Wednesday, February 12, 2014 — DT 27316

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 27316
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Setter Jay (Jeremy Mutch)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27316]
Big Dave's Crossword Blog Review Written By scchua
BD Rating
Difficulty - ★★	Enjoyment - ★★★
Falcon's Experience ┌────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐ ███████████████████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ 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 █ - solved but without fully parsing the clue █ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Big Dave's Crossword Blog █ - solved with aid of checking letters provided by solutions from Big Dave's Crossword Blog █ - reviewed by Falcon for Big Dave's Crossword Blog █ - yet to be solved

Introduction

After a bit of a slow start, I managed to get on Jay's wavelength and finish the puzzle without the aid of my electronic assistants. This despite solving the puzzle while watching the Winter Olympics hockey game between the Canadian and the US women.

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. The underlined portion of the clue is the definition.

Across

1a   Late show of hesitation during calls for doubles (4,7)

9a   Various animals emerge in a novel? (9)

10a   The girl with a red top or fleece (5)

Fleece^[2] makes an appearance here as a verb meaning to cut wool from (sheep).

In cryptic reading of this clue, top^[5] means not the highest point but rather the beginning, as in the expression "the cast rehearsed Act One from the top".

11a   Permissiveness of times shown in non-church people (6)

12a   Peak Practice's opening leads to popular, clean broadcast (8)

Peak Practice^[7] is a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale — a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District — and the doctors who worked there. It ran on ITV from May 1993 to January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time. The series ended on a literal cliffhanger when two of the series' main characters plunged off a cliff. Despite pleas from viewers for one last episode, ITV declined to accommodate them.

13a   Drake losing heart -- trick is to spread out (6)

15a   Past life changed, without a year for a feeling such as this (4-4)

18a   Rabbit's spicy, having been peppered with this? (8)

I contemplated for a long time before deciding to use virtually the same underlining as scchua for this clue. The only change that I made was to include the question mark as part of the definition (which I believe may be a flag from the setter that the definition is not entirely straight-forward). The definition tells us that we are looking for something (this) that could be used to pepper something.

19a   Golf -- after mother fetched grub (6)

Golf^[5] is a code word representing the letter G, used in radio communication.

21a   Boss of kitchen sacking female over a problem (8)

As the "a" is part of the wordplay, it cannot be included in the definition (as scchua mistakenly shows it in his review).

23a   A few words from Romeo, in poor shape (6)

Romeo^[5] is a code word representing the letter R, used in radio communication.

26a   Struggles to take in Western perspectives (5)

27a   Creature from another planet leading one with a line (9)

28a   Saboteur worried by article nearby (11)

Down

1d   Slow copper left journalist with such cheeks (7)

In contrast to what scchua has indicated in his review, I have included the word "with" in the definition. Given that the solution is an adjective (well, a past participle acting as an adjective), I would say that the definition must be "with such cheeks" (an adjectival phrase) rather than merely "such cheeks" (a nounal phrase).

In Britain's current decimal currency system, a penny^[5] is a bronze coin and monetary unit equal to one hundredth of a pound (and is abbreviated p). In the system used prior to Decimal Day^[5] (February 15, 1971), a penny was equal to one twelfth of a shilling or 240th of a pound (and was abbreviated d, for denarius).

As scchua points out, although the penny was originally minted from bronze, since 1992 it has been minted in copper-plated steel due to the increasing price of copper^[7]. I suppose that the definition provided by Oxford Dictionaries Online (shown above) can still be regarded as correct if "bronze" is interpreted as the colour of the coin and not its composition.

2d   Appropriate name in a divorcee (5)

I have seen clues where "a" in the clue is replaced with "AN" in the solution for no valid reason. However, that is not the case today. It is obviously grammatically correct to substitute "AN EX" for "a divorcee".

3d   Just ego is hurt -- badly (9)

4d   Never run-of-the-mill, except for the first half (4)

5d   Small hole on ship is what attracts attention to viewer (8)

6d   Name of star oddly featuring in tabloid (5)

The Sun^[7] is a daily tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and Ireland by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The Sun once had the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, but in late 2013 slipped to second largest Saturday newspaper behind the Daily Mail. In February 2012, The Sun on Sunday was launched to replace the [disgraced and] defunct News of the World, employing some of its former journalists. National editions of the paper are published in London (The Sun), Dublin (The Irish Sun) and Glasgow (The Scottish Sun).

The News of the World^[7] was another News Corp. tabloid, the Sunday sister paper of The Sun. The paper was shut down in the aftermath of the News International phone hacking scandal^[7].

The Sun is known for its Page 3^[7] feature,  a large photograph of a topless female glamour model (often in a risqué pose) usually published on the newspaper's third page. I don't know the identity of the ladies whom scchua has selected to illustrate his comments — but I do know that neither of them is Susan Boyle.

7d   Preschool carer -- really heartless (7)

8d   Charming fellow making a deep impression (8)

F^[2] is the abbreviation for Fellow (of a society, etc). For instance, it is found in professional designations such as FRAIC (Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada).

14d   Implements choice on cuts (8)

16d   Could one throw light on future developments? (9)

17d   Friendliness of posh bloke up before one in residence (8)

Nob^[5] is an informal British term for a person of wealth or high social position ⇒ it was quite a do—all the nobs were there.

18d   Rich people supporting live acts (7)

20d   Still worried about engineers providing a framework for growth (7)

The Corps of Royal Engineers^[7], usually referred to simply as the Royal Engineers (RE), is a corps of the British Army that provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces.

22d   Agree to get rid of new item of value (5)

24d   So long a day that is universal (5)

Adieu^[5] [a word adopted from French] means (1) as an exclamation, goodbye and (2) as a noun, a goodbye ⇒ he whispered a fond adieu.

Under the British system of film classification^[7] a U (for 'universal') rating indicates that a film is suitable "for all the family" (or at least for children over 4 years of age). 

25d   Amount charged about right for release (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)
^[11] - TheFreeDictionary.com (Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary)

Signing off for today — Falcon