Financial Times 18,101 by BOBCAT

15 comments on “Financial Times 18,101 by BOBCAT”

1. You did much better than me, Cineraria. Thanks for a great blog and congrats on solving it so well

   I struggled a lot for few rewards. I liked ERRATA, and thought 1ac was a good Spoonerism (never thought I would write those words). The rest of the puzzle produced many questions and “eh?”s but few smiles I had no hope with AVOCET and had to reveal that. I have even not heard of the margay

   Thanks Bobcat and Cineraria

2. Thanks Bobcat, that was superb. My top picks were MASTER PLAN (a good Spoonerism is a rare thing), TERMINATOR (liked ‘I end’), LENS, PAINKILLER, DIAL, PLAYGOER (great surface), GARDENIA, and REBECCA (ingenious anagram fodder). Thanks Cineraria for the blog, I needed your help to understand MOTE & STARRY-EYED.

3. Eyebrow did twitch but then vaguely remembered that sur prise (à la over taken) would do the job. Assesment = grand another twitch, despite its recency, and my Lancs rels who say “Aye tha’ wer’ grand”. Synaptic strength needs both — recency and frequency — eg tec for detective is not yet automatic in the aging ginf brain. Always fun though, the synapse shuffle, thx Cineraria and Bobcat. One of these Bobcats I’ll remember the nina, although without the name uptop…

4. Bobcat is something of a nemesis for me, I tend to find several clues which are over-contrived: painfully worked back, from the required grid entry. Perhaps, painstakingly , is a better word.
   For example, LARGESSE ( 20ac) is a bit like hard work.
   No change today, but at least I completed, and, it’s a superb puzzle. The best clue is the one that I struggled with the most, Abe Lincoln, defined as a PLAYGOER! That is pure cryptic setting, at its best, but ouch….my brain hurts.
   Surface of the month.

   “ERRATA”: I think it’s (almost) invariably a printed list of mistakes, provided to the reader of a written document, so I am totally OK with it. I always think….well if you spotted the blinkin’ errors, just correct ’em, don’t give me a list at the end!

   CATS: it’s a lovely USP, but hopefully, one day, the list will get exhausted! Like those blooming storms they insist on naming!

   Bottom line: Great stuff from setter and blogger, my flag is at full mast, hurrah, Bobcat & Cineraria

5. Really enjoyed this: my interest in birds helped land 5d while ‘im indoors’ shares Bobcat’s interest in cats so I knew MARGAY (cute little thing) which was a boon.
   It was an excellent challenge though I needed all the crossers to solve PLAYGOER. Like Martyn, I enjoyed the Spoonerism though it seems few here like them (true, some are smoother than others).
   I also liked STARVE, EXIT STRATEGY and REBECCA.
   Thanks Bobcat and Cineraria (you did a grand job!)

6. This was a superb puzzle and a great blog. I enjoyed it despite it being very tough.Rubiaceae or madder is a large plant family of plants, I had forgotten that GARDENIA was a
   family member, what a clever clue.
   4d reminds me of the original sick joke: « Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? »
   Nho MARGAY

7. Thanks Bobcat and Cineraria

   I thought this was an excellent puzzle, one of Bobcat’s best.

   In 19D I took the definition simply as ‘woman’, with ‘wanton’ as an anagrind indicating that the removed letters of ‘useless’ weren’t in sequence.

8. Yes, excellent work from both Bobcat and Cineraria. All eventually parsed though I wondered about ERRATA for ‘list’; the explanation given by Cineraria and E.N.Boll& works though. I had to look up MARGAY which I suspected had to be our feline Nina.

   Favourite was my last in PLAYGOER – great surface.

   Thanks again to Bobcat and Cineraria

9. More ticks I should have mentioned earlier were DIAL (simply because, for once, I quickly spotted the reverse engineering) and GARDENIA’S ‘successive quarters’ were great too (as SM @6 mentions) because without them I wouldn’t have connected the plants.

10. I always enjoy Bobcat’s puzzles, but this one tops them all. A tough one, but eventually doable with clever, tricky but precise parsing. Terrific surfaces as well.

    Thanks to Cineraria for the blog, especially for the parsing of GARDENIA. I got the answer, but not how it parsed. Congratulations on figuring that one out.

    Thanks to Bobcat for a superb puzzle.

11. Lovely puzzle. Shame about the deja vu with BABY GRAND.

12. 💪💪💪

13. Thanks for PLAYGOER–all I could see was a fairly grim and not very cryptic definition (yes, Lincoln was in fact shot by an actor). AVOCET also went in unparsed. I agree with the quibble about ERRATA–yes, they are a list, but so are a roster and a litany and a recipe and the dictionary.

14. I hadn’t seen the “successive quarters” device before and I thought it brilliant, so 17d GARDENIA was my clue of the day.

    My other ticks were for 4d PLAYGOER for the superb surface, and the delightful spoonerism of 1a MASTERPLAN.

    Thanks, Bobcat for the grand puzzle and Cineraria for the masterful blog.

15. I agree with Petert at 11 – it’s becoming increasingly common to have this déjà vu, but from Saturday to Tuesday is a bit too soon for not only the same solution but pretty much the same clue. Of course it’s not the setters’ fault, but where’s the crossword editor?

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