Financial Times 17,401 by Slormgorm

Weekend puzzle from the FT of April 29, 2023

Slormgorm makes his Weekend debut with this puzzle. I found it moderately challenging and give a nod to the &Lit. of 7d (GLUTTON) and the cryptic definition of 18 (RIPCORD).

Welcome and thank you, Slormgorm.

ACROSS
1	KING COBRA	Beast barking wildly bites commanding officer (4,5)
		CO (commanding officer) in (bites) anagram (wildly) of BARKING
6	BOGUS	Counterfeit toilet you sold with a 75% discount (5)
		BOG (toilet) + U (you) + S[old]
9	PORK PIE	Item of food that can come with a Whopper (4,3)
		Double definition with the second referring to the use of ‘pork pie’ to mean a lie in rhyming slang
10	POLLUTE	Cut brought over by music producer for Poison (7)
		LOP (cut) backwards (brought over) + LUTE (music producer)
11	TRAIN	Teach cats and dogs perhaps to chase tail for treat (5)
		[trea]T + RAIN (cats and dogs perhaps)
12	OLD MASTER	Star mixed up with model is a great artist (3,6)
		Anagram (mixed up) of STAR MODEL
14	EWE	Who is now reading this reportedly is a brute (3)
		Homophone (reportedly) of “you” (who is now reading this) with ‘brute’ referring to any animal that is not human
15	SMALL CHANGE	Coppers can smell hag, unfortunately (5,6)
		Anagram (unfortunately) of CAN SMELL HAG
17	SCREWDRIVER	Cocktail or shot on table provided by club (11)
		SCREW (shot on table, i.e. a snooker table) + DRIVER (club)
19	MOD	Might one off rocker flash despotic leader? (3)
		MO (flash) + D[espotic] with the definition referring to Mods and Rockers
20	OPPRESSOR	Work with men to arrest Fleet Street tyrant (9)
		OP (work) + PRESS (Fleet Street) + OR (men, as in ‘other ranks’)
22	EXCEL	Cap in very large size you need to pick up (5)
		Homophone (you need to pick up) of XL (very large size)
24	CHOLERA	Red rash only half covers old and large infection (7)
		O (old) + L (large) together in CHE (red) + RA[sh]
26	MOLLIFY	Soothe one female enthralled by another (7)
		I (one) + F (female) together in (enthralled by) MOLLY (another [female])
27	DUDES	They won’t go off entertaining European chaps (5)
		E (European) in (entertaining) DUDS (they won’t go off)
28	HONEY BEAR	Animal fur from a rabbit delivered by Spooner (5,4)
		Spooner’s “bunny hair”
DOWN
1	KAPUT	A place to go after talking at centre in broken German (5)
		[tal]K[ing] + A (a) + PUT (place)
2	NARRATE	Tell a tale and a Republican judge supports detention essentially (7)
		[dete]N[tion] + A (a) + R (Republican) + RATE (judge)
3	COPING SAW	At front, seasick and woozy after getting on cutter … (6,3)
		COPING (getting on) + S[easick] A[nd] W[oozy]
4	BUENOS AIRES	… no easier travelling in bus in foreign capital (6,5)
		Anagram (travelling) of NO EASIER in (in) BUS (bus)
5	ALP	Peak part of menstrual period (3)
		Hidden word (part of)
6	BALSA	A hunk climbing a tree (5)
		A (a) + SLAB (hunk) all backwards (climbing)
7	GLUTTON	Individual ultimately feeding stomach over 2240 pounds? (7)
		[individua]L in (feeding) GUT (stomach) + TON (2240 pounds) &Lit.
8	SPEARHEAD	A red shape sculpted in lead (9)
		Anagram (sculpted) of A RED SHAPE
13	DELIVERYMAN	Chap driving for Amazon could be Christ, perhaps (11)
		Double definition
14	ENSCONCED	Wrongly concede cases Poles settled comfortably (9)
		NS (poles) in (cases) anagram (wrongly) of CONCEDE
16	HORSEPLAY	Boisterous fun in a stage version of Black Beauty? (9)
		HORSE PLAY (a stage version of Black Beauty?)
18	RIPCORD	One jumper pulled on during a windswept fall? (7)
		Cryptic definition
19	MACHINE	Hit covered by West, a person of tireless efficiency (7)
		CHIN (hit) in (covered by) MAE (West)
21	EPEES	Go into hardware stores ultimately for fencing equipment (5)
		PEE (go) in (into) [hardwar]E [store]S
23	LAYER	Plonk served with slices of egg and roast chicken? (5)
		LAY (plonk) + E[gg] R[oast]
25	ASH	At first, hideous sister annoyed flipping Cinders (3)
		H[ideous] S[ister] A[nnoyed] backwards (flipping)

9 comments on “Financial Times 17,401 by Slormgorm”

For 19ac I got HAD, using IHA (James Iha, Smashing Pumpkins guitarist minus I, plus D) which I managed to convince myself could mean “might” in a phrase like “had I but known”. This left me with 19dn starting with H, which I filled in with HOTWIRE – prolly some UK thing I would never know, right? Wrong. Still I take pride in the contortions that got me there.

MO = flash, CHIN = hit?

A bevy of fun crosswords last weekend – this was the one I did first as a warm-up to Neo’s bumper grid.
I think PORK PIE was my top pick.

Peter @1,
A MO is short for ‘moment’, so ‘I’ll be there in a mo/flash’ and ‘chin’ is slang for hitting someone on the chin.

Thanks to Slormgorm, always a pleasure, and to Pete.

Thanks Slormgorm. I found this on the difficult end of Slormgorm’s spectrum. I missed MOD and never would have understood it anyway. I needed a word finder for EXCEL, RIPCORD, MACHINE, and LAYER; I guessed CHOLERA but could not begin to parse it. I liked the surface for TRAIN. Thanks Pete for explaining things.

Thanks Pete

where was this puzzle? Was it online?

I only had the jumbo and the polymath in my newspaper, so I did the jumbo and not this one

Martyn@4
It was and is available online.

Thanks for the blog, I was puzzled like Martyn , fortunately the IT Office was able to find this and print it for me.
A good set of clues , SCREWDRIVER is the only cocktail I know thanks to Fawlty Towers.
MOD was a clever definition , easy if you know about Mods and Rockers but pretty obscure otherwise. The famous battles in Brighton etc were on Bank Holidays so maybe deliberate.
Quite a few animals around but not really a theme.

I had been looking forward to doing this puzzle the old-fashioned way for a change. with a pen on an actual printed newspaper.
What a disappointment. Does this happen every time there’s a jumbo?

For 24 I thought there may be two halves che(rry) and ra(sh).

Kev, You make an interesting observation. Having half of one word directly and another word indirectly might be considered unconventional but I think it works. I am going to stand with my parsing. Thank you for commenting.

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