Financial Times 18,006 by Zamorca

18 comments on “Financial Times 18,006 by Zamorca”

1. I started in NE corner and progressed steadily anti-clockwise. Mostly very approachable with few mysteries.

   I thought HOT HEAD was clever (albeit surprised to see it as a single word), Other favorites were RECKLESS, TRIFLE had nice surface and I liked LACKEY for its surface, its brevity and because “miss” was not a random female name.

   I needed the internet to find tout and parse STOUT and find BOE & parse OBOE. 14. I was not sure how being drastic was to BEGIN – I did not see the anagram indicator and thank Pete for the guidance. 1ac I thought rushed = ran a bit of a stretch.

   Thanks Zamorca and Pete

2. Re: 12, I don’t understand why the wordplay isn’t “condition on vote”, i.e Flu on X = Flux, rather than as clued.

3. Thanks Zamorca for a real treat. I like smooth surfaces so I was very pleased with this crossword. My top picks were NARROW, FAIRNESS, BUZZARD, TRIFLE, SIDING, and KNOW. Thanks Pete for the blog.

4. BrianB @2: ‘On’ can indicate juxtaposition either before or after a word. The clue for FLUX could read ‘vote on condition’ or ‘condition on vote’; either makes sense, either is acceptable.

5. Shame about 16a …HOm THE AD… — 24a: Just one POTATO is needed… — 21a: a TRIFLE, of late notorious for its nugatoriness.

6. Most enjoyable – if speedy solve – where the remaining letter of the anticipated pangram, X, yielded FLUX (12a) towards the end.
   All clearly and fairly clued though I did have to confirm the existence of Alfie Boe.
   My favourite was 24a for the ‘baked potato’ part of the wordplay.
   Thanks to Zamorca and Pete.

7. Enjoyed this. The top half went in quickly and the bottom took a little longer.

   Liked FLUX, LACKEY, RECKLESS, SNIPE

   Thanks Zamorca and Pete

8. Thanks for the blog , very neat set of clues . I agree with Frankie@5 for UP TO A POINT , needs to be read as – baked potato has ….
   AMBITION , maybe the “Morning session” is the ” AM bit ” of a daily timetable , I am not totally convinced .

9. Thanks Zamorca and Pete

   16ac: There is certainly no need for “whom” to make the surface reading work. Collins 2023 p 2267 tells us “the objective form who is now commonly used, even in formal writing”. ODE 2010 p 2026 says something similar. I remember a joke from decades ago about a telephone call, as follows.
   Caller: To whom am I speaking?
   Answer: You must have a wrong number. Nobody we know says “whom”.

   24ac: I agree with Roz@8 that the apostrophe S needs to be taken as “has” for the cryptic reading.

   5dn: I prefer to separate morning/AM from session/bit. For the latter, “I enjoyed that bit/session of the conference” works for me as a shift in formality of speech, but not in meaning.

   6dn: Here I think the indicator for RAZOR should just be “Hair cutter”, with the apostrophe S meaning “has” in the cryptic reading. The word “instrument” is needed for HARP.

10. 12ac, further to Tony@4 regarding “on”. This is something that crops up from time to time, so, for those who have not seen this before, or are glad to be reminded:

    There are dictionary meanings of “on” which justify it meaning “before” or “after”. However, some editors insist that “X on Y” has to mean YX in an across clue, but XY in a down clue. Aspiring setters would be well advised to stick to that, but solvers should be prepared for “on” to be used either way in any clue.

11. Thanks Pelham Barton @10 for articulating the “on” ambiguity that has always troubled me.

12. Thanks, Tony, for the clarification. I learned something.

13. Is it the ‘detailed’ that gets rid of the t in face fluent? I don’t remember seeing that before.

14. Newbie @13: exactly that.

15. I realise this is a perfect forum for my personal bugbear re 25d: “sot” to mean “boozer”. Sot means fool, as in “besotted”, “made a fool”. The fact that there is a cliché “drunken sot” means that the one thing sot cannot mean is drunken; or there would be no need to specify it as an adjective.

16. 25dn: The following are definitions from the standard dictionaries:
    Collins 2023 p 1895 sot¹ “1 a habitual or chronic drunkard 2 a person stupefied by or as if by drink”;
    Chambers 2016 p 1488 sot¹ “someone stupefied by alcohol; a habitual drunkard; a fool (obs);
    Oxford Dictionary of English 2010 p 1704 sot “a habitual drunkard”;
    Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 2007 p 2925 sot noun “1 A foolish or stupid person; a dolt. Long rare exc. dial.” and “2 A habitual drunkard.” This latter meaning is marked L16, which means it dates from the late 16th century.
    In a living language, words mean what they are used to mean. While dictionaries are not infallible, I would always back any one of the sources quoted against an unsupported comment.

17. Further to Pelham’s observations, it is perhaps worth mentioning that the fact that “drunken sot” is coinage does not imply that a “sot” is not a drunk. There are many instances of this sort of construction, where an adjectival intensifier is used for the purposes of reinforcement. For example, “raving mad”.

18. So far as I have been able to ascertain on the ‘on’ matter: The Times is strict and A on B in an across clue is BA (AB in a down clue). The Independent more or less follows that, but not always. Azed doesn’t mind and allows both AB and BA, surprisingly perhaps for someone who is such a stickler in other matters (for example not allowing ‘extremely handsome’ to indicate h and e and insisting that to clue s you have to say ‘shaver’s head’, not ‘shaver head’, as Zamorca does). I agree with Azed on the AB/BA matter, for what it’s worth.

    Quite a nice crossword from Zamorca with some good clues, but I was ucomfortabl;e with one or two of the definitions, which seemed a bit of a stretch (desperado = hothead, villa = mediterranean-style house, hope = ambition, stout = fearless and maybe others). No doubt people will now produce dictionary evidence that Zamorca was quite justified.

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