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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
A blog that takes a look at the highlights from the week’s cryptics, and some of the puzzles coming up this weekend.
Clues of the weekend
Here’s a hidden clue, helpfully indicated in bold, in Goliath’s Saturday cryptic puzzle —
Errors discovered in cathedral apse structure (6)
And here’s an anagrammatic clue —
Desperately eager to consent (5)
Hamilton, the Polymath general knowledge setter, asks, among several other things, if you know the name of “The Greatest Showman” (1,1,6), the name of the first major golf tournament of the year (7) and an archaic word for nourishment or in Scottish law, maintenance (7).
The Sunday puzzle is the monthly Numbers puzzle by Aldhelm, which asks your numerical knowledge of the year of Britain’s general strike, the digital expression of quatorze and how to express DCXI in numbers.
How to solve
Solomon on Friday has this —
Queen of Belize fidgeting with hat (9)
If you ‘fidget’ Belize with hat, you get the name of a queen —
ELIZABETH
Guarded, quiet and shy (9)
This helps if you know the musical expression for quiet — P.
Add that to a word for shy — RESERVED.
And you get a synonym for guarded —
PRESERVED
Jason on Thursday had this double defintion clue —
Produce permit (4)
Both words mean
BEAR
Guy on Wednesday had this down clue —
Actor in theatre turned up late (9)
If you turn up a word for theatre — REP — you get PER.
Add that to a synonym for late — former — and you get another word for actor —
PERFORMER
Is vehicle stuck in middle of puddle for scrap? (7)
The middle letters of puddle are DD.
Stick Is and a vehicle, car, in dd, and you end up with a synonym for scrap —
DISCARD
Word of the week
CIGAR
Goliath had this as a down clue —
Tragic start gone up in smoke (5)
The start of tragic when gone leaves us with ragic, and when written upwards you get —
CIGAR
The OED says the word is from Spain and suggests it is closely linked to the word cigarra, which means “cicada”, naturally suggesting its formation from that word. Another view is that the roll of tobacco leaf was compared to the body of the insect, which is cylindrical with a conical apex.
From the FT Style Guide
TAUTOLOGY
Beware tautologies such as joint co-operation, mutual agreement, new departure, past history, safe haven, close scrutiny, temporary reprieve, human or global pandemic.
To access the FT’s Cryptic, Polymath and FT Weekend crosswords, go to https://www.ft.com/puzzles-games or solve them on the iOS and Android apps.
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