Financial Times 18,111 by Zamorca

19 comments on “Financial Times 18,111 by Zamorca”

1. Thanks Zamorca and Pete

   12ac: I took this as PLAY in OUT (published) + ED (edition).

   15ac: I can see no good reason for having “timeout” as a single word in this clue. I think the surface would read just as well with “time out” as two words, as needed for the wordplay to make sense.

   27ac: I had the final GER as a reversal of RE (on) + G (government).

2. I found about half of this to be quite hard, not sure why.

3. WEATHER-BEATEN was my FOI and one of my favourites.

   Also: JUGGLE, THE PLOUGH, RANG TRUE, RELAXED

   and there were lots more I liked. Knowing it would be a pangram helped me finish in the SW

   Thanks Zamorca and Pete

4. I found this quite approachable throughout. At the appropriate time, I even managed to find GREBE in a remote area of my brain.

   Ticked GATHERING, MACHETES, and NOSEY.

   I could not see the parsing of FIERCE and needed help from the internet to find both LOUGH and THE PLOUGH so that was LOI. No issues otherwise.

   Thanks Zamorca and Pete.

5. RADIO ONE
   A filling/in INDOOR* +E

   NOSEY
   Liked the surface. Reads more like a CAD.

   Thanks Zamorca and Pete.

6. I didn’t have any trouble with this, not that it flew straight in. A pleasing puzzle in front of the golf

   I liked NOSEY, MOOT POINT and maybe BRAZIER because I normally struggle with letter swapping but didn’t here.

   Thanks Zamorca and Pete.

7. Thanks, but why do we have to wait so long for the blogs on Saturday ft puzzles? No prize in evidence for online readers. I’ve forgotten about it between Saturday breakfast and Monday morning!

8. well, at least we only have to wait two days now instead of a week!

9. 4dn: I remember it took me a while to work out how this fits together, but I had it the same way as KVa@5:
   “built indoor” = anagram = RDIOON;
   “area filling” = A to insert in the anagram;
   “end of concourse” = E to add after RADIOON.

10. Thank you for the corrections.

11. WordPress, Thank you very much for posting. Despite having studied first-year Astronomy at university, I had been unaware of the term “asterism”. You have cleared my confusion about Ursa Major and The Plough.

12. Thanks Zamorca for a most enjoyable crossword. My top picks were RELAXED, OCCUPYING, GREBE, WARMS TO, THE PLOUGH, SNEAKER, and GOTTA. I wondered about EXTREME DANGER which doesn’t really have dictionary support despite how familiar the term is. Thanks Pete for the blog.

13. To James@7: in the “Good Old Days” before internet blogs you needed a really good attention span. The wait was a fortnight before the FT published the solution. But at least there was a small chance of a cash prize if you’d sent it in – though I never won!

14. A nice one again from Zamorca, and a pangram as usual.
    Thanks, Z and P.
    PS We agree with James @7.

15. [James P @7 & allan_c @14: I like having the entire weekend to savour the Saturday crossword so I’m satisfied with the current arrangement. I do miss the prize days, however; I was very lucky when I mailed in the first FT prize I ever completed unassisted & my name was among the three winners. My prize was a copy of Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything — I highly recommend this history of the OED.]

16. I finished this Wednesday evening, so I am with Brian L and Tony Santucci. ~In the good old days one had a week to get the answer in to the FT, giving us slower ones time to try for a prize. I never succeeded, but the fact that I had the extra time meant that I kept going at the puzzle. That incentive is no longer there, which is a shame. Those having trouble what the answers were might consider doing and keeping the paper copy?

17. An excellent crossword puzzle. Well done Zamorca.

18. Pete@11, you referred back to WordPress’ post, which appears to have disappeared. Could you tell us what WP said, or explain the difference between a constellation and an asterism in more detail?

    Thanks for the excellent blog, and thanks, Zamora for the pleasingly pangrammatic puzzle.

19. I do not remember exactly what WordPress wrote and I can find no way to restore the comment in question. If I understand correctly an asterism is a cluster of stars that is not a recognized constellation. So asterism is a more general word than constellation and I am surprised that it is not better known.

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