FINANCIAL TIMES 17595 by MUDD

22 comments on “FINANCIAL TIMES 17595 by MUDD”

1. TACKED
   TACT (delicacy) homophone

2. FF9 DD8: Oh! Yea!

3. I couldn’t equate “tod” with “fox”. My research seems to indicate it’s a Scottish thing?

   Is a pea a seed? I suppose it is. And I could only find “bike” as a meaning for “scrambler”, rather than “biker”. I thought enlarged/developed was a bit loose.

   My ignorance of Shakespeare put me at a disadvantage for COBWEB, but it was pretty obvious anyway from the intersecting clues.

   I found this enjoyable and the right level of difficulty, and appreciated the lack of ultra-obscurities. Thanks Mudd & Turbolegs.

4. The paper version has puzzle 17594 and the solution to 17595. 1 am really muddled. What next?
   I was also lost by tod or fox.
   Thanks to both .

5. Tod is the name of a fox in a 1967 American novel called the Fox and the Hound by Daniel Mannix, later made into a Disney cartoon.

6. Mr. Tod was the name of the fox in Beatrix Potters’ “The Tale of Mr. Tod”.

7. There’s tod-lowrie to look at as well. GDU is right: all we have (it seems) is ‘C12 origin unknown’.

8. There are several literary examples of foxes called ‘Tod’ but ‘tod’ is a Scottish word meaning ‘fox’ which is, I suspect, the intended reasoning.

9. Todd Sloan (CRS)

10. Parsed ATTRACTIVE as (TART)* + ACTIVE

11. SM@4 That’s because yesterday the paper version had puzzle 17595 and the solution to 17594 by mistake.

12. INCHOATE – ‘Etymology – From Latin incoh?tus (“begun, unfinished”), perfect passive participle of incoh? (“begin”). Signs of dyslexia.

13. I found this difficult, and while I got there, the top left hand corner proved a bit of a trial, not helped by struggling with the very easy Botswana and Sinai. I wondered about Gear, where I also thought of Wear, but only gear made any sort of sense.

    Thank you for explaining Riviera; I have never heard of the artist Rivera. I thought the parsing was something to do with RA.

    Particularly enjoyed Filmgoer and Exacting. Like others, I am never heard of Tod.

    Thanks.

14. Thanks Mudd and Turbolegs

    10ac (ATTRACTIVE): I took this the same way as Frankie@11. I think it works either way, but “on”, especially in an accros clue, more naturally suggests following rather than containing to me.

    23ac: When in Yorkshire I have been known to amuse myself by appearing to say that they do have a word “tact” in Yorkshire, but then adding “you spell it T-A-C-K-E-D and it refers to carpets being tacked to the floor”. I save my skin by following that with “… which is why I feel so at home here”.

    14dn: Collins 2023 gives us “scramble n 14 Brit a motorcycle rally in which competitors race across rough open ground”. I think the intended meaning is related to that, but I did not find anything more explicit in a short search. It felt right at the time I was solving, which I always do unaided for the FT puzzles – I only look things up afterwards to contribute to these discussions.

15. The only place I have encountered ‘fox’ = ‘TOD’ has been crosswords. Infrequently enough that it has not stuck.

    A double dose of Mr Halpern this morning. I think I preferred this incarnation of the two. Very elegantly put together – not often I’d nominate an acrostic as potential COTD but CELEB is right up there. Other favourites include FLAN, EXACTING, FILMGOER, TACKED, YELLOW CARD, DIAGONAL and – a new take on an old chestnut – DETERGENT.

    Thanks Mudd and Turbolegs

16. 16dn: Further to earlier discussion, tod for fox is marked as Scottish in Chambers 2016, but Collins 2023 and SOED 2007 also allow northern English. I did not find this meaning in ODE 2010. As to the rhyming slang, the dictionaries are unanimous that the name is Tod Sloan, so I would have made two errors had I written it down from memory. The majority view is that the rhyme for Sloan appears to be own, but alone is also mentioned. I can imagine someone saying on my tod or on his/her tod, but the form given in the dictionaries is invariably on one’s tod, which seems to require a dramatic change of linguistic gear between the second and third words

17. Tod Sloan was a jockey IIRC.

18. I enjoyed this, although I needed time to get through the SE corner. No obscurities and clear cluing with some lovely Muddy surfaces – what more could you want? Well, selfishly, I did miss the double definitions that are so typical of a Mudd puzzle.

    I am glad to see not even the great Turbolegs could work out the homophone in 23. To boast. I happened to get it this time. But I find those clues difficult in general. Otherwise, I could not parse NEEDIER – EEN is new to me too and I could not find it during the solving – while SCRAMBLERS is still a bit of a mystery despite the discussion above. I felt a couple of clues did not quite work as well as intended, but let’s not get into that at this stage

    It was just nice having Mudd back, and I liked a lot of the clues. Standouts for me were DETERGENT, EXACTING, CELEB and DART, all with great surfaces.

    Thanks Mudd for an enjoyable outing and thanks Turbolegs for your excellent blog

19. Martyn@19: I am sure that Mudd did not intend SCRAMBLER to be as much of a mystery as it has turned out to be. I think when I first read the clue I had –R-M-L–, having failed to solve 27ac from -E– alone, but the R on the end was fairly obvious and then the notion of scrambled eggs came readily to my mind. I think the second definition was not meant to be cryptic at all, but just a definition by example of a scrambler representing one way of preparing eggs. Perhaps I found that part easy because they only time I have eggs for breakfast is when I am staying in a hotel, and I almost always choose scrambled eggs if they are available. Then I got a mental image of a pack of motorcyclists racing across uneven grass from somewhere in the back of my mind, and it all clicked into place. I think the first definition was probably meant to be one who takes part in a scramble, by analogy with “racer” as one who takes part in a race. I was genuinely surprised not to be able to find more explicit confirmation of that definition in any of my dictionaries. Maybe I was just lucky.

20. PB@20 – yes, indeed. SCRAMBLER is not a biggie, as I also intuitively get it. My comment really was an observation, not a complaint.

    Were it an attempt to use a completely obscure word that did not exist, my reaction may have been a little harsher.

21. Thanks Mudd for an enjoyable puzzle with a nice variety of challenging clues and Turbolegs for introducing me to Rivera and reminding me of Cobweb.

22. Thanks Mudd. I got to this late but I’m glad I did it. I missed MASTODON not knowing tod and I guessed TACKED but all else made sense. SCRAMBLER in the motorcycle sense can be seen here: https://www.visordown.com/features/top-10s/fried-poached-or-scrambler-top-10-best-scrambler-motorcycles-2023 SCRAMBLER refers to the bike but it’s not a stretch to call a rider of that type of bike the same thing. Think “cafe racer” — it’s a type of bike and a type of rider as well.
    My favourite clues today were OOPS-A-DAISY, ATTRACTIVE, and FILMGOER. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

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