Financial Times 18,020 by BOBCAT

7 comments on “Financial Times 18,020 by BOBCAT”

1. Thanks Bobcat. I found this on the tougher end of the Bobcat spectrum; I revealed UREA and couldn’t parse ENDLESS and ROOTLET. I did enjoy most of this with VINDALOO, HOT AIR, ARMAGEDDON, DEVELOPMENT, PRETENCE, and KESTREL being favourites. I saw TOMCAT early enough to help with a couple of answers. Thanks Cineraria for the blog.

2. It was indeed difficult in places.

   I most liked HOT AIR for its surface and TYRANNY for its nice misdirection. I add DEVELOPMENT, which I read it as an &lit and they get me every time! I strongly suspected from the start it was an anagram, but it took me several attempts to see the answer.

   Thanks for the parsing of ANDROGEN Cineraria. I parsed it completely differently and had a lot of question marks. I think you nailed it. An interesting construct and I greatly admire you for unravelling it.

   Oh, and my Croatian friend tells me there is no SERBO-CROAT language “but it is good enough for a crossword”.

   Thanks Bobcat and Cineraria

3. It felt like I was solving lot of anagrams so I was surprised to find there were only half a dozen. Certainly some tricky bits in here but the WP was generally clear. Indeed, I was only beaten by two very short ones: I didn’t spot the WP device in UREA which is very neat – mind you, the definition – ‘vital substance’ is not enormously helpful. And DYNE is nho as a measure of force – I might have been able to get byre, hype, type or tyre but that particular combo was never going to come to mind.

   Likes inc EXPOSTULATE, ENDLESS, ARMAGEDDON, TYRANNY, EXPANSE, ANDROGEN (a really clever idea and lovely pdm), DEVELOPMENT, KESTREL and ADROIT. Splendid puzzle – and, for once, I remembered to look for the nina!

   Thanks Bobcat and Cineraria

4. I’m afraid that Bobcat is a member of my Nemeses Club, ( of which there are many ), but this was my best effort yet.
   Completed, but not without some “hit and hopes”.
   On which, big thanks to Cineraria: 3 or 4 of my parsings were distinctly awry.
   [ PASS AS/ UREA/ EMERALD; and I treated “Evolution of” as an anagrind, sort of “double-duty” ].
   A few whylist words too…..DYNE, TRIER, ANDROGEN.
   A grand and enjoyable test, but a bit above my pay-grade.

   Thanks, BC (I’ll get you next time) & Cineraria

5. I didn’t enjoy this. For far too many solutions, solving the parsing came second – after the answer was figured out – either from the definition or from identifying what word fitted.

   Hmmm

6. Thanks for the blog , really clever wordplay in many clues , especially ANDROGEN ( the mansplain hormone ) and DEVELOPMENT .
   DYNE the cgs unit of force but far too small , 100000 dynes = 1 newton . 1N easy to visualise , the weight of an average apple on Earth .

7. Tricky in places but nothing we couldn’t get. UREA was our LOI, and we took a while to get LIE DETECTOR because we misread the enumeration at first as (8,3); fortunately the nina helped to put us right.
   Further to Roz@6, the dyne comes into its own when measuring surface tension – in dynes/cm rather than millinewtons per metre.
   Thanks, Bobcat and Cineraria.

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