Financial Times 14,477 by Gaff

14 comments on “Financial Times 14,477 by Gaff”

1. The other “alternative anniversaries” are of the deaths of Aldous Huxley and C S Lewis on 22 November 1963 – the same day as Kennedy’s assassination (see the Guardian) and the first episode of Doctor Who (see Google). As you say, today is also the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth.

2. Oops, Doctor Who’s anniversary is actually tomorrow, so the Google doodle has done some time travelling.

3. Today is also the tenth anniversary of the day that England won the Rugby World Cup, with 27,16 scoring a drop goal in the last minute of extra time to clinch the victory over Australia.

4. Thanks for the blog Jed.

   Some tricky ones here alright.

   9ac: Can’t parse this one. I thought it might be an anagram of presi(den)t + germ, where “3 left president” indicates removal of 3 letters, but that leaves one ‘e’ short.
   24ac: You’ve omitted this one – NARNIA, via the straightforward definition 6’s 25 (C S Lewis’s world).
   27,16: Anagram of (w[r]inkly in) in Jo[h]nson. Definition is World Cup(idity) hero, as per Gaufrid @3.
   3dn: Britten composed Peter Grimes which is the overture to (solution coming before) NEW at 10ac.
   5dn: Nous in [h]omily. Not sure about ‘heads’ for removal of first letter though.

5. Further on 5dn: Chambers gives ‘ to remove the head or top from’ for ‘head’ as a verb, so that’s OK.

6. Thanks, Gaff, for a real stinker, and to Jed and friends for lifting most of the fog.

7. Hi Jed

   There is a bit more to 28dn: The notes listed are all NOT E. Very neat.

8. Could we not also interpret 28d as being NOT E since E is not included in this list of notes?

9. 3D composed=written, new opening (overture): B for w. That’s how I parsed it. I’m new at this so I’m not sure. Can’t parse Peter Grimes: I see I’m not alone. I thought 28D was too simplistic; glad to find it “very neat” indeed.

10. @declanor – I automatically saw 28d as a list of notes but NOT E.

11. Just to tidy up what I meant in a few clues:

    9 ac: Work of 3(Britten), ‘dn’ left PRESIdEnT with GERM*(warfare). I know – sneaky, but the reference to 3 doesn’t need the ‘dn’ because there’s no 3 ac, so the ‘dn’ must be doing something else

    24ac : 6’s 25 – straightforward if you have the others, impossible if you don’t!

    27,16: pandean has it right

    3d: capita has the parsing right. Some don’t like using a word for two purposes in a clue, but I thought it worked OK here.

    28d: I’m glad you all found NOT E. I rather liked that, though it would probably have prompted my mother to say “He’s so sharp, he’ll cut himself”

    Thanks as always to Jed and to 225. The feedback we setters get is really valuable.

    If you haven’t seen, there is a bit of a debate about Tramp’s Guardian theme on this site. I set quite a few themed crosswords and the reaction has given me pause for thought. You don’t have to do the crossword to see what the issue is.

12. Thanks for the puzzle Gaff, and for popping by to explain some of your intended parsings.

    The thing about 9ac is that ‘dn’ does not appear in the clue – did it get lost somewhere along the way?

    I find the double duty of ‘composed’ in 3dn a bit unfair myself, which is why I was suggesting an alternative.

    Also: 28dn is certainly neat but not original – I’ve seen it before, although I can’t remember by which setter or where.

13. 9 ac : Pandean. Oh dear! (Or words to that effect). The ‘dn’ was indeed apparently removed by someone along the line who thought they knew better (despite explicit instructions because I was worried that might happen). Ah well! No-one died. Well a few did, but a long time ago!

14. Very clever theme of one of those dates when you always know where you were when you heard the news of an event not dealt with in the theme!

    Having read the blog I am now working through the clues to enlighten myself. I would never have managed to solve.

    Jed – you will see that the faulty 9ac is labelled as 1ac in the blog.

Comments are closed.