Financial Times 17,767 GUY

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Guy is the FT setter today.

I found this one on the tougher side. After a couple of passes, I only had a handful of answers in place, but once I saw LA ROCHELLE (the solution, but not the parsing), I was gradually able to fill in the top half. UP TO THE ELBOWS opened up the bottom half a bit and gradually, everything fell into place. I was left with ARC and LA ROCHELLE unparsed, but a bit of reflection over a rushed breakfast did the trick, so I think I've parsed everything to my satisfaction. Would love to say more about the puzzle but I've got to go get ready for another "fun" day at work.

Thanks, Guy.

ACROSS
1 CONSUMMATE
Perfect diplomat tailed couple on motorway (10)

CONSU(l) ("diplomat", tailed) + MATE ("couple") on M (motorway)
6 FELL
Down hill (4)

Double definition
9 MONITOR
Watch Othello, perhaps eating a little egg (7)

MOOR ("Othello, perhaps") eating NIT ("a little egg")
10 ARBITER
Judge wanting limits for another dangerous dog? (7)

[limits for] A(nothe)R + BITER ("dangerous dog?")
12 CENTREFOLD
Coin tosser getting on double-page spread (10)

CENT ("coin") + REF (referee, one who tosses a coin before a match, so "tosser") + OLD ("getting on")
13 ARC
Line filling in part, given incomplete circle? (3)

[filling in] (p)AR(t), given C (an "incomplete circle") and semi &lit.
15 LINNET
Finch apparently caught by fisherman on lake (6)

IN NET ("caught by fishermen") on L (lake)
16 PATIENCE
Irishman that is 25 loses nothing, offering resignation (8)

PAT ("Irishman") + i.e. (id est, "that is") + (o)NCE (the solution to "25" dn, losing O (nothing))
18 NAPOLEON
Usurper in Moscow once, shot on plane back to Pulkovo (8)

*(on plane o) [anag:shot] where O is [back to] (Pulkov)O
20 DERMAL
Skinny marines trade coats (6)

DEAL ("trade") coats RM (Royal "Marines")

Skinny is a cryptic indication of "to do with skin".
23 EMO
Sort of rock music you get from The Monkees (3)

Hidden in [you get from] "thE MOnkees"
24 OVERCHARGE
Fleece not needed by person in custody (10)

OVER ("not needed") by CHARGE ("person in custody")
26 IMPASSE
Map is wrong — two bearings fixed position (7)

*(map is) [anag:wrong] + S + E (south and east, so "two bearings")
27 TENSION
Potential difference in notes corrected (7)

*(in notes) [anag:corrected]

In physics, voltage is also known as potential difference or electric tension.
28 GIRD
Truss, minor female shunned by Liberal Democrat (4)

GIR(l) ("minor female", shunned by L (Liberal)) + D (Democrat)
29 ARTHUR ASHE
Tennis player of skill and colour, transfused with epidemic (6,4)

ART ("skill") + HUE ("colour") transfused with RASH ("epidemic")
DOWN
1 CAMP
Party where you’ll see punters parking (4)

(River) CAM ("where you'll see punters") + P (parking)
2 NANKEEN
Grandmother piercing tough cotton (7)

NAN ("grandmother") + KEEN ("piercing")
3 UP TO THE ELBOWS
In court finger scoundrel and crooks, deeply involved (2,2,3,6)

UP ("in court") + TOT ("finger") + HEEL ("scoundrel") + BOWS ("crooks")

"Tot" and "finger" both mean "indicate a guilty person".
4 MARKET
Try to sell stamp from another planet (6)

MARK ("stamp") + ET (extra-terrestrial, so "from another planet")
5 TRAGOPAN
Asian game in snare, an Asian pheasant (8)

GO ("Asian game") in TRAP ("snare") + AN
7 ENTRAIN
Get into car wet after top comes off tent (7)

RAIN ("wet") after [top comes off] (t)ENT
8 LA ROCHELLE
Port turning pink, suffering a bit of etiolation? (2,8)

[turning] <=CORAL ("pink) + HELL ("suffering") + [a bit of] E(tiolation)

