Financial Times 14,387 by Wanderer

19 comments on “Financial Times 14,387 by Wanderer”

1. Thanks Jed
   Regarding your queries, 3dn is an &lit because if you drink, say, coffee with cream in it you have it WHITE.

   In 5dn MOR is the abbreviation (briefly) for MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD and it appears in (held in) ‘meMORy’.

2. There seems to be a highway mini theme.

3. Hi Muffyword
   I would say that it is, perhaps, a little more than a mini theme. After all, the symmetrically placed 17,15 and 3,24 are in the 5, as can be 7,27 and 25.

4. Hi Gaufrid,

   Full blown theme it is then!

5. Thanks, Jed.

   I had several ticks for this clever puzzle [CATS [‘discontented’! – I don’t remember seeing that before but I suppose I must have] CONE [27ac] SADDLE-SORE [brilliant!] and VICARS [ 😉 ]- but totally missed the theme. Thanks to Muffyword and Gaufrid for spelling it out.

   Great stuff. Huge thanks to Wanderer – it was a lot of fun.

6. PS

   I don’t know whether your comment re 7 and 27 was a criticism, Jed, but I saw nothing wrong with the fact that they were the same [both clever clues]. The symmetrical placing of them should have led me to the theme. I think Wanderer is commenting on the ubiquity of cones. 😉

7. Thanks Wanderer and Jed.

   10ac and 24dn:
   The anagram fodder for RED CABBAGE requires two As: (GRABBED A C)*E.
   In times past, a trivial spelling mistake was often punished quite harshly in school.
   LINES … Please write “RED CABBAGE” out 10 times for tomorrow!

8. With regard to 10ac, the anagram could be based on GRABBED, CE (bit of celery) and A (the note)

9. Imposition cancelled!

10. Re RED CABBAGE, I the blog is right except that an A (the ‘a’ before ‘bit of celery’) is missing in the explanation.

11. I found this perhaps the easiest of Wanderers so far and missing the theme on top of that, left me with an unsatisfactory feeling.

    But after Muffyword’s and Gaufrid’s comments, I’ll have to change my mind.
    Two CONEs are all right here, although I disagree with Eileen about having two identical solutions in a crossword. I don’t think I have seen it before.

    5d (MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD) is a lot more clever than I initially thought – in fact, I didn’t see the MOR bit.
    Also nice: “Time’s right” for E.

    26ac (“Name of right-back”, NEIL) was almost a copy of a(n even better) Klingsor clue half a year ago: “I’ll be right back” [one should know that Klingsor’s real-life name is Neil].

    Thank you, Jed, for the blog.
    I parsed 11ac (PHLEGM) not as a full anagram (the anagram indicator is in the wrong place for it). So for me: “in (LMPH)*, EG (say)” hence “EG inside (LMPH)*.
    Not that it makes much of a difference.

    Many thanks to Wanderer for some original cluing.
    And I learnt today that ESPRESSO is not just coffee but that it can also be the coffee machine. 🙂

12. Thanks Wanderer for an enjoyable crossword and Jed for the blog.

    I too missed the theme, but now fully accept the justification for two CONEs.

    10ac: I agree with the parsing given explicitly by mike @7 and implicitly by nms @10.

    11ac: I agree with Sil @11 about this one.

    In each of these two clues, keeping E(key) and EG(say) out of the anagram also keeps us away from indirect anagram territory, although the word order is a more compelling reason in the case of 11ac.

13. “Two CONEs are all right here, although I disagree with Eileen about having two identical solutions in a crossword. I don’t think I have seen it before.”

    Sil at #11. The first ever crossword, the centenary of which we’ll all be celebrating on 21 December 2013, had two identical answers.
    10A “a bird” 19D “a pigeon” (4 letters)

14. “Two CONEs are all right here, although I disagree with Eileen about having two identical solutions in a crossword. I don’t think I have seen it before.”

    I didn’t understand this comment: ‘…all right here’ doesn’t tie in with ‘I disagree with Eileen about having two identical solutions in a crossword.’

15. On duplicate solutions, I recall Elgar including “Deja vu” twice in a Telegraph Toughie.

16. Hi Prolixic @15

    That’s lovely! – many thanks.

    I know it’s not quite the same thing but, in Crucible’s latest Genius puzzle, based on ‘well-known pairings’, where the entry in the grid had to be the ‘partner’ of the word indicated by the wordplay of the clue, we had JARNDYCE as the match for JARNDYCE and, in his previous puzzle with the same instructions, FABER and FABER.

17. Re comment #13 above (and I can’t be accused of giving the game away on a current puzzle) the answer that appeared twice in Arthur Wynne’s puzzle – the first ever crossword puzzle – on 21 December 1913 was DOVE.

18. Dear all, I am perhaps not long enough around in Crosswordland (and certainly not 100 years ….. 🙂 ) but I really hadn’t seen a duplication before.

    For me personally, it’s not all right (or at least inelegant) to have two identical solutions in a crossword unless there is a (kind of) theme going on that justifies it.
    As was the case here.
    Perhaps, Eileen, you said a similar thing but I thought you would be happy with duplication anyway (in general) [and if so, that’s where I disagree].
    It looks there are no rules in the book for it, am I right?

    Thanks nmsindy and Prolixic for a short history lesson. 🙂

19. Having never heard of “middle-of-the-road/MOR” as a type of music, I came up with “middle-of-the-mood,” which I justified by the fact that middle of “thE MOod” is EMO, a style of music I was familiar with, and which was also contained in mEMOry. (Obviously, I missed the theme completely.) Oh well. An enjoyable puzzle, and I learned that a 99 is a type of ice cream cone.

Comments are closed.