Financial Times 14,735 by IO

20 comments on “Financial Times 14,735 by IO”

1. I persevered with this but it has done nothing to change my view on themed puzzles. They always seem to be more for the setter’s amusement than mine and are guaranteed to turn lots of people off straight away. Film buffs will have written half the answers in almost from the enumeration – good luck to anyone trying to untangle a couple of them without prior knowledge! Fine for a specialist slot but not for a regular daily puzzle in my view.

2. Thanks PeeDee
   You got a tough one today! Another tribute puzzle from Io, this time to the actress who passed away last month.

   I think the ‘kissing’ in 1ac just means that the A is ‘touching’ the B.

   In 14/10 I had the WRIT TENON and then just assumed that THE WIND was ‘repeated expulsion of consumers’ but I wasn’t too happy with this parsing.

   I can help with 25/30. I think it is HAVE A N (to take a navy) in TOD (own) HAVEN (bay) OT (to westward).

   My take on 21dn was INS (ways in) containing (which … cuts) VENT (to open).

3. A theme which needs investigoogling is not a good thing when one is trying to look like one is working! I did know some of the films but not all of them.

   Well done PeeDee on the blog – not one I’d have wanted to do – and thanks, I think, to IO. My favourite clue was 22d as it made me laugh out loud.

4. An absolute waste of time except for ‘luvvies’.

   The boundaries of cryptic have been overwhelmed by those of general knowledge and as such make IO’s contribution completely unacceptable.

   I will refrain from buying the FT for the remainder of the week in protest

5. Well done, PeeDee, talk about Augean Stables! Unusually, I agree with Rinsp and wagonman. The moment one has to leave Chambers constantly to switch to the keyboard for obscure films, the setter has crossed the boundary. Beautifully complex, Io, for which thanks: but please revert to your norm.

6. Thanks for the blog to a very tricky puzzle – especially for those of us who had never heard of several of the films – they were eventually solvable from the wordplay & crossers but only with quite a lot of effort.

   Gaufrid @ 2 – I think “the wind” is fine in 14/10 – if a baby has “the wind” it needs burping.

7. On the whole, this was not too difficult for an Io. I managed to get all the films from the wordplay even though I was surprised to discover that Lauren Bacall had appeared in Applause and Pret à Porter. I failed on Eltham though, not knowing either Bob Hope’s birthplace or that an elt is a young sow.

8. Agree with all who felt this was a theme taken too far. Thanks to PeeDee for the blog.

   There appears to be a slight error in the explanation of 27/31 – the anagram is of PERPETRATOR, not POTTER.

9. Many thanks IO for a very enjoyable Puzzle & PeeDee for filling in the South East Corner where I was out of my depth.

   I was initially delighted when I uncovered Bacall and Bogart – I have seen all the movies that they made together but, sadly, I knew very little about Lauren’s solo career.

10. With the imminent Ryder Cup, I initially assumed that “player” was going to be a golfer. Took me a while to get on the right track.

11. My feeling is that Io made the down clues considerably easier than one might have expected from this setter; the “gateway” clue was a write-in as was 9ac when you knew what you were looking for; 1ac was then obvious, so although the parsing of some of the across clues was a bit on the tricky side, overall it was not the daunting puzzle it might have been. I did, however, mess up on 24/30 by putting EATHAM without thinking. Thanks PeeDee and Io.

12. Thanks declanor – I’ve no idea what I was thinking about there!

13. I also found the parsing harder to work out than the answers.
    I liked the link-up of 32A & 33A Ministry (of) Health (now the Department of Health).

    Thanks to PeeDee and Io.

14. Not for me, this one. I agree with previous comments about it being a theme too far. Haven’t done the FT for a while and this hasn’t made me want go back to it.

    Nutmeg has been setter of the day for me!

15. This was not just a themed crossword, also a tribute to perhaps the last of the Hollywood greats.
    After IO’s lovely Robin Williams crossword, this was another major achievement.
    At least from a cryptic point of view, as more or less all the across clues were themed including so many multi-worded film titles.
    If IO is indeed a film buff then this was a Labour of Love.

    Unfortunately, as a solver I cracked the theme rightaway.
    And knowing (most of) these films it was actually over in about 20 minutes.
    Never solved an IO so quickly (let alone a Nimrod).

    So, yes, when wagonman says “The boundaries of cryptic have been overwhelmed by those of general knowledge and as such make IO’s contribution completely unacceptable”, there is some truth in that.
    Calling this puzzle “completely unacceptable”, however, is three and a half steps too far for me.

    Now, when I said I solved the puzzle in 20 minutes, that doesn’t mean I understood every single entry.
    Leaving me with the same questions as you PeeDee.
    And I have to admit, I couldn’t be bothered to parse them, feeling the same as when the great Araucaria gave us these long charades for relatively obvious solutions.

    The clues I liked most were the anagram based 27,31 , the ellipsis of 32,33 and the weirdish 29d (AARGH).

    Many thanks to IO for another genuine tribute!

16. Sil et al, perhaps we have reached ‘tribute fatigue’, the same way charities experience donation fatigue.

    Certainly the subjects of the puzzles are worthy of tribute, and if it were only one setter who gave only an occasional tribute then things would be fine. Perhaps it is time for the tributes to be moved back into the main body of the newspaper? That is what the obituary and features columns are there for. Let the crosswords be just crosswords again.

    Tribute puzzles suffer particularly from the write-in and tick-list problems as the solutions are typically from a limited set of proper nouns. For example Dark Passage, Key Largo, The Big Sleep or Written on the Wind wouldn’t be regarded as suitable phrases for crossword solutions in any other context than film titles.

17. shikasta @6 – one can add ‘the’ in front of nearly all nouns and the sentence will still make sense. My query, and I expect Gaufrid’s too, is why should we be required add it on here? We do not normally add ‘the’ or ‘a’ in front of nouns elsewhere in cryptic puzzles.

18. PeeDee @17 – this isn’t a case of just adding ‘the’ with no reason – “I’ve got the wind” is what my grandmother would say if she was burpy – similarly babies are often referred to as having “the wind” – so “the wind” for “repeated expulsions of air by consumers” is perfectly accurate – so Gaufrid’s parsing works fine.

19. Didn’t know there was a standard spelling for “aargh”. (There apparently is. Arrgh was my answer, knowing nothing about AA – in the US we have AAA for cars, AA being Alcoholics Anonymous.)

    Though I would say it expresses disgust or frustration; horror not so much.

20. Thanks Io and PeeDee

    This was hard work for me and needed a lot of computer work to check off the many films that I didn’t know. I’m a little different to the majority here … I don’t mind learning something new … and withheld from looking up Bacall and getting the list from her filmography, instead getting as many letters / words as I could and checking my guess.
    Having said that, I can’t remember needing so much help in parsing the answers fully – 14 -10, 18a, 25 -30 and 21. Also needed help wit ELT as a young sow – not in many of the online dictionaries, including Oxford or Collins.

    For the actual letters in the grid – I did eventually get them all right.

    For 28, I had it as a simple hidden word … EssEX TO Lincolnshire.

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