La Rochelle is a French port on the Bay of Biscay.
11 BEDSIDE MANNER
Doctor’s bearing in meds, beer and bubbly (7,6)

*(in meds beer and) [anag:bubbly]
14 BLUNDERING
Clumsy subordinate breaks expensive jewellery (10)

UNDER ("subordinate") breaks BLING ("expensive jewellery")
17 FOREBEAR
Old relative put up with food at Spooner’s (8)

If said by Spooner, BORE ("put up with") + FARE ("food") may have come out as FOREBEAR
19 PROSPER
Expert salespeople given a raise get rich (7)

PRO ("expert") + <=REPS ("slaespeople", given a raise)
21 MUGGINS
Poor judge taking last grand from robberies (7)

Taking last G (grand) from MUGGIN(g)S
22 SCOTCH
Put the lid on booze (6)

Double definition
25 ONCE
When cold, you must wrap up (4)

ONE ("you") must wrap up C (cold)

23 comments on “Financial Times 17,767 GUY”

  2. What a super puzzle. Really, really good with smooth surfaces, some very nice tricks and some lovely semi-&lits. ARC is superb. Sadly, so is ARTHUR ASHE who could not be more precisely described: he was both skilful and of colour and he died of an AIDS-related illness, tragically believed to have originated in an infected blood transfusion. The clue is sad but utterly brilliant.

    As I’ve said before, it feels like a cop out to say ‘too many good clues to single any out’ but that is very much how this puzzle ends up. I could nominate just about any clue as podium-worthy. Splendid job.

    I have one query – curiosity rather than complaint: ET is used in MARKET as a synonym for ‘from another planet’. For that to work, ET needs to be adjectival. Extraterrestrial can be an adjective but can ET? I have only ever associated the abbreviation with the creature and thus with a noun.

    Thanks Guy and loonapick

  3. MARKET
    Copy from Chambers:
    Begin Paste
    ET
    abbrev
    5. Extraterrestrial
    End Paste

    ARTHUR ASHE
    Thanks PostMark. Missed the significance of the surface. Excellent. Sad-yes.

  4. I suspected that the difficulty of the puzzle was in the service of some larger theme, but I do not see anything else going on. I did not know what “tot” had to do with “finger,” so thanks for the clarification.

  5. 12a CENTREFOLD – thought the “Coin” might be doing double duty as the CENT, and the REF “Coin tosser”.
    To obviate that, we have to take the REF as just a “tosser*” – as shouted out by the fans of one side or the other at every decision he makes.
    [*definitions 2 & 3 – not ‘4. (computing) A program that forwards or redirects messages on a bulletin board system.’]
    LOi 6d FELL – Guy missed the chance of a combined ‘lift and separate’ with Playtex — “Downhill”.

  6. 18a NAPOLEON – misdirection about about a different would-be “Usurper” – Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose plane was shot down en route to Pulkovo airport (St Petersburg).

  10. I managed most of this but had bottle instead of scotch in 22 down so missed a few in the bottom right hand corner.

    I didn’t much enjoy. Too many clues where the cryptic bit is pretty much impossible to solve on its own. More of the “too clever by half type clues” for my liking.

    It seems to me that the cryptic bit ought to be solvable alone. I’m still in the foothills of crosswords solving – even after 20 years. But I sense a trend towards clever and clever cryptic bits which are impossible to solve on their own.

    So you work out the answer from the definition and / or crossers and then spend ages trying to figure out the parsing.

    This I don’t enjoy as it leads to far too much time wasting. Some of us have busy lives and can’t spend hours and hours trying to solve these puzzles.

    I also sense the FT puzzle has become more difficult late. Anyone else feel this? I’m not getting the same pleasure that I once did from FT and I feel that the setters are catering for an ever smaller minority of super expert solvers. Congratulations to those of you who are very good at this art, but there are an enormous number of people who would gain more pleasure from puzzles that were just slightly easier. There are specialist puzzles in other journals for the low handicappers.

