This puzzle was originally published Friday, April 3, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph
Introduction
Today's puzzle was definitely on the easy side and I finished in probably what is my best time ever (although nothing to brag about by British standards). I was therefore a bit surprised to see that Big Dave gave it three stars for degree of difficulty. A couple of clues did contain some "false leads" but they did not distract me for too long.
Today's Glossary
Some possibly unfamiliar abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions used in today's puzzle
blow - Brit. exclamation expressing annoyance
CH - abbrev. Companion of Honour: a British title
Devonshire - a county in England, apparently more properly called Devon
h - abbrev. henry: the unit of inductance in the SI system of measurement
hackle - a comb for flax or hemp (noun, defn. 4)
TA - abbrev. Territorial Army: a volunteer force in the UK providing backup to the regular army
Today's Links
I found no questions on AnswerBank discussing today's puzzle.
Libellule's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 25893].
I would point out to Libellule, that should The Princess Royal happen to read his review of 16d, she might be tempted to quote Anne Shirley's line in Anne of Green Gables, "It's Anne with an 'e'".
Commentary on Today's Puzzle
20ac Healthy men nose around riverside town (6-2-6)
From the checking letters and the reference to "riverside", I quickly suspected that the solution might be of the form "...-on-Thames". However, I also suspected (erroneously) that "nose around" might be a direction to "reverse nose", which would thus produce a solution like "...es-on-Thames". Luckily, I didn't spend too much time down this blind alley.
28ac Drunk had somehow bumped into rodent in unruly residence (8)
There are several "false leads" in this clue to potentially lead one astray. For instance, "unruly" might be an anagram indicator, in which case "rodent in unruly residence" might be RAT in an anagram of HOUSE. Or perhaps "somehow" could be an anagram indicator. I suppose even "bumped" might be an anagram indicator. But none of these possibilities happens to be correct. As it turns out, "unruly residence" constitutes the definition part of the clue and "somehow bumped into" is a rather verbose containership indicator. In fact, there is an anagram indicator in the clue, and it is "drunk".
2d Instrument Spike brought into group (6)
If you are mulling over names like Spike Jones, Spike Milligan or Spike Lee, you are on the wrong track. Think "spike" without the upper case start.
Signing off for today - Falcon
Toughie 3255
17 hours ago
Falcon
ReplyDeleteI checked my solving time on the website, and it barely warrants 1 star, so I agree with you.
In mitigation, in the early days of the blog I used to set up a stub entry for the blogger to extend, and that will have had two lots of 3 stars, which would have remained as such if unmodified.