Financial Times 18,096 by MONK

15 comments on “Financial Times 18,096 by MONK”

1. Oriel–unless I’m missing something your parsing of 4A doesn’t work,; you only have eight letters. Perhaps the troops should be SAS. I assume “crack” is the anagram indicator and in this case may be going double duty.

2. Thanks Jay – you’re quite right. It should be SAS – Special Air Service. I’ll amend the blog. It is not an anagram however. The indicator is ‘patrolled’ in the sense of ‘going around the perimeter’.

3. {A + STIR (prison) reversed (western)} inside (patrolled by) {T (tense) + SAS (crack troops)}

   Not an easy grid. Nod to Jay@1.

4. Good one, Cineraria. That makes more sense.

5. Oops, and Our Blogger @2

6. I was determined to complete this — and even got such obscurities as OPUNTIA & IYYAR — but before long I realised that there were too many clues requiring UK knowledge. Maybe next time …

7. OPUNTIA , SELFISM and IYYAR were jorums for me today. You should have persisted GDU as you had solved the trickiest clues.

8. Found it tough to an extent. Good puzzle. Liked TSARITSAS, WAR WIDOWS, INVASIONS (a novel WP) and ICICLES.
   Thanks Monk.
   Excellent blog. Thanks Oriel.

9. I enjoyed this – only coming up short on a handful – I could parse IYYAR and ARBROATH SMOKIES but never heard of it/them before. OPUNTIA was beyond me but on the whole this was fun and not too much convoluted thinking required..

10. There were too many unknown words for me to say I enjoyed this puzzle, but I managed to complete, so the clueing must be fair.
    23(d), IYYAR, I thought was IYAR, but since it’s a translation, I suppose both spellings might be valid.
    It’s a tough solve, but the setter used a friendly grid layout, and crossers from the easier clues helped greatly.
    Skilful setting, but satisfying to complete rather than entertaining.
    Thanks, Monk & Oriel

11. Thanks Monk and Oriel

    23dn: Collins 2023 p 1038 has Iyar or Iyyar; Chambers 2016 p 812, ODE 2010 p 931, and SOED 2007 p 1446 have only Iyyar.

12. So a tsarina can be called a TSARITA, and they can come in pairs! And WATT’s an engineer and WYATT’s an architect? Good to know! And IYYAR is the name of a month? ARBROATH SMOKIES is a fish, is it? I see, then INAMORATO is a lover. And weather is sky? I see. Everyone knows OPUNTIA is a cactus, and how did it take me time to come up with SHEERNESS – a port I have travelled through so often? And now I know Sarum pertains to the order of divine service in the Salisbury diocese from 11th c until the reformation, I will slip the word into conversation. I could go on…

    …. I did finish with lots of guessing and googling. Liked WIPED, SPECTATOR, HUE AND CRY

    Thanks Monk and Oriel

13. Thanks Monk for the challenge. I failed with the nho 5d despite having all the crossers & the remaining letters of the anagram fodder. I couldn’t fully parse TRAFALGAR SQUARE, TSARITSAS, or ICICLES. I did enjoy many of the clues including RICOTTA, WYATT, QUOTIDIAN, SPECTATOR, AS A RULE, and WOODS. Thanks Oriel for the blog.

14. James Watt (21a) was one of the Scots who invented the modern world. With the smoked herring at 8d and the teary greeting at 6d, there was a nice Scottish tone to this puzzle. (And Islay with its 10 whisky distilleries is about as IDYLLIC as you can get.)

    My COD (not smoked) was 1d WAR WIDOWS, for the clever subtractions in a great surface.

    Thanks Monk and Oriel for the fun.

15. I got more of this than I deserved to simply by believing what the cluing told me like OPUNTIA, WYATT and IYYAR. But there was enough that I never heard of that it was not going to work like ARBORATH. Ah well. Still had fun! Thank you All.

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