Financial Times 17,237 by BRADMAN

14 comments on “Financial Times 17,237 by BRADMAN”

1. I concur that there’s probably a typo in 11d. My dictionary has “boudoir” but not “boudoire”. And I too was stumped by 15a. I thought perhaps NTE or ENT might have been some British organisation that I’d not heard of, but I was unable to find any when I tried internet searches.

   Another mystery for me: why are student events rags?

   Mostly good cluing, but I groaned at 24a. I’d not heard of SLOPE ARMS nor RIATA, and had only a vague recollection of PALIMPSEST.

2. Just solved the rag mystery. A Britishism with which I was unfamiliar.

3. Geoff. Students have (or used to have?) rag weeks.

   I agree that 11d should have ‘boudoir’ and, I can only guess there is also a stray E in 15a with National Trust as the organisation? Where is the proofreader or have we all missed something?

   I also plumped for LEFT, with a left bottle of port being one that’s not drunk – but a poor clue imo if that’s correct.

4. 15 a, 11d and 23d: In all three cases, I have the same line of thinking as all of you. Nothing better to say.

5. Maybe a Car peer will grumble after doing it in the wrong place? 🙂

6. 23: I think this is 2 definition: port, left side of a ship facing forwards, and left as in left over not having been consumed. Pretty poor clue in my view.
   15: the national organisation is I think the National Trust, NT, which still leaves us with an extra E to be accounted for. Perhaps it’s a partner for the supefluous E in boudoirE

7. Similar bewilderment over the apparent editing errors in 15A and 11D. For 15A, even accounting for the extra “e,” it would be odd (but not impossible) for N[ational] T[rust] to be intended, with “national” already in the clue. 23D is a DD and IMHO an ingenious cryptic clue. I thought of LEFT immediately, but spent the longest time parsing “not drunk?”

8. 15 A mistake by me, sorry — hospital department better
   11 Original clue OK with boudoir — trying to communicate from Wales on a smartphone with editor in response to query did not work

9. I agree with Cineraria that 23D is a rather elegant clue.

10. Thanks for the blog, I thought 11D must be a misprint because the clue worked perfectly without the E and in fact was very good.
    ENT used to be in puzzles a lot but not seen it for a while, these mistakes can easily happen.
    I also agree with Cineraria that PORT was a neat double definition.

11. Thanks Bradman and Turbolegs. Good to see the confusion over 15ac and 11dn cleared up.

    23dn certainly appealed to my taste. [If I may indulge myself for once, about 25 years ago I set some exam questions for the University of Birmingham MSc in Operational Research. I liked to give the questions fictional settings with a connection to Birmingham and surrounding areas, and set one of them in the Orlon Plate Engineering Company. I do not think the students would have spent any time working out what the name meant, but “all on plate” = “none eaten” (Nuneaton, Warwickshire.)]

12. thanks Bradman, Turbolegs
    I quite liked 23d, but share Turbolegs’ query about 11d, even allowing for the corrected typo. How does the clue work? It seems to point to ‘me, possibly’ being the definition, when me is only the letters left over from the relevant bit of the anagram. It also has the appearance of an &lit clue, with ‘what might transform’ doing for the anagram, but then both me and possibly get in the way of that. A bit of a mishmash.
    Also thought ‘no. 54’ was a fudge, as the no. is purely padding. It seems odd that we use the word number to qualify numbers in some contexts.

13. Enjoy this.

    Riata was a new word and Pslimpsest has only ever been seen by me once, and that was in a crossword.

    Thanks.

14. I had no trouble with the national organisation (ENT) in 15a CARPENTER, because I immediately thought of the English National Trust, with the E distinguishing it from the superior (geographically) Scottish National Trust. Ah well, I agree with Don@8 that the hospital department is better.

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