Financial Times 18,143 by BOBCAT

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BOBCAT kicks off this bank holiday Monday…

A fun puzzle, with an appropriate Nina. A couple of my parsings might be a little flaky.

Thanks BOBCAT!

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1. Hot, fast, cool and keen (in absence of forward couples) (6)
STOLEN

[fa]ST [co]OL and [ke]EN (in absence of forward couples)

4. Key watering hole for the stars? (5,3)
SPACE BAR

Double (cryptic) definition

9. Female protected by Artemis and Hecate coming together (3-3)
SHE-CAT

[artemi]S HECAT[e] (protected by)

10. Track a small group, disregarding The Times summary of the plot (8)
SCENARIO

SCEN[t] A [t]RIO (track a small group, disregarding the Ts (times))

12. Vessel used to be put back to front (4)
EWER

WERE (used to be, moving the back, E, to the front)

13. Terms of reference concerning university (5)
REMIT

RE (concerning) + MIT (university)

14. Prison reporting over escapes (4)
CAGE

C[over]AGE (reporting, OVER escapes)

17. Lieutenant governorship managed without acting operatives eventually (2,3,4,3)
IN THE LONG RUN

(LIEUTENANT GOVERNORSHIP)* (*managed) without (OPERATIVES)* (*acting)

20. Eccentric curate, needing no tips, creates a dressing (7,5)
TARTARE SAUCE

([c]URAT[e] (needing no tips) CREATES A)* (*eccentric)

23. Beastly king misplacing one’s meat (4)
LOIN

LION (beastly king, misplacing I (one))

24. Father beds sinful woman in state of excitement (5)
FEVER

FR (father) beds EVE (sinful woman)

25. Irrational engineer gutted maritime structure (4)
PIER

PI (irrational, transcendental in fact) + E[nginee]R (gutted)

28. One travelling light, better to conserve energy after run (8)
STREAKER

STAKER (better) to conserve (E (energy) after R (run))

29. X recalled crime — something for the courts (6)
TENNIS

TEN (X) + (SIN)< (crime, <recalled)

30. Old president holding over half the answers. Certain? (8)
ABSOLUTE

ABE (old president) holding SOLUT[ions] (answers, over half)

31. Pat’s lacking wheels, though no learner (6)
CARESS

CAR[l]ESS (lacking wheels, no L (learner))

DOWN
1. My sect is badly affecting the whole body (8)
SYSTEMIC

(MY SECT IS)* (*badly)

2. Nice family guy overwhelmed by too much American light entertainment (8)
OPERETTA

PERE (Nice family guy, French) overwhelmed by (OTT (too much) + A (American))

3. Revolutionary national emblem embodies spirit (4)
ELAN

([natio]NAL E[mblem])< (embodies, <revolutionary)

5. Layers of precedence, or the converse? (7,5)
PECKING ORDER

Cryptic definition – layer meaning bird

6. Swish dog, but not fashionable (4)
CANE

CAN[in]E (dog, but not IN (fashionable))

7. Difficulty raised over French water agency (6)
BUREAU

(RUB)< (difficulty, <raised) over EAU (French water)

8. Militant author, at first suppressed, pens circular letter (6)
RIOTER

[w]RITER (author, at first suppressed) pens O (circular)

11. Naked athletes wobble in performance — it’s not cricket! (5,3,4)
BELOW THE BELT

([a]THELETE[s] (naked) WOBBLE)* (*in performance)

15. Music that’s elemental? (5)
METAL

Double (cryptic) definition

16. Maternal character unknown outside the limits of Memphis (5)
MUMSY

(MU (character) + Y (unknown)) outside M[emphi]S (the limits of)

18. We hear car maker’s attracted to Henschel’s prime sites (8)
AUDIENCE

AUDI (car maker) attracted to [h]EN[s]C[h]E[l] (prime sites, 2, 3, 5 and 7)

19. Poles hoarding foreign money — in extreme cases, it’s mania (8)
NEUROSIS

N S (poles) hoarding (EUROS (foreign money) + I[n] (extreme))

21. Fluid plan to cycle around LA succeeded (6)
PLASMA

MAP (plan) to cycle round (LA + S (succeeded))

