Thursday, May 12, 2011 (DT 26479)

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26479
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Friday, February 18, 2011
Setter Giovanni
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26479]
Big Dave's Review Written By Gazza
Big Dave's Rating
Difficulty - ★★	Enjoyment - ★★★★
Falcon's Performance ┌────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐ ███████████████████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ Legend: █ - solved without assistance █ - incorrect prior to use of puzzle solving tools █ - solved with assistance from puzzle solving tools █ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Big Dave's blog
Notes The National Post has skipped DT 26476 through DT 26478 which were published in The Daily Telegraph from Tuesday, February 15, 2011 through Thursday, February 17, 2011.

Introduction

The reason for this post being late is that Blogger (the site that hosts this blog) experienced severe technical problems causing it to be taken off-line for over 20 hours. Apparently, an upgrade to the site went horribly wrong causing the site to be shut down. The recovery involved rolling the site back to a state prior to my Wednesday blog, so when the site came up (in read only mode) that posting was missing. Blogger is now back in full operation and the missing Wednesday posting has been recovered. Now I have to catch up.

You can learn more about the Blogger outage here.

As if the issues with Blogger were not enough to contend with, the National Post has skipped ahead several puzzles. At least the puzzle itself was rather easy, but still very enjoyable.

Today's Glossary

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

[An asterisk beside an entry merely indicates that it has been taken it from a Cumulative Glossary of entries which have previously appeared, in either this blog or its companion blog, the Ottawa Citizen Cryptic Crossword Forum.]

Appearing in Clues:

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.

deal² - [Collins English Dictionary] noun 1. a plank of softwood timber, such as fir or pine, or such planks collectively 2. the sawn wood of various coniferous trees, such as that from the Scots pine (red deal) or from the Norway Spruce (white deal). [As a similar definition appears in the American Heritage Dictionary, it would appear that this is not a British expression (although I would think that it must undoubtedly be in more common usage there than it is in North America).]

Appearing in Solutions:

draper - noun British dated a person who sells textile fabrics.

palatine (or palatinus) - a high-level official attached to imperial or royal courts in Europe since Roman times. The term palatinus was first used in Ancient Rome for chamberlains of the Emperor due to their association with the Palatine Hill, the imperial palace guard after the rise of Constantine I were also called the Scholae Palatinae for the same reason.

*para¹ - noun [likely British] informal 1 a paratrooper. [Although I found no specific confirmation that this is a British expression, it would seem to be so judging by the dictionaries in which it is found.]

*TA - abbreviation (in the UK) Territorial Army, a volunteer force locally organized to provide a reserve of trained and disciplined manpower for use in an emergency.

Signing off for today - Falcon