Financial Times 17,969 by XELA

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A generally breezy challenge from XELA this Friday, save for a few clues here and there.

FF: 9 DD: 8

ACROSS
1 STACK
A large amount of time in bed (5)

T ( time ) in SACK ( bed )
4 CROSSOVER
Displeased about having become popular with different audiences? (9)

CROSS ( displeased ) OVER ( about )
9 SKIFFLE
Runner primarily favouring fairly lively, energetic music (7)

SKI ( runner ) FFLE ( starting letters of "..Favouring Fairly Lively Energetic.."
10 ERRANDS
Slip with small jobs to be done (7)

ERR ( slip ) AND ( with ) S ( small )
11 NUMERO UNO
Italy’s best leader? (6,3)

~cryptic def
12 HALAL
Type of food preparation area in municipal building (5)

A in HALL ( municipal building )
13 NONET
National Trust taking on number of people in solo and group work (5)

ONE ( number of people in solo ) in NT ( National Trust )
15 AUSTRALIA
Odd rituals adopted by group of drivers down under (9)

[ RITUALS ]* in AA ( group of drivers, Automobile Association )
17 EZRA POUND
Poet’s old book and pen (4,5)

EZRA ( old book, of the bible ) POUND ( pen )
20 ERATO
Literary inspiration provided by merry author regularly (5)

alternate letters of "..mErRy AuThOr.."
21 CABAL
One hailed by a Liberal faction (5)

CAB ( one hailed ) A L ( liberal )
23 DIFFERENT
Distinctive fender, fit to be replaced (9)

[ FENDER FIT ]*
25 INTEGER
No. 8, say, brought in by Serie A team (7)

EG ( say ) in INTER ( serie a team ) ; "say" on double duty?
26 AGELONG
A set of nice glasses initially lasting years? (7)

A GEL ( set ) ONG ( starting letters of "..Of Nice Glasses.." )
28 TWENTY-ONE
Game is new and not yet refined (6-3)

[ NEW NOT YET ]*
29 SADDO
Pathetic person ultimately creates drama and unwanted aggro (5)

last ( ultimately ) letters of "..createS dramA anD unwanteD aggrO"
DOWN
1 SIS
Somewhat persistent member of the family (3)

hidden in "..perSIStent.."
2 ASIA MINOR
Oman Air is flying around Anatolia (4,5)

[ OMAN AIR IS ]*
3 KEFIR
PM imbibes fine, healthy drink (5)

KEIR ( pm, starmer ) containing F ( fine )
4 CAESURA
A trick account set up gives pause (7)

reverse of [ A RUSE ( trick ) AC ( account ) ]
5 ONEROUS
Demanding individual runs pop-ups occasionally (7)

ONE ( individual ) R ( runs ) OUS ( pOp-UpS, alternate letters of )
6 SURCHARGE
Excessive load of fish caught in big wave (9)

CHAR ( fish ) in SURGE ( big wave )
7 VENAL
Meat full of nitrogen is easily bought (5)

N ( nitrogen ) in VEAL ( meat )
8 RAS EL HANOUT
Cook as a rule not including hot spice mix (3,2,6)

[ AS A RULE NOT H ( hot ) ]* ; knew what the parse was but not the solution itself
11 NONDESCRIPT
Indistinguishable reproduction of second print (11)

[ SECOND PRINT ]*
14 TOP-FLIGHT
Excellent trip given by revolutionary drug (3-6)

reverse of POT ( drug ) FLIGHT ( trip )
16 LEASEHOLD
Large facility next to hospital with dated rented property (9)

L ( large ) EASE ( facility ) H ( hospital ) OLD ( dated )
18 UNDERGO
Weather is less than good until the halfway point (7)

UNDER ( less than ) GOod ( half of )
19 DEFLATE
Supplied sustenance to overturn recent collapse (7)

reverse of FED ( supplied sustenance ) LATE ( recent )
22 BUTTE
Barrel of water close to one isolated hill (5)

BUTT ( barrel of water ) E ( onE, last letter ) ; learnt this meaning of BUTT today
24 EVENS
Quits competitions after losing heart at the end (5)

EVENtS ( competitions without T , last letter of hearT )
27 GOO
Sentimentality is mostly acceptable (3)

GOOd ( acceptable, mostly )

18 comments on “Financial Times 17,969 by XELA”

  1. Agree with your rating of this puzzle, Turbolegs, which was one of two halves for me. Not overly taxing though I did need the blog for the parsing of AGELONG.
    I knew and liked RAS EL HANOUT, a mainstay of North African food – yum! Also tipped CAESURA, NONDESCRIPT, ASIA MINOR and SKIFFLE.
    STACK held me up for a while as I thought of SLACK first, ‘L’ in ‘SACK’ as a whole clue definition ie SLACK meaning to spend a large amount of time in bed! I did eventually see the error of my ways and enjoyed this rare sighting of Xela overall. Thanks to the setter and Turbolegs both.

  2. INTEGER
    Agree with the blogger’s comment/question.
    NUMERO UNO
    Not sure it was intended this way by the setter:
    Italy’s best—>’best’ in Italian.
    Italy’s leader—>I (the Roman numeral I (number one) or the first person pronoun I. Numero
    Uno could mean either).

