Wednesday, March 2, 2011 (DT 26412)

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26412
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Setter Jay
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26412]
Big Dave's Review Written By Crypticsue
Big Dave's Rating
Difficulty - **	Enjoyment - ****
Falcon's Performance ┌────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐ ███████████████████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ Legend: █ - solved without assistance █ - solved with assistance from puzzle solving tools █ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Big Dave's blog

Introduction

I needed electronic help with three clues today. There seemed to be no particular reason, although a couple of them dealt with British pastimes such as football and fox hunting. However, I was able to decipher much more obscure Briticisms today than what appeared in these clues. It is a mystery sometimes why we encounter a mental block on certain clues - often ones that should not be particularly difficult.

Today's Glossary

Selected abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions appearing in today's puzzle.

[Items marked with an asterisk are from a Cumulative Glossary of entries appearing, since the beginning of this year, in either this blog or its companion blog, the Ottawa Citizen Cryptic Crossword Forum.]

Appearing in Clues:

The meanings listed in this section may reflect how the word is used in the surface reading of the clue. Of course, that meaning may be contributing to the misdirection that the setter is attempting to create.

flat² - noun chiefly British a set of rooms forming an individual residence, typically on one floor and within a larger building containing a number of such residences: a block of flats [in North American parlance, an apartment]

fly³ - adjective informal

1. British knowing and clever: she's fly enough not to get tricked out of it
2. North American fashionably attractive and impressive: a fly dude

*L² - abbreviation [5^th entry] British (on a motor vehicle) learner driver

lights - plural noun the lungs of sheep, pigs, or bullocks, used as food, especially for pets

Met - abbreviation informal (the Met) [treated as singular or plural] the Metropolitan Police in London
Appearing in Solutions:

ground¹ - noun 2 [3^rd entry] an area of land, often with associated buildings, used for a particular sport: a football ground; Liverpool's new ground is nearing completion

K² - abbreviation [6th entry] king (used especially in describing play in card games and recording moves in chess): declarer overruffed with ♦K and led another spade; 18.Ke2

lo - exclamation archaic used to draw attention to an interesting or amazing event: and lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them

*RE - abbreviation (in the UK) Royal Engineers, the field engineering and construction corps of the British army

ring pull - noun British a ring on a can that is pulled to break the seal in order to open it [in North America, a pull tab]

starkers - adjective British informal completely naked: he ran starkers across the pitch

sus - [Collins English Dictionary] noun British slang 1. suspicion 2. a suspect

tick⁴ - noun (in phrase on tick) British informal on credit [Origin: (mid 17th century) apparently short for  ticket in the phrase on the ticket, referring to an IOU or promise to pay]

yard² - noun 2 (the Yard) British informal term for Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police

Appearing at Big Dave's Crossword Blog

*hacked off - adjective U.K. informal irritated: annoyed or dissatisfied

pull - verb 3 [2^nd entry] British informal succeed in attracting sexually: I used my sense of humour to pull girls; noun 2 [4^th entry] British informal an attempt to attract someone sexually:an eligible bachelor on the pull

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

This commentary should be read in conjunction with the review at Big Dave's Crossword Blog, to which a link is provided in the table above.

4a   Can opener call and score? (4,4)

What does Crypticsue mean when, as a hint for 'pull', she says "the word a young man might use if he had managed to attract the attentions of a young lady". At Oxford Dictionaries Online, the very first entry for pull happens to be 'exert force on (someone or something) so as to cause movement towards oneself: he pulled her down on to the couch'. Is that it? Intriguing as idea may be, I hardly think so. The true answer is revealed in Today's Glossary.

26a   Half-decent bars provide lights etc. (8)

I had seen (in a previous puzzle) 'lights' used in the sense of 'the lungs of sheep, pigs, or bullocks, used as food'. Therefore, although this meaning certainly didn't pop immediately to mind, it did come to me as the form of the solution began to take shape from the checking letters.

What did surprise me was to see Oxford Dictionaries Online list the phrase "punch one's lights out" under this entry. This prompted me to wonder if the latter phrase might be derived from this meaning of 'lights', which would then literally mean 'to punch one's lungs out'. If so, this expression would take on a somewhat different flavour from what I had always believed. However, with a bit of additional research, I was to discover that Collins English Dictionary provides an second meaning for lights as 'a person's ideas, knowledge, or understanding' with "he did it according to his lights" being given as an example. No doubt, this is the sense on which is the phrase is based, and 'to punch one's lights out' which would equate to 'knock one senseless' - which corresponds closely to what I had always envisioned the phrase to mean.

20d   Living forever without source of tension is wrong (7)

Without a doubt, the word 'without' is a godsend to cryptic crossword compilers, as it can take on two different meanings - thereby enabling setters to compose clues which can be interpreted in two diametrically opposed senses. This clue is a prime example. Since 'without' man mean either 'outside of' or 'lacking' this clue might mean either:

• start with a word meaning "living forever" and remove (lacking) T (source of tension) to produce a word meaning "wrong"

or

• start with a word meaning "living forever" and put it around (outside of) T (source of tension) to produce a word meaning "wrong".

Thus one may either have to remove or insert a T depending on which interpretation happens to be correct in this instance.

Signing off for today - Falcon