    So I’m with Martina @9

  11. Thanks Guy and loonapick

    I solved the puzzle this morning in a reasonable time and then read the blog with its first eight comments. I then typed a comment equivalent to the first two sentences of the next paragraph, but decided not to post it. The point raised by Moly@10 in the paragraph starting “I also sense” chimed sufficiently with my own thoughts that I will now make the comment and expand on it.

    6ac: FrankieG@5 refers to the setter having missed a chance. I would rather think that he has deliberately shown respect for the English language and the principles of square dealing in crossword setting by leaving the clue in two words. I have several times previously indicated my dislike for the unsignalled requirement on the solver to split a clue word. More than ten years ago, I switched from the Guardian to the FT precisely to get as far away as possible from that and other devices which I believe stretch the language beyond what should reasonably be expected of the casual solver.

    I reject absolutely the notion that a harder clue is necessarily better, or that becoming more and more like the Guardian is necessarily an improvement. Indeed I think we should welcome the variation in standards between the different newspapers whose crosswords are blogged on this website.

    As to my own solving, I was an avid solver of the Enigmatic Variations series when it started in the Sunday Telegraph, but I long ago decided that it meant spending more time than I wanted to spend on a single crossword. I have other time consuming interests. and I now prefer something gentler.

    The notion that weekday crosswords are set to be solved in the train on the way to work may be out of date, but can we not keep to something of the spirit of that?

  12. I agree with Moly@10 and sympathise with Martina@9. This was too hard to be enjoyable.
    I thought 3dn in particular stretched synonymy beyond breaking point.
    Pelham Barton@11 talks a lot of sense.

  13. Thanks Guy. What seemed impenetrable at first gradually came into focus albeit with some lucky guessing. I thought the clues were extremely well-crafted on the whole. My top picks were PATIENCE, IMPASSE, DERMAL, and MARKET. In ARBITER, I was a bit surprised to see ‘wanting’ as a linking word; I also thought ‘coin’ in CENTREFOLD was doing double duty until FrankieG @5 offered ‘tosser’ as a synonym for ‘ref’. Thanks loonapick for the blog.

  14. An odd solving experience for us – lots of tentative answers pencilled in which all turned out to be correct although we had difficulty parsing them, such as ARC, LA ROCHELLE and UP TO THE ELBOWS. Plenty to like, though, including ARBITER, DERMAL and MUGGINS. LOI was TRAGOPAN after working it out from the wordplay and checking in Chambers.
    Thanks, Guy and loonapick.

  15. What allan_c@14 and Tony S@13 wrote.

    I agree with GordonP@12 that PB@11 talks a lot of sense.

    Thanks Guy and loonapick

  16. Thanks for the blog , really enjoyed this , very neat clues, I like the FT having such variety in standard , the Guardian has given up totally on hard puzzles. IO Wednesday next week if we are lucky.
    TENSION is very old usage but still persists in EHT supplies which provide a very high potential difference ( NEVER Voltage ) .

  17. Question on 17D: is BORE really put up with? Isn’t BORE the thing you have to put up with and BEAR is putting up with the BORE?

  22. I thoroughly enjoyed Pelham Barton’s essay at 11. Harder does not equal better; wit, fun and playfulness are the qualities of great clues and crosswords.

    I do not share his dislike of Playtex or Goddard devices. Going beyond PB’s comments, I also do not understand other people’s objections to indirect anagrams and double duty, unless they make a clue unduly difficult. ‘Unduly’ is of course purely subjective. Double duty in the service of concision can make for an excellent clue.

    “In the train on the way to work” may be outdated for some, but I agree that the sentiment is sound. Now for many it could be “over breakfast on the way to working from home.”

    Thanks, Guy, for prompting Moly’s comment at 10, which prompted PB’s comment at 11. And thanks, loonapick for untangling all the clues I couldn’t get or parse. And finally, thanks PostMark at 2 for highlighting the absolute brilliance of the poignant surface of 29a ARTHUR ASHE, my clue of the day.

  23. I took finger (from american films i think) to mean tot as a small measure of scotch shall we say. Not sure about tot = indicating a guilty person in that i can’t find a reference. Entrain seems to me an odd word but that won’t stop me using it in scabble . . .

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