Financial Times 17,584 by Zamorca

20 comments on “Financial Times 17,584 by Zamorca”

1. Good old Zamorca and her trusty pangrams! The missing K helped with TALKED which I couldn’t parse. Other than that, the grid was a breeze, and a pleasant one at that. WHIFFY earned a thumbs-up for making me smile, likewise TIP OF THE ICEBERG. My pick of the grid, though, is 4d, SHEARER, which is a fun misdirection … especially when you consider that Alan Shearer’s nickname was Mary Poppins!
   Thanks to Zamorca and Pete.

2. Thanks to Zamorca and Pete.
   Adding to Diane’s faves: IN THE NUDE.

   DAHLIAS (a minor observation)
   S HAD —AIL cutting —->AIL in SHAD.
   SAILHAD reversed.

3. Thanks Zamorca, that was entertaining as usual. I picked JUST MISS, STUCCO, NEVER, MINGLES, SOVEREIGN, INFLUENZA, and SPIRIT as my favourites. Thanks Pete for the blog.

4. I agree with everyone’s positive assessment. This week’s favourites all seem to have nice surfaces: LOGIC, NEVER, FORUM, DAHLIAS and of course WHIFFY

   I have no idea who Alan Shearer is, so I had ERER filled in early and was looking for a female name to complete the rest. It was only the crossers that got me there. I wondered whether watcha was the homophone, but I had never heard it

   Thanks Zamorca for the nice puzzle, and Pete for the great blog

5. Martyn,
   Alan Shearer is the gifted former striker and captain at Newscastle FC who also many caps for England.

6. Sorry, had many caps!

7. And Newcastle FC!

8. Thanks for the blog, I thought that this was very good. IN THE NUDE is a very neat construction. I have heard of SHEARER as a pundit due to Spitting Image , they made a puppet for him but found they had to use his own words in the script because he was impossible to satirise. Far more detail from Diane who seems to have caught my typing syndrome. These comments are the only time I ever type and I make so many mistakes .

9. Thanks Zamorca and Pete

   20dn (WATCHER): I actually wrote A/O in the space for the second letter of this answer. I would always spell the greeting WOTCHER, which makes for an ambiguity not resolved by other answers. Collins 2023 gives us wotcher first and wotcha as an alternative.

10. I enjoyed this and found it easier than Imogen’s puzzle on the same day.

    My favourites included: EQUIPMENT, WHIFFY, IMPLICIT, INFLUENZA, DAHLIAS (which I love and grow many)

    And I also loved TIP OF THE ICEBERG – made me smile.

    Thanks Zamorca and Pete

11. Yes, Roz @8; in my case, that’s what happens when my thoughts race ahead of my typing ability which has deteriorated somewhat.

12. I put in GROWL at 23D but is that really a “bark”?

13. I also wondered about bark= GROWL , do not think they equate for dogs, maybe for a cough.

    Diane@11 I have never typed , I still do not know where the letters are. I write normally a lot including on whiteboards and I make far fewer mistakes than here.

14. KVa, Regarding DAHLIAS, I know I did not include “cutting” in my explanation of the clue but I think my way of explaining it works nonetheless.

15. I too wondered about BARK and GROWL. And I have not been able to convince myself that one overlaps the other.

16. Whether or not BARK and GROWL equate, they are given two-way equivalence in Chambers Thesaurus, so at least Zamorca is off the hook.

17. 23dn (GROWL): I am sure I did not worry about this when solving, but the dictionaries are unanimous that a bark is a sharp sound and a growl is a low sound, with a hint of it being sustained. Even if a sound can fit both definitions, I do not think that helps. After all, a man can be both fat and tall, but that does not mean fat=tall. I am not convinced by any reference to a thesaurus. Maybe Chambers explicitly claims that it gives lists of synonyms, but that was certainly not Roget’s original idea. His idea was that you are looking for a word, and you know that bark is not quite right, so you look up words with similar meanings to bark, and find growl, which conveys the sense you were looking for. That sort of argument says that bark and growl are not precise equivalents.

18. PB @ 17 I don’t disagree with you. My point is that the setter’s use has support, whether one agrees with that or not.

19. Simon @18 thank you for that. I should like to amend my last sentence to read “That sort of argument suggests that bark and growl may not be precise equivalents”. Really, no argument can prove that words are not equivalent, it can only fail to prove that they are equivalent. There is always the possibility that there may be some other meaning in which the words are equivalent.

20. Thanks all

    On Alan SHEARER again: I was aware of him being a footballer, but I had not heard of him as a pundit until my post-puzzle, internet reading. I know what a pundit is, but I do wonder what is required in UK to be regarded as one. Any thoughts?

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