Financial Times 17,509 by MONK

20 comments on “Financial Times 17,509 by MONK”

1. Thanks, Monk and Oriel!

   My top faves: TENSON, REDIAL, SEA SLUG and PIGEON.

2. As usual with Monk, I was slowed down by the preponderance of words I’d not heard of before. In this case, TENSON, NEM CON, MAESTOSO & GEO (in 21d). Also, I only knew SPLINE as a curve-drawing aid.

   Recently, Paul clued INTEGER, with ‘cardinal’ as the definition and quite a few people criticised the lack of a ‘?’ at the end of the clue since a cardinal is a non-negative integer, so a definition by example (like, for example, May in 13a). Monk is a retired mathematician so I would have expected the question mark here myself.

3. A real mix of incredibly easy clues (Across: 7, 10, 11, 20, 24) and some really hard ones): Down: 1,5, 17, 21).

   The stand-out has to be 26A: really easy to parse (even without the cross letters) but the answer is a word that I have never some across, not even in crossword land.

   I am not familiar with the phrase around the perimeter, nor the TV show, but it sounds liked I’d enjoy it.

   Thanks Oriel.

4. Didn’t finish — too many words and/or contexts I’d never heard of, viz SPLINE, TENSON, GEO, NEM COM, OONT, AURIFEROUS, GEO and the use of gull & PIGEON. Oh, and I was unfamiliar with FFS, and would prefer to remain so. And French OU was unknown.

   I remember now why I usually avoid Monk’s.

5. Didn’t see the nina, and haven’t heard of it either.

6. Thanks for the blog, a good set of clues and a few new words to learn, I think the ones I did not know were fairly clued. TREASURING was very neat with an extra reference to Turing.
   Peter@3 it is from a Radio 4 show- I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue – still going strong from 1972. It also popularised the famous game , Mornington Crescent.

7. Like Peter @3, I thought there was a real mixture here. I started off well, helped by the two long anagrams, getting half of the across clues straightaway. Then I slowed right down not helped by not having heard of the same words/terms listed by Hovis @2 .

   My favourites were: SEA SLUG, OUTRANKS, ESPRESSO, TREASURING

   Thanks Monk and Oriel

8. nho, so loi – TENNYSON
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tenson
   ‘Noun – tenson (plural tensons) – (poetry) – A form of lyric poem used by troubadours in Provençal in which two voices present different sides of an argument, in alternate stanzas, lines, or groups of lines with identical structure.’
   Sounds like a cross between Homer’s Odyssey & Eminem’s rap battles in 8 Mile. Nice that it’s clued with another poet.

9. As often with Monk had to come here for some parsing. Tx Oriel and Monk. Liked FLUFFS amongst a good crop.

10. Also nho:
    ‘Noun – GEO (plural geos) – (Shetland, Orkney, Caithness) – An inlet, gully or cleft in the face of a cliff.’
    ‘Noun – OONT (plural oonts) – (British India (Anglo-Indian), Australia, colloquial) – A camel. [from 19th c.] ‘
    For SPLINE is it this meaning?…
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spline
    …5 – A rectangular piece that fits grooves like key seats in a hub and a shaft, so that while the one may slide endwise on the other, both must revolve together.’
    I especially liked “It’s just a FLU For Feck’s Sake” – there’s a Covid denier here:
    http://irelandoncraic.com/beekeeper/

11. Clips of One Song to the Tune of Another from I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue are available here. They’re hilarious.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnwb/clips

12. As a simpler explanation of 21d, Chambers gives PIGEON (verb) as “to gull or hoax”.

13. Hard work as expected from Monk with the difficult ones and new words as mentioned by others above. I didn’t do myself any favours by trying to make “megalith” fit for 13a and didn’t know the significance of the peripheral Nina.

    Luckily I had come across OONT before, otherwise I would have had even more trouble getting the crossing PIGEON (which I didn’t know could be a verb – thanks Tom I @12) for ‘Gull’ at 21d.

    Thanks to Oriel and Monk

14. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p00vc1ds
    Barry Cryer sings Psycho Killer to the tune of Old Man River
    Tim Brooke-Taylor sings Girlfriend in a Coma to the tune of The Happy Wanderer
    Tony Hawks sings Uptown Top Ranking to the tune of Scotland the Brave
    Jeremy Hardy sings Music was my First Love to the tune of Mr Tambourine Man.

15. Poor Jeremy really wasn’t a singer.

16. It’s a pretty good impression of BobbyD though.

17. Thanks Monk for the challenge. I rarely complete a Monk crossword and this was no exception but I persevere because there’s often a rewarding nina. I failed with TENSON, NEM CON, and MAESTOSO and I couldn’t parse FLUFFS (FFS) or PIGEON (GEO). The rest made sense with ESPRESSO, ORIGINATES, SEA SLUG, and especially TREASURING being favourites. Thanks Oriel for the blog.

18. I wasn’t sure whether to go with OONT (precise wordplay, but nho) or NEWT (NT going round ew, yew uncovered) Obvious in retrospect which was the right one.

19. “Not an easy one from Monk” – but it was all gettable with a bit of patience and a few checks in Chambers. I managed to work out the nina (although not beoing a regular R4 listener didn’t recognise its origin) which also helped. One minor pedantic point in that ‘nem con’ is not the same as ‘unanimous’, as anyone who has to write minutes should know..
    Thanks, Monk and Oriel

20. Thanks Orielfor blog. Always forget when FT puzzles appear! Only one response required, to allan_c@19, with whom I agree that ‘nem con’ is not the same as ‘unanimous’, which is why the clue used ‘unanimously’, the definition given in the Oxford Dictionary of English. 😉 . That confirmation aside, ‘nem con’ and ‘unanimously’ surely work under the substitution test?

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