Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - DT 26578

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26578
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Setter Unknown
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26578]
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 █ - reviewed by Falcon for Big Dave's blog

Introduction

It was the south-west quadrant which gave me difficulty today. While the clues there do not seem overly difficult in hindsight, it was the interlinking of them that was the problem. With just one or two more letters in any one of those clues, the whole corner would probably have fallen in rapid succession. But because I could not make headway on any one clue, the entire corner remained unsolved (until I called my electronic assistants into action). I guess that a person finding themselves in such a situation could correctly say that they were faced with gridlock. The puzzle proved to be a bit of an English geography lesson - not to mention being a primer on British musical notation.

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.

beau - noun dated 2 a rich, fashionable young man; a dandy.

Appearing in Solutions:

broad - [The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition] (in East Anglia) a lake-like expansion of a river

broad - noun 2 (the Broads) a series of low-lying shallow lakes connected by rivers in E Anglia. 

crit - noun informal (short for criticism or critic) British a review of a literary or artistic work or production: a theatre crit

crotchet - noun 1 Music, British a note having the time value of a quarter of a semibreve or half a minim, represented by a large solid dot with a plain stem.  Also called quarter note

dandy - noun 1 a man unduly concerned with looking stylish and fashionable: his floppy handkerchiefs and antique cufflinks gave him the look of a dandy

Dorset¹ - a county of SW England; county town, Dorchester.

*it² - noun British informal, dated Italian vermouth: he poured a gin and it

le - French the

nigh - adverb, preposition, & adjective 2 almost: [as adverb] a car weighing nigh on two tons

painter² - noun a rope attached to the bow of a boat for tying it to a quay.

slip¹ - noun 4 Cricket [a] a fielding position (often one of two or more in an arc) close behind the batsman on the off side, for catching balls edged by the batsman: [i] he was caught in the slips for 32 [ii] King is at first slip [b] a fielder at slip.

off - noun 1 (also off side) Cricket the half of the field (as divided lengthways through the pitch ) towards which the batsman’s feet are pointed when standing to receive the ball.  The opposite of leg.

 *st - abbreviation [1^st entry] stone (in weight), noun 4 (plural same) British a unit of weight equal to 14 lb (6.35 kg): I weighed 10 stone

Staines - [Collins English Dictionary] a town in SE England, in N Surrey on the River Thames. Pop.: 51,167 (1991)

Sunday - noun 1 the first day of the week and for most Christians the day of worship and rest. 2 colloquial a newspaper that is on sale on this day.

Sunday - noun [2^nd entry] (the Sundays) British informal the newspapers published each Sunday: she wrote human-interest pieces for the Sundays

Sunday painter - noun [likely British] an amateur painter, especially one with little training.

*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.

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

26a   Beau's extremes of depravity? (5)

The definition is "beau" (but it takes a different meaning than that with which I am familiar). Here it means "a rich, fashionable young man" (DANDY) rather than "a boyfriend or male admirer". The wordplay ("extremes of depravity") introduces a twist on the standard construction. We need to use D AND Y rather than the normal D + Y.

Signing off for today - Falcon