The FT crossword blog: Fly-by-nights and Boris Johnson offer clues and solutions

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 

Rosa Klebb gets the weekend off to a cracking start with the Whitsun Bank Holiday jumbo puzzle. Here’s a nice couple of anagrams, one at 5 Down —

Reorganise and clear schedule (8)

. . . and another at 26 Down —

Dodgy advert for banking facility (9)

Gozo’s Polymath, the FT’s weekend general knowledge puzzle, tests your arts and culture knowhow. If you know the names of the actor who played Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, the pseudonym of US short-story writer William Sydney Porter and the composer of the Hebrides Overture and the Scottish Symphony, you’re on your way to solving the whole thing.

Aldhelm’s hybrid Weekend puzzle, which mixes straight and cryptic clues, seeks a solutions to this straight clue —

Charitable giving (12)

And a solution to this cryptic —

Swindle gang leader over disagreement (5)

And the monthly news puzzle, set by Neo, on Sunday has this clue -

Chap acting wantonly at Sycamore Gap? (6)

How to solve

Julius on Friday has this container clue, as indicated in bold —

Yorkshireman at home in County Kerry (4)

In this one —

Leaders of Conservatives elected loveable Etonian Boris, a famous name (5)

Leaders point towards taking the lead letters of Conservatives elected loveable Etonian Boris, to give you a word meaning a famous name —

CELEB

Some clues just have double meanings. Xela on Thursday went for —

To leave an airport late perhaps is irresponsible (3-2-5)

Answer: FLY-BY-NIGHT

Here’s a homophone clue in Slormgorm’s Tuesday puzzle —

I wail loudly on radio in The Sweet (3,5)

On radio indicates that Slormgorm is directing you to a homophone. So, I wail loudly can be I SCREAM which, said in a different way, becomes —

ICE CREAM (The Sweet).

Word of the week

TICKETY-BOO

Xela had this clue —

Fine pass boy produced with ball (7-3)

Pass gives us TICKET, boy produced tells us that the word boy is created differently along with o for ball. Hence TICKET + YBOO.

The prase comes from the Hindi, thīk hai, which means all right. The OED says in 1947, Lord Mountbatten, when he was Governor General of India, gave currency to the phrase and it became a Royal Navy term for OK.

From the FT Style Guide

GERRYMANDER

Not jerrymander; it means to divide a voting area so as to give one party an unfair advantage. The word was formed from the name of Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts in 1812, and Salamander, the odd shape of a constituency he created.

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.