Tuesday, June 30, 2009 (DT 25861)

This puzzle was originally published Wednesday, February 25, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

Although it was difficult to find a starting point in today's puzzle, once I finally did manage to get under way, the solution unfolded fairly smoothly. However, I did have an incorrect solution for one clue and missed some wordplay on one or two others.

Today's Glossary

Some possibly unfamiliar abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions used in today's puzzle

hook - a type of cricket stroke

make the running - Brit. to be the person who causes things to happen and develop

OR - military other ranks (abbrev. defn. 3)

ratty - Brit. informal bad-tempered and irritable (defn. 4)

River Forth - a major river in Scotland

River Test - a river in Hampshire, England

Tourist Trophy (TT) - a motorcycle racing event held on the Isle of Man

trad - traditional jazz or folk music

Today's Links

Big Dave's efforts to promote his site may be paying off as I found no questions on AnswerBank discussing today's puzzle. Or maybe the Brits just found this puzzle to be very easy.

Libellule's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 25861].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

23ac Otter represented in colour by old painter (10)

By my reading, the wordplay in this clue is slightly more complex than the review on Big Dave's blog would tend to suggest. Rather than being simply an anagram-type clue, I believe it is a combination of an anagram-type clue and a containership-type clue, as illustrated by the following parsing:

23ac {OTTER represented (anagram indicator) → TORET} {in (containership indicator) colour [TIN^T]} {by (positional indicator)} old [O] /\ painter [TIN(TORET)T|O] (10)

While the the wordplay in a clue may sometimes be such that the order of operations is not clearly specified, I don't think that is the case with this clue. However, I always stand ready to be corrected.

As an aside, it may be informative to consider a couple of variations on this clue:

Variant 1: Represented otter in colour by old painter (10)

In this (admittedly, not very elegant) variant, the order of the operations is ambiguous. One could justifiably first execute the containership operation specified by "otter in colour" (producing, say, [TI(OTTER)NT]) and then perform the anagram on the result or one could first perform the anagram operation on OTTER (producing [TORET]) followed by the containership operation (as in today's actual clue).

Another variant might be:

Variant 2: Otter in colour represented by old painter (10)

In this clue, the order would clearly be the containership operation first followed by the anagram operation.

6d Firm on the up organized a social round noon? It's infrequent (10)

As I am writing this, Big Dave's blog shows a couple of extra letters appended to the solution (i.e., OCCASIONALLY, rather than OCCASIONAL). However, judging by past experience, this may well have changed by the time you check his blog.

8d State-of-the-art description of East End gardener with shears? (7, 4)

I followed the wordplay well enough to get the correct solution, but I missed the bit about the dropped "h". Instead I wasted time searching fruitlessly for a district named Cutting in the East End of London.

25d Leo, say, has token Al discarded (4)

I thought Leo might be the name of a LION - which of course turned out to be a red herring in this clue.

Signing off for today - Falcon