Financial Times 15122 by GAFF

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A themed offering for Christmas from Gaff.

Once you get a couple of theme clues in, this puzzle falls into place quite quickly.

All of 13ac/18ac appear in the puzzle, either as a solution, or as part of a solution, although one of them (9ac) seems to get his tail clipped.

Some of the clues are excellent (2dn and 24 ac are my favourites), but I could not parse 22dn, and I have minor quibbles with 15ac and 1dn.

Merry Christmas everybody, especially the setters and my fellow bloggers!

Across
1 CUPID’S DARTS
Flights of fancy produced by custard dips (6,5)

*(custard dips)
7 AID
No leader gave money for assistance (3)

(p)AID
9 BLITZ
Offensive ostentation starts anew (5)

(g/B)LITZ
10 ENDORPHIN
Object to alternative level of acid in painkiller (9)

END + OR + PH + IN
11 CRAZY FOOL
Daredevil’s car floozy wrecked (5,4)

*(car floozy)
12 PARSE
Spare criminal and reduce sentence (5)

*(spare)
13 THEREIN
Inside that’s eerie, oddly fine outside (7)

E(e)R(i)E in THIN
15 HEEL
The elevated part of a shoe (4)

Hidden in “tHE ELevated”

“part” seems to be doing double duty here, as the hidden word indicator and as part of the definition?
18 DEER
Does grass come back? (4)

<=REED

“Does” as in female deer.
20 PAPRIKA
Spice Island with new capital Kerala borders (7)

(c/P)APRI + K(eral)A
23 OVARY
Madame loses her head for egg producer (5)

(b) OVARY

Madame Bovary is my favourite French novel.
24 DRAG QUEEN
Trail Elizabeth for TV (4,5)

DRAG + QUEEN (Elizabeth)

TV is short for tranvestite.
26 ECCENTRIC
Odd to be focussed on Europe (9)

EC CENTRIC
27 OLIVE
Fruit in mid-October, as it happens (5)

(oc)O(ber) + LIVE
28 OAR
Paddle into no-go area (3)

Hidden in no-gO ARea
29 HABERDASHER
She suits her beard – has style (11)

*(her beard has)
Down
1 CUBICITY
Split perhaps under young eye reportedly causes resemblance to die (8)

CUB + I + CITY

“eye reportedly” – technically that gives you “I”, but for me, this is a bit clumsy.

Split is the second largest city in Croatia.
2 PRIVATES
Soldiers that should not be paraded (8)

Nice one!
3 DIZZY
Reeling from effect of sleeping during home improvement (5)

D.I. (ZZ) Y
4 DIE DOWN
Passed on hold with ease (3,4)

DIED + OWN
5 RUDOLPH
13, 18’s leading light (7)

Cryptic definition
6 SCRAP HEAP
Dump spare chap cruelly (5,4)

*(spare chap)
7 ASHORE
Position of hands after crossing? (6)

Cryptic definition.

If I’ve got this right, I think the setter wants us to imagine deckhands on shore leave after a trip across an ocean?
8 DONNER
Thunder in Europe heard before Summer (6)

Homophone of Donna (Summer)

And, as well as beong one of Santa’s reindeer, Donner is the German word for thunder.
14 EVERY INCH
Completely exquisite first light over island (5,4)

E(xquisite) + VERY + INCH

VERY relates to very flares, named after their inventor, which are used by vessels in distress.
16 VIXENISH
Dog-like catty (8)

Double definition
17 RAINWEAR
Mac maybe could lessen choice for Spooner (8)

Spooner would have meant WANE RARE
19 RED CRAB
Nipper rose to complain (3,4)

RED + CRAB
20 PRANCER
Springer CPR near useless (7)

*(cpr near)
21 COME TO
Recover body with tail at Job Centre (4,2)

COMET + (j)O(b)
22 DANCER
Leader on the floor, maybe, with notes (6)

This has to be DANCER, as the only reindeer not mentioned elsewhere, and I can see “on the floor” as referring to dancing, but beyond that, I’m stumped?
25 QUOTA
Status band of volunteers share (5)

(Status) QUO + T.A.

