the left and I missed AGA, SNUBBED, and TAKE TO. There were many clever clues and I particularly liked CAST ADRIFT, ONCE, OFFAL, and CRONY. “Police” as an anagram indicator in 29a seemed odd to me. I knew to look for a pangram and that helped with JUMPER. Thanks Zamorca and to Grant for filling in my parsing gaps.

14. Thanks Zamorca and Grant
    Another who was on the setter’s wavelength today and it all went in smoothly with the suspected pangram also helping sort out JUMPER and BEQUEATH at the end. It was an anti-clockwise grid fill starting from the NW and finishing in the NE.
    Enjoyed the untangling of the often complicated word play just as much as settling on the definition. Was initially sceptical of ‘police’ as the anagram 29a, but satisfied myself with the ‘keeping order’ part of it.
    An enjoyable early week romp.

15. Thanks to all posters. I didn’t find this as hard as you all seem to think I did but it certainly wasn’t a write-in for me. Just fun, & about right for a Tuesday, I s’pose.

16. Now that it’s somewhat later in the day (UK time), I think I can come up with a slightly different view on this crossword.
    Let me first make clear that I enjoyed the challenge, most surfaces are really good and Zamorca clearly put some thought into this crossword.
    The fact that it is a pangram I didn’t find that special because this setter’s puzzles are nearly always pangrams, either as Zamorca or as Hectence.
    allan_c @ mentions ‘last lob’ = B and ‘third brandy’ = A.
    He calls it unfair, to me it’s horrible, as is ‘endgame’ = E in 28dn.
    Guardian territory.
    At the same I know that there are setters (a minority) who think this is all right.
    I have noticed on earlier occasions that Zamorca/Hectence is one of them.
    She is also a setter who has no problem with B for ‘boy’ or G for ‘girl’, despite the fact that dictionaries do not support it – well, fair enough.
    But there are some issues here.
    For example in 1ac ‘you and I caught in Kuala Lumpur’ means “WE inside KL” and not “WE around IN KL”.
    That is because Zamorca uses ‘caught’ as the past tense of the verb ‘to catch’ which in proper cryptic language should be the present tense.
    Same problem in 19dn, ‘introduced’ should be ‘introduces’ and, if that doesn’t suit the surface, something like ‘will introduce’.
    The same thing gives real trouble, in my opinion, in 7dn’s AGA.
    The clue reads ‘ good answers accepted’ but that means something for ‘good’ with something for ‘answers’ being accepted by it.
    If you like to see it as ‘good that answers accepted’, then ‘accepted’ is once more the past tense which we shouldn’t have.
    Another one of my pet hates (involving verbs) is the use of plural forms when it should be singular.
    8dn (HEISTS) is a good example of that: in the surface ‘Landlords’ is plural but in cryptic language the verb that follows should be in the 3rd person singular.
    Here, ‘must install’ could do the trick.
    Finally, I wasn’t happy with 31ac where the reversal indicator (‘about’) was placed in front of the fodder, although it’s not the first time I’ve encountered that.
    I know that most solvers don’t give a toss as long as cracking the crossword was an enjoyable experience.
    I also know that as someone who sets crossword himself, although irregularly, one has to be aware of these things.
    And I also know that someone who gets published himself should keep shtum about what colleagues do or prefer.
    Still, I felt the need to write this comment as a lot in this puzzle is so far away from my own views in this area.
    That said, we’re all different, aren’t we?

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