    Thanks Xela and Turbolegs.

  3. The reference I consulted said a butt is a barrel of beer or wine. Either way, I’d never heard of it. Nor RAS EL HANOUT, KEFIR as a drink, nor SKIFFLE. Didn’t know what Serie A team meant.

    All else was tickety-boo, thanks Xela & Turbolegs.

  4. Thanks for the blog , very enjoyable puzzle.
    I think No 8 is enough to define integer so no need for double duty .

  5. I enjoyed the puzzle and was particularly proud of myself for getting CAESURA, a word which I was unfamiliar with. Thanks to Xela and Turbolegs!

  6. Nice straightforward end to the week apart from not checking the anagram fodder well enough and bunging in EL in the middle of RAS AL HANOUT which is entirely my bad. I’d agree with GDU that, even though there is such a specifically named thing as a water butt, BUTT probably does not need the ‘of water’ as a butt can contain plenty of other things so the water element was briefly distracting.

    EZRA POUND, CABAL, AGELONG, ASIA MINOR, SURCHARGE, the aforementioned RAS EL HANOUT and UNDERGO were all particularly smooth with the TOP FLIGHT clue for NONDESCRIPT being COTD. What a superb spot for an anagram.

    Thanks Xela and Turbolegs

  7. Parsed 4a CROSSOVER with the definition as everything else after the wordplay: “having become popular with different audiences”.
    [It’s a noun but “Frequently attributive.”]

  8. Is Xela a new addition to the FT roster? Certainly new to me as was RAS EL HANOUT and I struggled with the parsing of AGELONG but otherwise an enjoyable way to start the week. Thanks Xela and Turbolegs

  9. Roz @4. 8 would then be a ‘definition by example’ which is normally indicated by a question mark or a word such as ‘say’.
    Didn’t get RAS EL HANOUT although, with all the crossers, there weren’t too many options to check.
    In the last storm, my water butt got blown over by a particularly nasty gust (it’s not attached to my drainpipe, I hasten to add).

  10. Thanks Xela (except for 8dn) and Turbolegs

    4ac: I think “having become” could be a link phrase, but is better taken into the definition, as suggested by Frankie@7. The word crossover is given as an adjective in Chambers 2016 p 370 and Collins 2023 p 480.

    11ac: Chambers p 1057 gives numero uno as “number one, the most important person or thing, often oneself” as a phrase adopted into English from Italian. ODE 2010 p 1219 has a similar definition. The trouble is that neither of those really helps if we are trying to make the clue into a double definition as “Italy’s best” + “leader?” – they would work for “Italy’s leader best” with or without a question mark or “Best leader in Italy?”.

    25ac: This could be overlap between definition and wordplay (as suggested by Turbolegs) or an unsignalled definition by example (as Hovis@9).

    8dn: Solving on a bus, I could not see any reason to distinguish between RAS EL and RES AL, or between HANOUT or NAHOUT, knowing of the word mahout as an elephant driver. The correct answer can be found hyphenated in Collins (p 1653), but I could not find it in Chambers or ODE.

    Edit: apologies for the typos in the first submitted version of this comment.

  11. I don’t think 25A works. “No.” without more would be a fair definition of the answer, but, as others have said, “No. 8” is not unless “, say” is taken in conjunction with it. If, however, “No. 8, say” is the definition then (a) “No.” is superfluous, and (b) “say” is doing double duty. Seems to be a consequence of giving priority to the surface in clue construction.

  12. I had always assumed that NUMERO UNO came to us from Spanish, seeing how liberally American English borrows from that language. (The US is the world’s fifth-largest Spanish-speaking country, so…) But the dictionaries all say Italian. Wonder how that happened. Anyway, I agree with the commenters who don’t think that clue quite works.

  13. 25ac: Thanks Rudolf@11 for your comment. I should clarify that both possible readings I suggested in comment 10 require devices which run against my personal preferences.

  15. We had to work at this but no real problems, even with RAS EL HANOUT which we hadn’t heard of but worked out as most likely from the anagram and confirmed via Google. We’d not heard of KEFIR, either, but were able to check that in Chambers.
    A minor gripe in that we thought ‘municipal building’ for ‘hall’ was a bit odd – presumably referring to a Town (or City) Hall but there are plenty of halls which aren’t municipal, e.g. Church Halls, bingo halls, etc.
    Nice to see NONET clued without reference to missing Tennis equipment. We also liked CROSSOVER, CAESURA and SKIFFLE, although we wonder how many younger solvers would know the last-named.
    Thanks, Xela and Turbolegs.

  17. Got half. Failed at half. Mostly due to my poor vocabulary. Never heard of SADDO, CAESURA, SKIFFLE, and even AGELONG!

    lots to learn. That’s why I keep enjoying these so much.

    Thanks all.

  18. Here we have more complaints about double duty (in 25a INTEGER). I do not understand the problem. Having a word or phrase doing double duty enhances both the crypticity (my neologism?) and the concision of a clue, both of which are good things and ought to be praised.

    Thanks, Xela, for the fine puzzle, including the excellent use of “say” at 25a, and Turbolegs for the typically good blog.

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