Financial Times 17,616 by Pedrock

15 comments on “Financial Times 17,616 by Pedrock”

1. I found this puzzle very hard to complete, with some genuinely strange clues. Maybe I was simply not on Pedrock’s wavelength. I still do not understand in what sense “type” = “blocks” or “ice bucket” = “alcoholic receptacle”?

2. Thanks Pedrock and Pete

   1dn: I was lucky to be, in the 1970s, at a secondary school which had a printing workshop. We mainly printed things like headed notepaper and invitation cards. The design was set up with pieces of type, literally a block of metal for each letter and some for various sized spaces. Virtually obsolete technology now, of course.

   16dn (ICE BUCKET): this is something in which a bottle, usually of a white wine, would be placed to keep it at the low temperature at which it is supposed to be best for drinking.

3. What Cineraria@1 wrote (although I knew ICE BUCKET)

   Thanks Pedrock and Pete

4. Thanks Pedrock. I found this enjoyable and about average difficulty for me. I missed ECTYPE. My top pick was HIT-AND-RUN. Thanks Pete for the blog.

5. Wasn’t sure about “type” = “blocks” but I assumed it was something along the lines of Pelham Barton’s comment. Never heard of a Question Master being referred to as a ‘president’ but I guess he/she presides over the quiz? Can’t say I cared much for this offering.

6. ECTYPE was one our last in – usual solving with my daughter on the tube – and I checked it meant copy. We had a similar printing set up to Pelham Barton at my secondary school, and spent ages building type blocks in formes. I have a physical memory of handling em and en spacers, leads between lines, those tiny letters in the print trays and shaking bits of type out of my clothes after having it stuffed down the back of my neck.

   Thank you to Pete Maclean and Pedrock.

7. Thanks for the blog, quite a few unusual words in this, not totally obscure and fairly clued.
   I think PROPER FRACTION is just about &Lit.

8. Pelham, Thank you for explaining ‘type’ and ‘blocks’ — I should have done so myself. You had your school printing workshop in the 1970s; in the 1960s I had a group visit to the offices of the Glasgow Herald where I learned the terms.

9. [Further to earlier discussion about 1dn, may I mention my nomination for the neatest invention of all time? The inventor was either Tolbert Lanston or his collaborator John Sellers Bancroft, and it was to do with automatic casting and setting of type. This was done by two machines, the first of which produced a roll of paper tape which could be fed into the second machine.
   The key point was that the tape from the first machine was NOT rewound, but fed into the second machine backwards. This meant that the operator of the first machine could put the information at the end of each line as to the correct size of the spaces needed to fit to a straight right margin. This information would be the first thing read by the second machine for that line, and so the appropriate spaces would be inserted automatically into their places. A wonderfully simple idea, but someone had to think of it.
   I remember reading about this at school, and then some twenty years later my memory was confirmed by a display at the (London) Science Museum. It is the only time I have ever felt impelled to go to the information desk at a museum to thank them for a specific exhibition. The Wikipedia page for Tolbert Lanston mentions the two machines, but does not discuss that crucial detail, at least as it reads while I am typing this.]

10. Thanks Pete.
    I found this more difficult than normal but I put that down to an unfamiliar setter. I don’t think I can recall another Saturday Pedrock. I do not do the weekday ones so could have missed the name. Anyway it all fell out in the end.

11. Dnf as ectype evaded ús but really enjoyed the rest of the crossword.
    Thanks Pete and Pedrock

12. Ditto Panthes @11
    18 is a poor clue in my view – a question master is not a president.

13. 18ac: Chambers 2016 gives us the following:
    president¹ n someone who is chosen to preside over the meetings of a society, conference, etc
    question master n someone who presides over a quiz, discussion programme or meeting, and puts the questions to the participants.
    That looks a pretty good match to me.

14. @ Pelham 13

    Thank you for your illustration – but I still don’t like the clue and I don’t think the usage a good match.

    All these opinions are just that – personal judgements

15. Moly@14: Thank you for getting back and confirming that your assertion that a question master is not a president is just a personal judgement on your part.

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