Financial Times 17,075 by ARTEXLEN

16 comments on “Financial Times 17,075 by ARTEXLEN”

1. RAILCAR is quite interesting.

   Thanks, A and T!

2. This gave me much difficulty but in retrospect it seemed fairly clued and my experience on degree of difficulty usually does not match TL’s anyway. In at least three places prepositions were part of the definitions — ‘of Venus Williams,’ ‘from extreme state’ and ‘of island.’ Usually prepositions make the surfaces better but aren’t otherwise relevant. By the time I entered BARBADIAN I had gotten used to it. I wasn’t sure of 8A parsing because in ‘bring it back,’ ‘it’ often means sex appeal (SA). But then I thought that ‘How’ was a question and the blog confirmed it. FOOTPATH was nicely hidden and I did like ALASKAN. ON 13d I would have preferred SPENDING to define ‘outgoings’ but dictionary shows SPEND is a noun too. Thanks to both Artexlen and Turbolegs.

3. Thanks Artexlen and Turbolegs
   9ac: To save anyone else the bother of looking it up, cornetist is actually the first spelling given in Chambers 2014. The one I would always use (with a doubleT in the middle) is given second.

4. Very enjoyable and satisfying to get out after struggling with many clues. Couldn’t parse RAILCAR, not knowing what the ‘Venus Williams’ bit meant and haven’t come across ALAN ‘Freeman’ before

   Favourites were my last two in – the original ‘Bread virtually’ for BITCOIN and ‘One boasts well’ def for OILMAN.

   Thanks to Artexlen and Turbolegs (and PB @3)

5. I gave up on Tramp’s in the Guardian and tried this one, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

   I was sure 4d was “Barbarian” and couldn’t work out why! Not sure in 19d why relations are reports. “Railcar” was a doozie. And I’m afraid I’d never heard of the two featured Brits — Keir Starmer & Alan Freeman (although I find the latter was born in Australia).

6. Geoff@5: I interpreted 15d to mean that to report something is to relate it, and thus a report is a relation.

7. BTW, I didn’t know that the British don’t use the word “railcar”, so the Venus Williams reference made no sense to me until I read the blog. Thanks TL for the explanations and Artexlen for the challenge.

8. I found this rather tricky in parts for reasons already mentioned but it was well worth persevering.
   Like ub @2, I thought FOOTPATH well done and thought first of ‘spending’ but it seems ‘spend’ is acceptable.
   Likewise, I thought ‘cornetist’ had double t at the centre but this time Pelham Barton has done the legwork. Thanks to both.
   BITCOIN was great and so was the sneaky wordplay for Venus Williams which even contained the word ‘deceptive’ as an added tease!
   I was glad to complete, if not fully parse, this entertaining grid.
   Like Geoff, I’m still not sure about ‘relations’ for ‘reports’ or indeed ‘found’ for ‘introduce’.
   No doubt someone will put me right but in the meantime, thanks to Turbolegs and Artexlen for a real head-scratcher!

9. Tough grid. I only got about half and then gave up! Thanks for the blog. Still learning!

10. Quite a struggle with this but we made it in the end, although we couldn’t parse ASS, and we thought ‘part’ for ‘shed’ in 14ac was a bit of a stretch.
    We had trouble, too, parsing RAILCAR. Once we realised the Venus W reference simply indicated American usage we couldn’t at first shake off the idea that ‘about right’ indicated the –CAR bit so couldn’t see how to parse ‘rail’. Incidentally, athough Chambers indicates it’s American usage, the word is used in Britain too. A single coach diesel unit is often referred to as a diesel railcar.
    Despite the difficulty there was plenty to like. Favourites included FOOTPATH and CENTRIFUGE.
    Thanks, Artexlen and Turbolegs.

11. EdK@6, yes, after I’d thought about it a bit more, I came to this conclusion.

12. Thanks for the blog Turbolegs as I had too many bung and hopes here.
    The RAILCAR made absolutely no sense, but it is worth mentioning we have had railcars out here in NZ with the original ones being made in the UK. That tends to indicate it is not necessarily an American usage.
    Thanks for the challenge Artexlen.

13. Hi all,

    While by no means the definitive reference, I do recommend a reading of the wiki page on the railroad car.

    Good to see so many others found this as enjoyable as I did.

    Regards,
    TL

14. I found this tough but got there with one mistake – Barbarian instead of Barbadian. I couldn’t understand the parsing of Barbarian and now I understand why! Footpath has lots of ticks for me, because it was so well hidden.

15. Thanks Artexlen and Turbolegs
    Got to this one on the weekend and found it a very good challenge with a lot of thinking involved in discovering the answer and then uncovering the reason why frequently. Took an age to understand why an OILMAN would ‘boast’, why ‘Venus Williams’ was involved in a RAILCAR, how the parsing of OUTGOINGS worked until OUTINGS emerged and what was going with the ‘question gone from “Goon show’s”. Eventually got there though, with the exception of the rhyming Keir at 26a – so thanks for that.
    Finished in the NW corner with WHALE CALF (not sure why that took so long), RESPECT (subtle and clever) and that ASS (with it’s very tricky word play).

16. Coming to this several days late. I struggled with this and was very glad to finish. I think SHED for “part” is dubious, though I parsed the clue the same way. And I didn’t get what Venus Wms had to do with RAILCAR. Having seen the parsing given, I think it’s stretching things really far. I don’t think either of those clues works, tbh. Ah well. Thanks Turbolegs and Artexlen.

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