Monday, March 11, 2013 — DT 27060

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 27060
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Friday, December 28, 2012
Setter Giovanni (Don Manley)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27060]
Big Dave's Review Written By crypticsue
BD 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 █ - solved with aid of checking letters provided by puzzle solving tools █ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Big Dave's blog █ - reviewed by Falcon for Big Dave's blog

Introduction

Don't despair if you found this puzzle more difficult than crypticsue's two star rating. Her puzzle solving ability is reputed to "make grown men cry".

Notes on Today's Puzzle

This commentary is intended to serve as a supplement to the review of this puzzle found at Big Dave's Crossword Blog, to which a link is provided in the table above.

Across

7a   Management of river in Norfolk town adjoining a lake (8)

We need a river in Italy rather than one in England. The Po^[7] is a river that arises in the Cottian Alps and flows eastward across northern Italy entering the Adriatic Sea through a delta near Venice. If you are intrigued by crypticsue's dig at her fellow blogger gnomethang (affectionately known as Gnomey), he once identified the Po as being a Chinese river — and his fellow bloggers have never allowed him to live it down.

 Norfolk^[5] is a county on the east coast of England. Diss^[7] is a town (population 6,742) in Norfolk, close to the border with the neighbouring East Anglian county of Suffolk.

I initially related disposal to waste management^[7]. However, I suspect that disposal^[4] may simply have been used in the sense of a specific method of tending to matters, as in business.

9a   Bird arrives diving into grass (6)

10a   Scoundrel, in the course of time, makes mistakes (6)

11a   Soldier receiving notice in a pickle (8)

A marine is a member of the Royal Marines (RM)^[5], a British armed service (part of the Royal Navy) founded in 1664, trained for service at sea, or on land under specific circumstances.

12a   Nutter in pother bungled car manoeuvre (5-5,4)

Nutter^[5] is British slang for a mad or eccentric person.

15a   Harvest to get hold of round end of September (4)

17a   English residing in opulent German state (5)

Reich^[5] is the former German state, most often used to refer to the Third Reich, the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945. The First Reich was considered to be the Holy Roman Empire, 962–1806, and the Second Reich the German Empire, 1871–1918, but neither of these terms is part of normal historical terminology.

19a   King articulate but no leader (4)

Lear^[5] was a legendary early king of Britain, the central figure in Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear. He is mentioned by the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth. In the wordplay, remove the leading C from an adjective meaning articulate.

20a   Family team was behind a fund for restoration (7,3,4)

23a   Help one to get better for special type of race (8)

25a   Expresses love when restricted by bad habits (6)

In tennis, squash, and some other sports, love^[5] is a score of zero or nil ⇒ love fifteen. The resemblance of a zero written as a numeral (0) to the letter O leads to the cryptic crossword convention of the word "love" being used to clue this letter.

27a   To wander round losing daughter is more despicable (6)

28a   Hurried, always getting worried about it (8)

Down

1d   Support lord audibly (4)

A peer^[5] is a member of the nobility in Britain or Ireland, comprising the ranks of duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron ⇒ hereditary peers could still dominate the proceedings of the House of Lords.

2d   At university time for the latest news (6)

In Britain, up^[5] means at or to a university, especially Oxford or Cambridge ⇒ they were up at Cambridge about the same time. 

Time and date are synonyms is the sense of date^[3] meaning the time or historical period to which something belongs ⇒ artifacts of a later date — which could be expressed equally well as artifacts of a later time.

3d   Criticise  success that comes through lots of tricks (4)

In the game of bridge, a slam^[5] may be either a grand slam (all thirteen tricks) or small slam (twelve tricks), for which bonus points are scored if bid and made.

4d   Dissolute priest I found lacking energy and enthusiasm (6)

Strictly speaking, dissolute^[1] means loose, especially in morals. However, I think the setter is exercising a bit of cryptic licence to extend the meaning of the word by using it to describe something that has been subjected to dissolution, the process of breaking up into parts.

5d   Calm knight leading queen into path (8)

While crypticsue is correct in saying that N^[2] is the chess abbreviation for knight [K^[2] having been preempted by king], I think she is mistaken with respect to the chess abbreviation for queen.  Although the chess abbreviation for queen is Q^[2], Qu.^[2] is a recognized abbreviation for queen — just not in chess.

6d   False idol of French clan brandished in game (6,4)

The National Post printed the clue spread over two lines with no hyphen to indicate that a word had been split:

6d   False idol of French clan bran
       dished in game (6,4)

Having failed to spot the omission of the hyphen, I was faced with "bran dished" as the anagram indicator. Ever resourceful, I managed to concoct an elaborate explanation around the British game bran tub^[5], a lucky dip in which the hidden items are buried in bran. Lucky dip^[5] is a British game in which small prizes are concealed in a container and chosen at random by participants. The term lucky dip is also used to refer to any process of choosing or deciding something purely at random ⇒ [as modifier] beware of lucky-dip deals which specify only the type or rating of accommodation. From this, I mistakenly concluded that "bran dished" might somehow be a British expression denoting the choosing of things at random (and, thus, a term that could serve as an anagram indicator).

In the French language, de^[8] is a preposition meaning 'of'.

Golden calf^[5] has come to mean an unworthy or inappropriate object of worship, typically wealth ⇒ we were led astray by the seductions of the golden calf. In the Bible, the golden calf was an image of gold in the shape of a calf, made by Aaron in response to the Israelites‘ plea for a god while they awaited Moses’ return from Mount Sinai, where he was receiving the Ten Commandments (Exod. 32).

8d   Run away from snaky character, one who finds fault (7)

I was misled into trying to remove R (run) from a snaky^[5] (cold, venomous, or cunning) person to create a term for someone who finds fault.

Scarper^[5] is British slang meaning to run away ⇒ they left the stuff where it was and scarpered.

13d   Unsentimental, as a boxer taking some punches needs to be? (4-6)

14d   Poem I set down with a twist in it (5)

The Iliad^[5] is a Greek hexameter epic poem in twenty-four books, traditionally ascribed to Homer, telling how Achilles killed Hector at the climax of the Trojan War.

16d   Writer has article about a sorrowful American city (8)

As it turns out, the solution is an American city — but the definition does not demand it. Pasadena^[7] is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade.

18d   Linger outside an industrial city in Germany (7)

Hanover^[7] or Hannover , on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony, Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain.

Although it has a Volkswagen plant (the biggest employer in the region) and a factory owned by German tire and automobile parts manufacturer Continental AG, the city does not seem to be particularly noted as an industrial city. However, the setter did need an adjective starting with a vowel to make the clue work.

21d   Short financial statement -- something that may bind agreement (6)

22d   Person in cafe -- one has got soaked apparently! (6)

Should 'one be immersed in water' then it would be quite apparent that one has got soaked.

24d   Group of Scouts  prepare for camp? (4)

When I was a Boy Scout many years ago here in Canada, the Wolf Cubs had packs and the Boy Scouts had troops.

26d   One is not  fair (4)

Key to Reference Sources: 

^[1]   - The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition
^[2]   - Search Chambers - (Chambers 21st Century Dictionary)
^[3]   - TheFreeDictionary.com (American Heritage Dictionary)
^[4]   - TheFreeDictionary.com (Collins English Dictionary)
^[5]   - Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford Dictionary of English)
^[6]   - Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford American Dictionary)
^[7]   - Wikipedia
^[8]   - Reverso Online Dictionary (Collins French-English Dictionary)
^[9]   - Infoplease (Random House Unabridged Dictionary)
^[10] - CollinsDictionary.com (Collins English Dictionary)

Signing off for today — Falcon