Financial Times 16,827 by ARTEXLEN

16 comments on “Financial Times 16,827 by ARTEXLEN”

1. If you can go to ‘the geegees’, why not ‘the dogs’? I tend to agree, Turbolegs, with a double definition there.
   PLANE wasn’t my first thought for ‘vehicle’ till I saw the crossers but it’s a method of conveyance so no quibbles.
   Last one in, once again, was SERVIETTE even with all the crossers!
   Favourites today included SAUCER (ALTER meant it couldn’t be kimchi), CYCLOPS (FOI) and MACEDON.
   Didn’t know the ’em’ of EMBED.
   Thanks Artexlen for an easier ride than expected on Friday and to Turbolegs.

2. When I studied French at school, it was stressed that DU means “of the” not just “of”. Either the French teachers were wrong or there is a missing “the” in 21d – possibly in the clue as written by the setter but lost at some later stage.

3. I agree, Hovis, that ‘du’ is ‘of the’ as a rule but in place names or titles, it can translate simply as ‘of’, e.g. Louis-Auguste we Bourbon, duc du Maine.

4. Whoops, de Bourbon, not we Bourbon!

5. Thanks Artexlen and Turbolegs
   21dn: Thanks for the information, Diane, but I still think it would be at least as good a surface, and kinder to the solver, to put “of the” in the clue.
   23dn: I agree with Turbolegs. Again, starting the clue with “Provide” instead of “Providing” would give at least as good a surface.

6. Thanks to Artexlen and Turbolegs.
   I found this very straightforward, but still very enjoyable. Only slightly marred, I felt, by ‘providing’ instead of ‘provide’ at 23d and ‘of’ instead of ‘of the’ at 21d. I agree with the comments above that both surfaces would be at least as good that way and I don’t really think that the existence of an ancient title in which ‘du’ translates as ‘of’ is enough to justify it.

7. Thanks for the blog , I did like CYCLOPS and HUSBANDRY is a nice old-fashioned word.
   Agree with 1AC – I have heard going to the dogs in the past when greyhound racing was more popular.
   Provide must have been the original intended word.
   My French is so poor I will just observe the DU discussion.

8. I agree that ‘of the’ would have been fairer in 21d with no detriment to the surface. I should perhaps have included a better example where ‘du’ simply means ‘of’ such as ‘l’histoire du Canada’ or any other country which is masculine.

9. Diane @8: When they write “l’histoire de la France”, you would not say that “de la” means “of”. At least, I hope you would not.

10. The “du” debate is interesting, though I put it in without a second thought. Translation cannot be perfect and there are occasions where, for example, a “du” in French is simply redundant in English : “faire du cidre” simply means “make cider” as the French often use the definite article where English doesn’t bother.
    The best definition of “du” is “de + le”. Diane’s country example is another case where the definite article is used in French but not in English. So, for instance, the French would say “vin du Royaume-Uni” with the “du” a contraction of “de le” or “vin de l’Allemagne” with “de l'” a contraction of “de la”. So “du Canada is a contraction of “de le Canada” but the English translation is “of”. So I think Artexlen is justified.

11. And re Pelham Barton@9 am I being really dense or missing irony or something? Setting aside the question of whether “they ” would write “l’histoire de France” or “l’histoire de la France” surely the only possible translation is “the history of France”…..

12. Well, it certainly isn’t ‘the history of the France’. There is no question that ‘de, de l’, de la’ and ‘du’ mean ‘of the’. Merely that they may be translated as ‘of’ in certain cases which is why I feel, like Perplexus, that this clue from Artexlen is acceptable.

13. Perplexus@11: Having done a bit more homework, I see that I was wrong to adapt the phrase “l’histoire du Canada” into “l’histoire de la France”, and I was being too compact in my writing. Certainly “de la France” translates to “of France”. Here, I think you can correctly map “de” to “of” and “la France” (in French) to “France” (in English). By comparison, “du Canada” translates to “of Canada”, but that does not mean that you can necessarily pair off “Canada” (in French) with “Canada” (in English), leaving “du” paired with “of”. Perhaps it is best to stop there and say that it is not always correct to take parts of phrases as a justification for mapping single words from one language to another.

14. Well, I never expected my comment @2 to get so much response. I felt that the original clue probably had ‘the’ in but it got lost along the way. My feeling, having read the above is that DU does mean “of the” and the fact that English may drop ‘the’ doesn’t detract from its meaning. As another examples, in a different language, the phrase “elephants are big” becomes “los elefantes son grandes” in Spanish. I doubt anyone would say this means “los” can mean nothing at all even if it is lost in translation.

15. Thanks Artexlen, that was enjoyable. I didn’t find this as easy as others but I got there in the end, only missing SKITTLE. Favourites were MAYFLOWER, TYPES, and SAUCER. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog. It’s fun seeing French words getting their due.

16. Thanks Artexlen and Turbolegs
    Agree that it was at the gentle end of this setter’s difficulty spectrum, finishing well within my average FT solving time. Was another who just bunged in DU for ‘of’ without thinking too much about it, but an interesting thread above working it through. Originally and lazily wrote in TAPES at 5d until doing the final parsing check and seeing that it didn’t, changing it to TYPES. SORCERY was another that I didn’t parse until that final check.
    There was a lot of work happening with single letters, which I quite enjoyed, by either adding them, subtracting them or moving them to another part of the answer.
    Had SAUCER (for its word play) and EXTRICATE (for the penny drop moment, didn’t think having the EX in the clue was detrimental to it, provided a clever diversion I thought).
    Finished in the SW corner with CATER (easy in hindsight), YELLOWISH (tricked by the definition) and RELAY (clever reversal) as the last few in.

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