Financial Times 16,871 by MUDD

18 comments on “Financial Times 16,871 by MUDD”

1. It was a surprise to see Mudd on a Monday and he certainly rattled the old brainbox with, for example, his signature double definitions at 6 and 16.
   Also liked 7, 11, 14, 17 and 25.
   Had to cheat to find my 1a, my LOI, which I didn’t know and couldn’t guess.
   Thanks to Mudd and Teacow for parsing 4 and 1d.

2. Good to see Mudd on a Monday. I hadn’t heard the word DIDDUMS in years and thought it had died a natural back in about the late 70’s. Never heard of a TULIP TREE before and MEDIANT had to be entered via an uncrossed letter lottery. These musical terms which are nouns rather than adjectives are strange to non-musicians like me. I’ll have to learn a bit more about BREDA which was also unknown.

   As pointed out by Diane @1, some of the double defs were good (ie not obvious) but favourite was definitely CARICATURE.

   Thanks to Mudd and Teacow

3. I admit, Wordplodder @ 2, that MEDIANT was a lucky guess based on what was clearly an anagram. I do know TULIP TREES though as the African kind with pretty red flowers grow here quite happily in Asia.

4. Thanks for the blog, a lot to like here and I will happily agree with the above for favourite clues with the pick being CARICATURE.
   Bireme ( and trireme ) seem to turn up quite often.
   My own outdated slang seems to match up to Mudd, I still say DIDDUMS and COBBLERS.

5. I liked BIREME and SPIGOT
   “You have a deficiency in the leg department, Mr Spigot ,to the tune of one”

6. ACD

   Thanks to Mudd and Teacow. I did know BIREME but not DIDDUMS or BREDA though eventually I did parse both of them. I was slow getting FRANKLY because I was looking for vILe innards rather than RANK..

7. A welcome Monday offering from Mudd: I had no problems with the vocabulary/GK except for MEDIANT, which I guessed from the anagram and dictionary checked. Only held up slightly by “coin” for INVENT – obvious in retrospect. A lot to like here.

8. I constructed 17 correctly but didn’t enter it, because it wasn’t in Chambers. I couldn’t do a thing with 1d.

9. All pretty straightforward although we hadn’t come across COBBLERS as drinks, and we wasted some time on 1ac as our first idea was ‘trireme’ although it obviously didn’t fit but we thought there might be some wordplay to do with the German city of Trier.
   Lots to like; favourites were TULIP TREE and QUICKLIME.
   Thanks, Mudd and Teacow.

10. Mudd on Monday makes for a challenging start to the week. I didn’t know BIREME or BREDA and had to use outside help; I didn’t know MEDIANT or DIDDUMS but was able to parse my way into those clues. NIGHT (nice surface) was my pick of the litter. Thanks to both.

11. Thanks Mudd and Teacow. I knew COBBLERS but had to look up DIDDUMS in Cambridge. Brilliant clue for CARICATURE.
    Only one clue puzzles me, tho I figured out from letters. In what sense does PLOD = copper?

12. jeff@usa: PLOD is a British slang word for a policeman or “copper.” I guessed that and confirmed it in Collins.

13. ACD@6: Ditto. I also had never heard of COBBLERS as a drink.

14. For the American contingent who press on admirably through the Britishisms, PLOD was a character, PC Plod, in Enid Blyton’s stories. I assume ‘plod’ comes from an officer’s walking the beat.
    And COBBLERS, as I’m sure you guessed, is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘cobblers’ awls’ and is anatomical (think ‘cojones’).

15. Diane@14 quite right , PC Plod was in the Noddy stories and also linked to the idea of policeman having large feet and plodding around.
    ” A load of old cobblers ” was popularised by the TV series Steptoe and Son, the BBC thought it was just about okay as a euphemism.
    Cobblers as a drink is fairly obscure . We also have fruit cobblers, a type of dessert , a bit like apple pie if you use apples. Versatile word.

16. Yes, Roz @15, this time I definitely thought of Steptoe!

17. Cobblers , awls , last etc do seem to have been in puzzles a lot recently.

18. Thanks Mudd and Teacow
    Actually completed this one last week, but only got it to surface for correction again tonight. Was a hard start to the week and took the best part of a couple of hours whilst watching something on the box at the same time.
    Wrote something in that is now illegible underneath BREDA at 1d which held up the NW corner for a little while – BIREME was the one to rectify that error. Knew both COBBLERS and DIDDUMS (which had to wait until last to go in). Smiled when PLOD presented, with long-distant memories of the Noddy books – didn’t realise that it was a common informal word for a policeman though.
    Liked his dd’s as per normal and agree that CARICATURE was the pick of a very good lot.

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