Financial Times 17,382 by Bobcat

12 comments on “Financial Times 17,382 by Bobcat”

1. 

   Ben

   #1 - Fri 14th Apr 23, 23:23

   
   

   Is 4
   about = re
   Backing away from ie backwards and taken off the back of
   mucker = mate
   To give muck.
   Perhaps?

2. 

   Tony Santucci

   #2 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 00:20

   
   

   Thanks Bobcat for an excellent crossword. I looked for a feline nina but didn’t spot one; however, I did see SPRING running vertically intersected by SUMMER running horizontally but I couldn’t go any further than that. I needed a word finder for DYNAMIC and I couldn’t parse MUCK and GET-TOGETHER. I had many favourites including SOLDIER, ASSESSMENTS, RAMSHACKLE, YULE LOG, CHRONIC, and MAYONNAISE, the last two for their surfaces. Thanks Pete for the blog.

3. 

   KVa

   #3 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 00:41

   
   

   Ben@1
   I agree with your parsing.

   Thanks, Bobcat and Pete Maclean!
   Liked AVENGER, FOCI, OPEN AIR and HAUNCH.

4. 

   Roz

   #4 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 05:43

   
   

   Thanks for a great blog, I really enjoyed this , very neat set of clues . I will agree with Tony and KVa for favourites and add DYNAMIC which was just so precise even with the definition. I could list nearly every single clue, must mention NAZARETH and AUGUST.
   For AVENGER I had the whole clue as the definition.
   CHRONIC made me think of Mary Quant and now very poignant after the sad news on Thursday.

5. 

   Hovis

   #5 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 05:55

   
   

   For 2d, I went for augUStUS, with one US removed.

6. 

   Rudolf

   #6 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 06:13

   
   

   I had the same as Hovis for 5D and agree with Roz about 7A being an & Lit.

7. 

   James

   #7 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 13:22

   
   

   Smart clues, KEROSENE was funny as an answer for a clue about English wine.
   Of the &littish ones (AVENGER, SERB, NELSON, AUGUST) none quite hit the spot for me. The first two have independent definitions which are not added to by the second halves of the clues. That for NELSON doesn’t have a separate definition but ‘he defended’ doesn’t contribute to wordplay (and what did NELSON notably do in the Channel?), and for AUGUST there is no definition at all apart from ‘when’. All clear enough, nevertheless.
   Thanks S&B

8. 

   Rudolf

   #8 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 14:22

   
   

   James@7 An interesting analysis of & Lit. I didn’t read the clues for NELSON and AUGUST as being & Lit. The one for NELSON has the whole clue as a definition, but only part of the clue as wordplay, as you say: my understanding is that this qualifies as a semi & Lit, although that expression doesn’t appear to have a generally agreed definition, as far as I’m aware. For AUGUST, I took “Was this when … ?” to be the definition, and didn’t read the whole clue to be a definition (I think this is what you are saying as well). As far as the other two are concerned, the question to be satisfied for & Lit status is, in my view, whether the clue read as a whole provides a plausible definition of the answer, and in my view both those clues do. (That is why & Lit clues almost invariably take the form of questions. They do not have to provide something as precise as a dictionary definition.) If so, then I don’t think it matters that another definition is supplied by a subset of the clue.

9. 

   James

   #9 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 18:00

   
   

   Rudolf @8 How to classify the clues doesn’t really bother me if they have their own logic. The clue for NELSON has perfectly sensible wordplay but what’s left is just an arbitrary snippet which seems unsatisfactory. Because the wordplay is so obvious one just writes it in and moves on, but if there was a clue with complicated wordplay that could only be worked out after solving (as is the case with many clues) with a similar arbitrary snippet that did not constitute a definition the solver would be lost.
   I’d like to know if the setter confused Nelson and Drake.
   The clue for SERB as a whole is not a definition of Serb. Everything after resident has no more relevance than whether the Belgrade resident has toast or cereal for breakfast.
   The extra bits in the clue for AVENGER are more apt, but don’t improve the definition at all.

10. 

    lady gewgaw

    #10 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 18:21

    
    

    @ Rudolf: ‘the question to be satisfied for & Lit status is, in my view, whether the clue read as a whole provides a plausible definition of the answer’.

    That’s not quite right if I may say so. &lit requires all the elements in the clue to be contributing to the wordplay, as well as providing a surface which accurately describes the answer.

11. 

    Rudolf

    #11 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 18:36

    
    

    lady gewgaw. I agree. I was focussing here just on the definitional part because I was responding to James’s comments about the definitions in the two clues in question. In those clues (the ones for SERB and AVENGER) we had agreed that the whole clue provides wordplay.

12. 

    James

    #12 - Sat 15th Apr 23, 18:51

    
    

    I should say that I did not understand the clue for AVENGER until I read the blog. I solved it from crossing letters and the definition, saw German for GER, spent a short while trying to think of a synonym for ‘after’ in the form *AVEN then gave up. I did not think of looking in the definition for wordplay; German has nothing to do with the definition of AVENGER so I took it as a normal clue with definition + wordplay.

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