22. Relations breaking bread with no end of fruit (6)
CITRUS

IT (relations) breaking CRUS[t] (bread, with no end)

26. Drag artist’s top secured by cropped body (4)
HAUL

A[rtist] (top) secured by HUL[l] (body, cropped)

27. Supporters half-heartedly advanced Greek produce (4)
FETA

FE[e]T (producers?, half heartedly) + A (advanced)

14 comments on “Financial Times 18,143 by BOBCAT”

  1. NEUROSIS
    I had
    EURO in N S+IS (in extreme cases it’s —->the first and the last letter of ‘ITS’
    FETA
    supporters=FEET

    Liked PECKING ORDER and BELOW THE BELT.

    Thanks Bobcat and Teacow.

  3. Thanks Bobcat, I enjoyed that despite missing CITRUS & failing to parse CAGE & IN THE LONG RUN. Favourites included SCENARIO, FEVER (liked ‘sinful woman’), PIER, STREAKER, and METAL. It looks like SHE-CAT & CAT WOMAN forced the ‘lion’ to hide out as LOIN. Thanks Teacow for the blog.

  4. For the first time I spotted the cat word, and it actually helped me solve 5dn. Overall the large number of partial-deletion clues made this slow-going and I finished with a couple of partial deletions unparsed. Happily there was only one NHO synonym.

    I liked TARTARE SAUCE, and BUREAU best. On the other hand, I did not think much of ABSOLUTE and SPACE BAR

    Thanks Bobcat and Teacow

  5. I was only able to do about half today, and was completely stumped by the SW corner. I didn’t get SPACE BAR and it has taken me a good ten minutes to work it out, even with the benefit of Teacow’s explanation. I don’t know why Martyn@4 didn’t like it, but as a clue it seems a bit on the silly side to me.

  7. A bit tricky in places; the NE and SW corners held me up for a while, but I got it all in the end.
    thanks, Bobcat and Teacow.

  8. I struggled with this one, and had a few quibbles, but overall a good puzzle.

    I got PIER, but I always dislike PI being clued as “irrational” – pi is an irrational number, but the words are not synonymous at all. You might as well clue APPLE as “red”. Rant over.

    I’m also not sure how STAKER = better?

    On 11dn, I read “wobble” as the anagrind, and just couldn’t get unstuck – I felt really silly when it finally clicked

    I liked FEVER, OPERETTA, and SCENARIO. Thanks Bobcat and Teacow!

  9. clueless american @8 – someone who bets is a better, and as they put up a stake they are also stakers!

    I didn’t find this easy when I did it this morning.

    Thank you to Teacow and Bobcat.

  10. Clueless American, I didn’t get 28, but I was alive to the possibility that “better” might mean “one who bets”. A person who bets stakes money, so he is also a staker.
    I believe in the US (and sometimes in the UK e.g. in legislation) the spelling is the rather unattractive “bettor”. Saves confusion I suppose.

  11. 25ac: Oxford Dictionary of English 2010 p 924 gives irrational as a noun defined as “an irrational number or quantity”. The two lines immediately above that definition include the statement “Examples of irrational numbers are the number pi and the square root of 2.” It actually uses the Greek letter for pi, but I am typing this on my phone and do not know how to get Greek letters into a comment on this device. To me this gives a perfectly good justification for “irrational” as a definition of PI. There really are not that many named irrationals to choose from.

  12. Babbler @10 thanks, that makes sense – I’m definitely used to ‘bettor’

    Pelham Barton @11 – still feels wrong to me, but I can’t argue with the OED, objection retracted!

  13. The space bar on a keyboard is a bar, not a key. That is because it isn’t shaped like a key – it has the shape of a bar.
    If it were a key, it would be called the Space Key.

  14. Bobbie@13: The definition of space bar in ODE 2010 (p 1708) is “a long key on a typewriter or computer keyboard for making a space between words.”

    ODE 2010 is the third edition of the large single volume dictionary first published by the Oxford University Press in 1998 as the New Oxford Dictionary of English. From the second edition, issued in 2003, the word New was dropped from the title. It comes from the same publishers as the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary widely known as the OED.

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