Financial Times 17,554 by Zamorca

29 comments on “Financial Times 17,554 by Zamorca”

1. This Zamorca was more of a workout than I’d anticipated (mostly due to parsing) and so, a good challenge this weekend, with, of course, the safety net of a pangram.

   Liked GONDOLIER.

   I had the same issues as Pete re BE QUIET, there seeming to be one E too many, likewise MEAT-FREE.

   Thanks to Zamorca and Pete, especially for explaining TENACITY and VEHEMENT (again, like Pete, I wondered at URGENT cluing VEHEMENT but it was the most likely answer and it did check out in online dictionaries).

2. Thanks, Zamorca and Pete Maclean!

   BE QUIET
   worker caught=homophone of BEE=BE, QUIT, injecting E (I guess we should read it as injecting E into QUIT).

   THEIR
   Does ‘belongs to them’ define ‘their’ all right? Was thinking of ‘what belongs to them’ but that would be ‘theirs’.

3. MEAT-FREE
   a quarter=E (4 directions are 4 quarters)

4. Reading though without my notes, I am pretty sure I parsed MEAT FREE the same way as you, with E being “a quarter” meaning east. I will come back later when I have access to my notes (loud groan from the audience)

5. Quarter (Collins)
   any of four main points of the compass

6. Thanks Zamorca, that was fun. I had the same parsing questions as Pete but KVa cleared those up. I liked NOTICEBOARD, KITCHENETTE, and TENACITY among other clues. Thanks Pete for the blog.
   [For some reason I had coined a clue on my copy of this crossword: Face backwards on a teetering point? That’s daring! (8)

7. Thanks Zamorca and Pete

   16dn (VEHEMENT): Chambers 2016 gives us “urgent adj earnest, persistent; pressing; calling for immediate attention.” The last meaning is the one that springs most readily to mind, but the earlier definitions map well on to “vehement”, and fit to the root urge.

8. KVa @3 got in with the same comment as me while I was typing and sandwiched me @5. Apologies for the repetition @4.

   It was nice to have crossword that was challenging in places but did not rely on remote words. Pointless was the only reference I did not know. I had ticks against NUMEROUS, YOBS and NAY for their surfaces. I shared the favourites with those above and enjoyed the crossword generally.

   Thanks Pete for the great blog as always and thanks Zamorca for an enjoyable mental workout

9. Thanks for clearing those questions up, KVa.

10. As a music teacher, I always spelt it UKELELE, and only after my retirement was I horrified to discover the error of my ways. Racked with guilt, should I have attempted to contact the many thousands of my former pupils and apologise? (I didn’t.)

    But I’ve been bold enough to point it out when the misspelling has appeared in various crosswords, and to journalists, who have usually been grateful, and swift to correct it online. (They usually blame the sub-editor, or whoever did the headline.)

    Yes, UKELELE does now appear as an alternative in many dictionaries, but only because, partly thanks to me, the error has become more common. Yesterday’s errors are today’s correct usage. That’s how the language evolves. So I don’t have a leg to stand on. But I still reserve the right to “tut tut”. 🙂

11. 😀

12. Thanks for the blog, very enjoyable puzzle. I liked the use of parameters for UNEARTH , and the “Stick up ” in TENACITY.
    For AGILELY I cannot find L=long in Chambers93 and I cannot think of a common usage.

13. [ Tony@6. very neat clue , a word I love, but I did have to check your definition. }

14. Thanks GDU@10 for the nice story. I bet that your misspelt UKELELE was lined up for the next edition of Chambers within 5 minutes of you writing it on the board.

15. 1a – NOTICEBOARD – In the parse “to” is doing double duty – the anagrind should be just “rent”

16. 1ac (NOTICEBOARD) I agree with Frankie@15, with “rent” as the past participle of “rend”.

    20ac (UKELELE) Chambers 2016 gives “ukelele a common spelling of ukulele” and does not give the alternative spelling under the headword ukulele itself. That seems to me to be getting the job of a dictionary exactly right.

    5dn (AGILELY) Following Roz@12, I could not find L=long in Chambers 2016 either. I found LI for Long Island: I know some people are happy with taking a single letter out of an abbreviation, but to me that is almost as bad as the unsignalled splitting of a clue word.

17. I liked the !rish sentiment expressed in 27a THEIR.

18. 27ac: It occurs to me that possibly Zamorca originally wrote “is belonging to them” and something went wrong in the editing process. “Belonging to them” would be a reasonable definition with “is” as a fair link word.

19. Thanks zamorca and Pete

    Ref L = LONG, it’a a standard abbreviation for mens’ trouser leg length – L, R, S.

20. [Roz @13: I checked the definition as well before I posted it.]

21. Agree with Simon S @19. L is used as both long and large.

22. [Roz @13: I forgot to say thanks!]

23. [ Is it late enough now to ask Tony or Roz to provide the answer – or at least an obvious hint – to Tony’s clue @6? ]

24. I would like to support Cellomaniac’s request. Another possible way of helping might be to imagine as we would be if solving a crossword and give us perhaps two letters of the solution that we might have got from other clues.]

25. [Cellomaniac @23: A word meaning “face” in reverse followed by an anagram of “point”. The definition is “daring” .]

26. [Tony@25: Thanks. I got it like a shot from that.]

27. [ I’ll add my thanks to PB’s. A very good clue, thanks for sharing it, Tony. ]

28. [Cellomaniac @28: Thanks for the positive feedback.]

29. Further to earlier discussion, ODE 2010 gives us, under L² abbreviation “large (as a clothes size)” but not long. Chambers 2016 gives neither. Collins, anyone?

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