Financial Times 14,795 by GOZO

13 comments on “Financial Times 14,795 by GOZO”

1. Thanks, PeeDee – I agree entirely with your preamble. Something entertainingly different.

   I couldn’t make sense of TRUE TO, either.

   Many thanks to Gozo for the fun: I enjoyed it.

2. An unmitigated delight, first to last. The Guvnor is back in town.

   And judging by 25, quiet recently set – unless, as is perfectly possible, Gozo can tell the future.:-)

3. The instruction on my PDF copy say “Sixteen solutions contain related groups, three reversed, which are ignored in the cryptic part of their clues”. It fails to say that ‘groups’ means ‘groups of letters’ – could be groups of anything – let alone groups of three consecutive letters.
   I think I’m a reasonably good solver, but I’m not psychic!
   This gets a total fail from me.

4. NoGoToGozo @3

   We were all in the same boat, and I don’t think you had to be psychic. I started with the ones where the cryptic part seemed to be complete, which gave me a few crossers. My first themed one in was slab-cake, where the definition was very suggestive, and the ‘quench one’s thirst’ a bit of a giveaway, and then abc jumped out at me, giving a working hypothesis about what was going on.

   If the preamble had said ‘groups of letters’ it would have taken out all the fun.

   But different strokes for different folks I suppose.

5. Two in a row for me!

   My first was fedora but since I couldn’t parse true to I wasn’t sure until I got overstay.

   I thought sturgeon was for appetizer – party leader. Those English towns and people always stump me. Not this time thanks to some wrong cryptic thinking.

   Thanks, everybody.

6. Yes, this was fun – a puzzle more in the style of (an easier type of) Guardian Genius.
   I fully agree with Conrad’s comment @4, however feel for NoGoToGozo one post earlier (despite the silly pseudonym).

   I saw the theme more or less right away.
   After finding 17d, FEDORA and PONDER had to be it, leaving me with FED and PON.
   What’s that? Bingo!

   It didn’t mean that the rest was plain sailing.
   Good crossword and a pity of 22d which seems to be a mistake.

   Also, I am afraid that 4 (and not 3, which is what the preamble tells us) sequences were reversed: the aforementioned FED and PON plus twice UTS (in 15ac and 23ac).

   Thanks to Gozo and PeeDee.

7. Thanks Gozo and PeeDee

   Sil @6: Only three different sequences were reversed. Maybe that was deliberate misdirection by Gozo.

8. Too tired to really give this the effort it deserved. Perhaps on another day but a semi inquisitor cum listener was a step too far for a week day. Well done pd I’d still be solving.

9. Gozo dropped me a line telling me that: there are indeed 4 reversed entries,he had noticed this and hoped it would be corrected in the editing process but the message did not get through; TRUE TO is an error, the clue was originally longer but got truncated somehow when producing the final copy.

10. There was a similarly themed crossword in the Spectator in October.
    For the record three of the solutions were the same ie dabchick, Afghan & calmness and another was almost the same (canopy/canopic).
    Thanks to PeeDee and Gozo

11. NoGoToGozo gives Zo. Which is neat.

12. Re: Ernie at #10

    This is another example of synchronicity in the crossword world. I was compiling this “ABC/DEF” Financial Times puzzle in early October — just at the time when Dumpynose submitted his Spectator puzzle on a similar theme for checking prior to publication. We immediately agreed that “great minds think alike”!

    Gozo
    aka Doc, Crossword Editor of the Spectator

13. Thanks Gozo and PeeDee

    What an interesting puzzle – found the theme with AFGHAN and OVERSTAY. Even though that was early on, it still took a while to get to the end.

    Lots of interesting twists and turns amongst a theme that helped out but didn’t give the game away !

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