Financial Times 17,536 by Gurney

15 comments on “Financial Times 17,536 by Gurney”

1. Thanks Gurney and Pete

   7dn (GUILT): I took GUT as in “gut feeling”. Chambers 2014 gives us “gut adj (inf) (of feelings or reactions) strong, deeply personal, basic or instinctive”. I think that is near enough.

2. Thanks Pete

   I thought the same as PB@1 about GUILT

   BLINDER is often used in Australia. Not sure about UK. In fact, 1A was one of my favourites. My other favourite was RIGMAROLE for its clever wordplay

   I shared Pete’s difficulty in thinking RAP is RAPE and got similarly stuck. Not having any idea where Bedfordshire is, I was rather hard pressed to name any towns in that county. Although I am glad to say I have heard of Luton (“Luton for the cup!”). I would be interested to hear how many places pronounce SLEIGHT and slight differently

   Sorry, this is getting a bit long. All in all a bit of a challenge, but an enjoyable one. Thanks Pete and Gurney

3. Thanks Gurney for an enjoyable crossword. I liked many of the clues including SNOWFLAKE, TWIST, EYE OPENER, TREBLE, and PROCONSUL. I wondered about “natural” being “gut” in 7d but I can see the connection; however, “subtly” indicating an anagram in 15a seemed far-fetched to me. Thanks Pete for the blog.

4. “Blinder” is a staple of sports reporting argot (“the keeper played a blinder to keep the score down to 1-0”) but perhaps not a word much used in everyday speech.

   A write in if you did know the word, and overall perhaps I’d have preferred a puzzle that was a little trickier for a Sat. I seldom finish an FT Sat in under 20 minutes, but this one took me about five.

5. Thanks for the blog, a neat set of clues, I think Pelham Barton@1 has the right idea for gut.
   Tony@3 for subtly , I tend to agree that nearly anything seems to be an anagram indicator and sometimes hard to justify. So I did look up subtle and found it means devious among many other things. Subtly=deviously does seem fair enough.

6. Another who thought gut feeling for GUILT, and wrote in BLINDER as in my idiolect, not just sporting, devious kids getting something past us also count.

   Thank you to Gurney and Pete Maclean.

7. 12a – PETAL – “A (a) + L (lake) together in PET (much liked)”? – PET+A+L

8. 1a – BLINDER – The “Dublin derby” would be between Bohemians (Bohs/Gypsies/Dublin’s Originals) and Shamrock Rovers (Hoops/Rovers)
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derbies_in_the_League_of_Ireland#Bohemians_vs_Shamrock_Rovers_(Dublin_Derby) – North Dublin v South Dublin
   Latest result: Hoops 3-0 Bohs — Player of the Match: Lee Grace – he must have “played a BLINDER”.

9. This was an enjoyable way to pass time on a recent long haul flight, with everything solved and parsed.
   Many ticks including GRAPEVINE, SUPER-EGO, TREBLE (for the word play), FUTON, IMPROMPTU, LANTERN, RIGMAROLE and EYE-OPENER.

   Thanks to Gurney and Pete

10. Martyn@2 on SLEIGHT – As a child I must have read this word before ever hearing it pronounced and assumed it rhymed with eight. Since then I’ve heard it pronounced, but just to be sure, I checked. The usual suspects give it as a homophone of slight.

11. A BANTAM isn’t a “boxer” without the WEIGHT – which doesn’t rhyme with SLEIGHT.

12. …although Collins has ‘3. boxing short for bantamweight’

13. Thank you, FrankieG. I have no idea how I managed to make such a mess of PETAL!

14. A pleasant Saturday afternoon diversion. We were OK with ‘subtly’ as an anagrind but thought ‘gut’ was a bit of a stretch for ‘natural’. We liked GRAPEVINE, AFORESAID, ELECTRODE and NECTARINE among others.
    Thanks, Gurney and Pete.

15. Thanks, Pete, for the excellent blog and many thanks also to all who commented.

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