The FT crossword blog: get your head around close encounters with the Queen

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 another of those hidden clues featured in Guy’s Saturday cryptic puzzle -

A little licence, as editor became less severe (5)

And here’s one which requires removing one letter from a word that is a synonym for the words highlighted in bold -

Film director in farmer’s boots showing no ego (6)

In Aardvark’s Polymath general knowledge puzzle, everyone knows Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, but what was the name of the album it featured? One for film-buffs - which filmmaker played the scientist Claude Lacombe in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

And in Aldhelm’s hybrid straight-cryptic puzzle, the first letter that is the solution of this straight clue -

Icy (6)

... is the same first letter that is the solution of this cryptic clue -

Forages around, gathering current delicacy (4,4)

How to solve

Bobcat on Monday went with -

Do very well by cutting starters for every customer eating lunch (5)

Starters for every customer eating lunch - the ‘starters’ are the first letters of every customer eating lunch - ECEL

A letter that represents by is x (by, as in times - e.g. seven by five).

X cutting into ECEL gives us -

EXCEL which means do very well.

Jason on Tuesday had -

Unhappy about husband’s ostentation (4)

Unhappy about - a word for unhappy - sad - that is put about, or reversed, becomes das. Husband = H. So DAS + H gives us a word for ostentation -

DASH

A classy anagram from Io on Wednesday -

Proper advices on breaking up (7,6)

Breaking up tells us to jumble the words proper advices to get -

DIVORCE PAPERS

. . . which is all about breaking up.

Word of the week

GARB

Steerpike on Thursday did -

Boast about making clothes (4)

Boast = BRAG. Turn it about and you get -

GARB (clothes).

The OED says ‘garb’ comes from the 16th Century word garbe which meant grace, elegance (1551), and came to mean a curved outline of a work of art. Italian had it as garbo.

From the FT Style Guide

NONPLUSSED

It is best to avoid as it has different meanings on each side of the Atlantic. In British English it means to be “so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react”. However, in the US it means “not disconcerted; unperturbed”.

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.