Financial Times 18,095 by GOZO

19 comments on “Financial Times 18,095 by GOZO”

1. Breezy fun indeed. Definitely at the easy end for me and enjoyable. I ticked IKE, STATIONER, and ELSEWHERE.

   One quibble: I thought PALLIASSE was unfair. As a new word to me (and my spell checker), a cryptic def clue did not seem appropriate.

   Thanks Gozo and Cineraria

2. Nice puzzle. Good blog.
   Thanks Gozo and Cineraria.

   Liked the Cryptic defs in general and SEMINARISTS.

   Agree with Martyn@1 on PALLIASSE.

3. A good puzzle from Gozo which wasn’t too difficult but I agree with Martyn @1 and KVa @2 that PALLIASSE was the LAST STRAW. Still, one more new word into the forgotten words from cryptic crosswords file. I liked the surface and construction of ELSEWHERE.

   Thanks to Gozo and Cineraria

4. I actually knew PALLIASSE and that it was the name for a hay/straw mattress, but I read all sorts of stuff, and it almost certainly came from a historical novel*, so I didn’t find this unfair.

   * I’ve read Walter Scott, but it could as easily be from someone else writing about the mediaeval period.

   Thank you to Cineraria and Gozo.

5. I agree with Shanne@4. PALLIASSE is not a word in common use but by no means obscure.
   Enjoyed this relatively easy puzzle and blog so thanks to Gozo and Cineraria

6. I really enjoyed this from Gozo, DAISY and BRUMMIE being favourites. Like Shanne, I knew PALLIASSE from some classical French novel or other though in French, it is ‘la paillasse’ (la paille being ‘straw’) but I do agree with Martyn that a charade might have been kinder here.
   All the same, it was a swift fun exercise.
   Thanks to Gozo and Cineraria.

7. Whoops, me @6,
   I meant ‘although in French’ not ‘other though’. While I’m in again, I liked LURID too.

8. Like the majority here, I agree with Martyn re 1a. Apart from that, very easy for a Gozo.

9. Very enjoyable, and a nice friendly difficulty level.
   UNWILLING? 14(d), for INTESTATE is a clever CD.
   PALLIASSE, not so likeable, but the crossers got me there.
   I know the word from an ancient music hall joke, in the 60s, where the punchline was ….”did he hurt himself?”……”No- he landed on his palliasse!”
   Maybe it’s becoming archaic, because, like others have posted, my spell checker says NO.
   Great stuff, Gozo & Cineraria

10. Weird about words; I learnt “palliasse” on an orchard while picking fruit as a student. A straw-stuffed matttress. The word has survived, but nothing, or no-one, else.

11. I thought palliasse was fair, having encountered it while reading tales of the Penninsula War, or similar… anyway a count of only 1 obscure word in a cryptic is incredibly benign, I feel..
    Thanks Gozo n Cinereria

12. Thanks Gozo. I wouldn’t call this ‘breezy’ but I got there in the end except for the nho PALLIASSE. (Without wordplay I had no shot at that one.) IN ANY CASE I liked this crossword with my favourites being LAST STRAW, IKE, ELSEWHERE, and BEAGLES. Thanks Cineraria for the blog.

13. Certainly breezy as we breezed through this. We didn’t have any problem with PALLIASSE as a word (we’ve encountered it in novels by C S Forester and Nevil Shute) but thought the clue was hardly cryptic. Plenty to enjoy elsewhere, though; we liked LEESIDE (shouldn’t it be two words, though?) and SHIMMER among others.
    Thanks, Gozo and Cineraria.

14. I got 1a PALLIASSE from the crossers and G&G (guess and google), which is often how we deal with jorums, so no complaint about this one.

    I stupidly failed on 13d, entering SEMINARIANS from the definition without noticing that it was an anagram. That kept me from getting 26a SHIMMER, which was a warm and gentle clue.

    Favourite was 8d ELSEWHERE, for deceptively hiding Before=ERE in the excellent surface.

    Thanks G and C for the clever and good puzzle and blog.

15. I agree with the view that this was easy-peasy except for PALLIASSE, and also the view that that word needed a clue with some wordplay. I hadn’t heard of it; Merriam-Webster’s word finder thankfully had. (I’m decently well read, but there are always new words to learn. That’s part of the fun.) I ain’t gonna set my pale ass down on no palliasse any time soon, though. (With a bit of thought, you might get a good clue out of that somehow, and I did try for a moment or two…)

16. Another SEMINARIANS here, which led me to decide that ‘ASSIMMER‘ was a legit word (one of the fruits of labouring in these vineyards is the power to auto-persuade against ones better judgment (but how else would I have got IOWAN?)).

    Wonderful to see my home town of TABLE TENNIS getting a mention.

    Thanks both – a fine entertainment. (I finished this in the small hours and was delighted to find the blog already posted (thanks Cineraria), but faced with being first to comment I had an attack of stage-fright. So hats off to Martyn@1.)

17. Some how I put yes agreed instead of YES Indeed which still had the right crossings mostly but forced to me to put obsessing on the down. While filled it surely wasn’t knowingly undersolved! Thank you all

18. Greetings from Miami Beach.
    This was my first ever fully solved FT puzzle without help from Reveals, so I imagine it must have been pretty much a breeze for you mavens. Like many I was stuck on PALLIASSE but finally managed to guess it, starting with PALLET as a place to lie on and going on from there.
    I see I need to brush up on English and Irish counties and towns as I was totally baffled by TABLE TENNIS but was saved by the crossings. (Somehow I did know BRUMMIES.)
    Thanks to all!

19. Thanks Gozo and Cineraria

    TJOB@18: Congratulations. May it be the first of many.

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