Financial Times 17,514 by AARDVARK

21 comments on “Financial Times 17,514 by AARDVARK”

1. Thanks, Maskarade and Cineraria!

   PETANQUE
   There seems to be no issue.
   ESPRESSO
   The only quibble could be that ESSO is a fuel company, not a fuel.
   ESSO is an acronym for Standard Oil. Maybe ESSO is a fuel in that sense.
   SALES TAX
   Looks like the UK has VAT (no sales tax). Someone from the UK or familiar
   with their system will confirm…
   AIR-SICKNESS
   Let’s take the def as ‘Complaint of jet-setter’
   and include the ‘say’ in the wordplay.
   yokel=HICK, say ‘AIRS HICK’—>AIRS’ICK. Of course, cape=NESS.
   Northern=countryside???

2. AIR-SICKNESS
   I think your parsing could be correct. ICK may be equivalent to HICK in a Northern dialect.

3. After half an hour I’d solved five, and two of these (including AIR-SICKNESS) I couldn’t understand. Aardvark stays in my “Don’t attempt” list.

4. Agree with GDU – many clues that are either wrong or where the solution does not justify the difficulty. FT editors seem to be letting a lot through

   Thanks to the blogger and setter

5. Thought this was fabulous fun. I agree with KVa re ESPRESSO. I suppose the ‘getting in fuel’ at Esso was suggestive enough for me.
   I admired the corner constructions and spotted them early enough that they would help with the rest of the grid.
   I agree with Cineraria’s parsing of AIRSICKNESS but thought it could be OICK or HICK, but didn’t see the instruction to remove the first letter.
   Anyway, it hardly matters as this was just so entertaining.
   Thanks Aardvark and Cineraria.

6. Re-reading KVa @1, ‘hicks works well with ‘say’ so that the H is effectively removed. Even so, Northern yokel makes me think ‘oick’.
   Yes, in the UK, it’s VAT, now so high I join the tax rebate queues at the airport!
   Interesting that we have ASDA, ESSO, AXA and ACCESS.
   Really liked SIN, ZYGOTE and FLAVOURSOME although for me, luscious is more apt.

7. One last thought, for caffeine addictions, 14AC could be a double definition!

8. Thanks for the blog and all the extras on the grid, I rarely notice these things, I only really care about the clues. I found this very enjoyable with clever wordplay throughout,
   I agree with the blog for the three clues highlighted. For (H)ick we usually have cockney for dropping the H but it also happens in Lancashire and many other places ‘appen.
   ESSO is a company but used to have a lot of UK petrol stations and people would refer to ESSO fuel, also ESSO BLUE was for oil burners and famously advertised.
   PETANQUE seems fine, PE is often called physical jerks.

9. Found this hard but enjoyed slowly but surely getting through it. I didn’t get 28a because I accidentally entered ALEXI instead of ALEXA (it is early morning). Alex(e)i Sayle’s tax 🙂

10. For 14a I had ‘when getting in’ doing double duty. On the one hand it indicates that this is a container clue but on the other Esso is a place one would go ‘when getting in’ fuel.

    I thought this was an amazing puzzle – ingenious.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

11. Has anyone really heard of 8D?

    27A: why is “Z” a bed?

    12A: is this really a word?

    19A: one can be ironic but is “ironised” really a word? I’, not even certain that “ironic” and “sarcastic” have the same meaning.

12. Peter. A z bed is a foldable bed (folds into a z shape, as it were).

13. For ESPRESSO – Remembered ’60s ads that treated ESSO as the fuel, rather than the company – “fill it with esso”
    Tracked one down here: Puffs and Patches – The Yearbook of Covington High School, Covington, Virginia – Volume 41 – 1966…
    https://archive.org/stream/puffspatches1966covi/puffspatches1966covi_djvu.txt
    …in which CLUTTER’S ESSO SERVICENTER advertises: “To make your car go, | Fill it with Esso”
    I think I remember Bobby Moore advertising “3-star Esso Popular” but Google won’t back me up.

14. Peter @ 11 ones of the joys of crosswords is constructing answers from the wordplay and then finding them in Chambers, for Azed it could be half the clues.
    I did know AQUARELLE , a type of watercolour often taught to beginners in painting lessons.
    Z beds fold up very easily into a Z shape, probably got replaced by sofa beds.
    The other two are in Chambers and agree with the definitions.

15. Did this travelling with my daughter and we came here to parse a couple of clues: SALES TAX and to check our parsing of AIR SICKNESS, as we couldn’t see where the ick came from. Well, SALES TAX was the LOI and I was trying to see how it worked when my daughter came here to see, before I’d finished.

    Chewy crossword but it lasted our trip out, and mostly clearly clued.

    Thank you to Cineraria and Aardvark.

16. We needed a wordfinder for POWERFUL – never thought of it as an anagram so we were looking for a flower/river reversed plus something that meant ‘off the wall’. Otherwise it all came together with no real problems.
    An impressive pangram, and as far as we can see without detailed checking it would have been a double pangram but for the single K and W.
    Favourites were DEJA VU, PETANQUE, RILE and EJECT.
    Thanks, Aardvark and Cineraria.

17. Thanks Aardvark for the challenge. I did a lot of guessing in this crossword so the “fun factor” was diminished and my parsing gaps were too many to list. I still found this worthwhile and I enjoyed letter trios in the corners. My favourite clues included DEJA VU, GAZPACHO, and EQUALISE. Thanks Cineraria for the blog.

18. I got more if this than I expected. Must be my hangover allowing for concentrated heads down. Missed the watercolor, didn’t know lush could be flavorsome. Didn’t know about Jeffrey.but loved seeing the zzz and cc sand such reveal themselves. Thank you.

19. Why does Otto mean oil???

20. PC@19: “Otto” is an alternate spelling of “attar,” a “fragrant essential oil.”

21. Thanks Cineraria – another bit of crossword arcana for my collection ?

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