Financial Times 18,017 by SOLOMON

24 comments on “Financial Times 18,017 by SOLOMON”

1. Irritable bowel syndrome is an uncomfortable condition.

2. IBSEN is IBS (uncomfortable condition) + E (initially Endured) + N (Northern). (Crossing with GDU)

   I think the TWITCHER is TWIT (bird-brained fellow) + CHER (the warbler), with clue as definition, for the birdwatcher who travels to see rarities.

   Entertaining puzzle so thank you to Solomon and Turbolegs.

3. Thanks Solomon and Turbolegs
   FOOD CHAIN
   Def: Those eating ordered (who eats whom-ecology).
   CD: a string of sausages?

4. HALIBUT
   I think the ‘slippery’ is part of the def.

5. A few unknown words and stretched synonyms made this more difficult than the clues suggested. I did not get “sound of dub”, so thanks for the steer. RATHA and ENNEAD were jorums. I had no idea a bird called PTARMIGAN exists and while I knew from the clue what letters were in the answer I had no idea of their order. I do get tired of being expected to know the name of every animal and plant on earth. So saying I did like HALIBUT and ERICA. I also liked UPRIGHT.

   A couple of questions: how is spot on & FAITHFUL the same and what is the purpose of ENNEAD & how is it different to “nine”?

   Thanks Solomon and Turbolegs

6. Martyn@5
   FAITHFUL in the sense of exact/true (as in FAITHFUL desciption/reproduction)=Spot on (my understanding)
   https://www.britannica.com/topic/ennead
   There must be other uses. Someone may enlighten us.

7. Thanks for the blog, very nice set of neat clues and some interesting words . Agree with Shanne@2 for TWITCHER which is a very clever clue .
   ACHATES also an asteroid , one of the Jupiter Trojans at L5 , so a loyal companion in that sense .

8. I breezily waltzed through most of this highly enjoyable puzzle although, like others, I struggled with the parsing of IBSEN and was wholly stumped by RATHA and ENNEAD, of which I had never heard

9. I thought this one was relatively straightforward and fun—-thanks Solomon! Thank you to Turbolegs (be thankful you didn’t have to blog the Enigmatist Guardian puzzle).

10. Very smooth with quite a few that tested the grey matter first thing this morning. I agree with KVa that ‘slippery’ is part of the HALIBUT def and that ‘Those eating ordered’ is a rather neat def for FOOD CHAIN, making a double rather than a cryptic def. I was pleased to decipher the very neat CONDIMENT with that lovely use of ‘Co. Mayo?’; CLAUSTROPHOBIA is a delightful cryptic def; SHANGRI-LA conjured up an amusing image and NETBALL, whilst very simply done, uses the ‘party game’ combo beautifully. I did not fully parse TWITCHER, ‘cher’ being very cheeky, but I like the overall construction; TELEGRAPH is a fiendish but clever assembly; UPRIGHT is fun and PLASMA is probably my COTD.

    Thanks Solomon and Turbolegs

11. Well…I am obviously way out of step, reading other posts.
    I did not find this puzzle easy, or fun.
    Several clues seem too contrived, and a bit joyless, even after solving.
    4(d) “Grant carries about picture”: REPRESENT.
    Huh?
    ” Half of Neanderthals”etc., Ho-hum.
    Not for me, this puzzle, but I applaud Turbolegs for the blog. Rather you than me.

12. That was fun. I (wrongly) assumed that for TWITCHER Companions of Honour were also fellows of some order. Nice clue, though Twitchers usually have telescopes, so they don’t have to get that close.

13. 22a EXCEL is a program, not a programme 😐. Otherwise fun.

14. Thoroughly enjoyable and where I managed to correctly parse all the clues except Excellent, where I tried to figure out what TV programme was known as Excel.

    Doh.

    As pointed out by Frankie, Excel is a program.

    The very clever Claustrophobia was my favourite

15. Thanks Solomon. This took me two sittings so I agree with a DD of 9 for this crossword. Lots of good clues as is usual for this setter including IBSEN, EXCELLENT, HUMDRUM, NIGHTCLUB, UPRIGHT, and PLASMA. I revealed 1d & 17a and couldn’t parse REPRESENT & TELEGRAPH. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

16. Fg@13 I’m inclined to agree regarding program but Chambers allows both

    I thought TWITCHER was just TWIT & CHER with “getting close to” just the link?
    Excellent clue either way

    Cheers T&S

17. Enjoyed this. ENNEAD and ACHATES I had to work out as they were new to me.

    Martyn @5 I definitely agree that there are limits to fauna in crosswords, especially fish, but I don’t think ptarmigans are obscure – they are native to the UK and not known by any other name.

18. Bodycheetah@16
    TWITCHER
    I thought ‘getting close to’ was just the link. We can complicate it a bit this way:
    TWIT getting close (its end) to (next to/against) CHER.

19. Nice to see my common name in a puzzle!

20. Thanks Digger@17 My theory is setters get sometimes get stuck in their own world and forget that what is familiar to them (PTARMIGAN, ACHATES, TWITCHER, for example) might be obscure to the majority of FT readers, who live outside the UK and probably have very different backgrounds to them.

21. [Martyn @20: As expected, sometimes GK is Brit-centered e.g. pop culture, rivers, or politicians. However, I believe the ‘odd’ words are often a byproduct of simply trying to fill a grid; setters may be seeing the word for the first time themselves. Cluing such words very clearly is a ‘nice’ gesture but there are no guarantees that that will happen.]

22. Tale of two cities for me. Half breezy and half hard. But I enjoyed working through the challenging parts. Learned new things as well. Thanks Solomon and Turbolegs

23. Martyn – there are a couple of ptarmigans: the ptarmigan / rock ptarmigan, which is found across the arctic regions, so Alaska, Canada, Scotland, Siberia, Norway, Greenland, Iceland, Japan and Mongolia and is the official symbol of the Canadian province of Nunavut, and the Willow Ptarmigan, which is found in similar areas as the Rock Ptarmigan, and is the state bird of Alaska. Yes, they are found in Scotland, but they cover most of the colder areas covered by the FT.

    Twitching is big business in both the UK and Australia, it’s not just a parochial British concept – and British twitchers travel worldwide to add to their tallies.

    Achates was Aeneas’ faithful companion in Virgil’s Aeniad. Now I don’t know where you come from but as a scientist, I have been expected to be aware of great literature, art and music, alongside the sciences, to be seen as educated. I’ve always been annoyed by this as the artistic types can get away with total ignorance of mathematics and science without being seen as philistines. But hey, that’s the way of the world.

24. Thanks Shanne.

    Always good to learn.

    My point still stands. As Tony@21 wrote, setters do employ strange words to fill a grid (much easier than starting again). But I feel setters also sometimes forget they inhabit a very different world to many solvers – regardless of geography.

    I should not have mentioned geography earlier, but seeing you touched on it also I will continue the theme. Apologies if this is of no interest. I have only lived in one country that the ptarmigan visits, and they must have avoided me. I did live in one of the countries you named where twitching is used and admit I never came across the term. It obviously involves ticking birds off a list. Does it also require travel? Finally, I have read (not studied / learned) many of the classics including the Aeneid. I remember the outline of the stories but I am afraid I just do not remember many of the characters’ names.

    Sorry this got so long. Looking forward to your Guardian blog tomorrow.

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