Don’t like “Status” as an indicator of QUO, as they are not synonymous.
*anagram

16 comments on “Financial Times 15122 by GAFF”

  1. Thank you loonapick. Re 22d, I can only think that the notes refer to the music needed for dancing (a bit weak, dare I say?). Thanks for your good wishes, same to you.

    All in all a fun, seasonal puzzle; many thanks to GAFF. Christmas greetings to all.

  3. Thanks loonapick
    “… although one of them (9ac) seems to get his tail clipped.”

    No, he just runs through into 10ac.

    I read 15ac as an &lit which avoids any double duty.

    I parsed 22dn as a double/cryptic def. with the first being simply ‘leader’ (Dasher and Dancer were the two leading reindeer) with the remainder, ‘on the floor, maybe, with notes’ being a cryptic indicator for DANCER.

    For anyone puzzled by the ‘including 27’ in the preamble, as I was until I used Google, there was a 1999 CGI animated Christmas television special titled ‘Olive, the Other Reindeer’.

  4. Thanks, loonapick.

    I thought this was quite delightful, with lots of smiles and ahas as THEREIN DEER [clever] steadily revealed themselves, especially DASHER and BLITZEN – and I liked DONNER, too.

    I hadn’t heard of the other reindeer, either, so that was a nice touch – and good to see Rudolph get a look-in.

    Of the non-themed clues, favourites were PARSE, PAPRIKA and OVARY.

    Many thanks to Gaff and a very Happy Christmas to all. 🙂

  8. Thanks all for the comments.

    As I solved online, I didn’t see the preamble, but on a day when Christmas prep takes a certain amount of attention, I may have picked up on Blitzen’s tail, and maybe even Olive.

    Again, thanks to Gaff, and I hope Santa’s reindeer bring you all you want for 2016.

  10. Well it’s now Christmas Day and we have just finished the puzzle. It’s funny what you learn from doing crosswords – Olive the Other Reindeer for one and mondegreen for another.

    Thanks Gaff for the amusement during the adverts while watching Casino Royale!

    Thanks loonapick for the blog – hope Santa’s reindeer bring you what you want.

  11. Thanks Gaff and loonapick

    Lovely puzzle just before Christmas, which I ended up doing in the small hours of Christmas Day when I couldn’t get back to sleep. Found that it didn’t really fall into place easily, even after getting the theme quite early on – having to prise out the last couple ASHORE and CUBICITY (not made any easier with having written EFEREIN in at 13a and wondering what the word meant by itself and what EFE meant with REINDEER in the rubric!).

    Made the simple complex with 4d by constructing OWN from ON holding W (with) – meant that ‘hold’ would have been doing double duty. Missed the hidden HEEL at 15a and had read it as a weakish cryptic definition – should have known better than that! Had a little trouble accepting ASHORE at 7d, but it couldn’t be anything else.

    Thought that creating a clue having meanings for both cat and dog was clever at 16d.

    With 22d, I read it as a plain cryptic clue where LEADER was a dancer who was taking the lead with their partner and defined as being someone ‘on the floor with notes’ – thought that it was quite a clever cd.

    Had no problems with the rock band, STATUS QUO, being defined as it was.

    Finally, I noticed a lot of clues (four) where the leading letter needed to be either deleted or replaced.

  14. Thanks loonapick for the blog and to Gaff for both the setting and dropping in to clarify OLIVE.

    I solved the 1ac anagram quickly so guessed where this was going – but no less enjoyable for that.

    Laughed out loud at PRIVATES.

    But a VIXEN is surely a bitch rather than a dog!

    Perversely, 13ac was my last one in having pondered the last 3 letters of 1dn for far too long.

    Overall an enjoyable puzzle which would have been even more so had I done it on the day!

  15. Excellent fun.

    Question:
    I can not find any support for (16D) vixen referring to dog. What am I missing ?

    I agree with Bruce at 11 regarding 4D. I think the surface reads better if “with” is part of the wordplay.
    Otherwise “with ease” is a bit off for “Die down”

    A late Merry Christmas. I wonder if anyone will ever see this.

  16. Hi Nregan @15 – Chambers has fox as a wild animal related to the dog so we think that 16d is fine.

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