Tuesday, June 9, 2009 (DT 25846)

This puzzle was originally published Saturday, February 7, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

Another fairly easy puzzle.

Today's Glossary

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

M - a thousand (Roman numeral), therefore many

In cryptic crosswords puzzles, "many" is sometimes used to mean "a large number" which in turn is expressed as a Roman numeral. I believe this device is also applied with other large Roman numerals such as L (fifty) and D (five hundred).

S - (abbrev.) saint

Today's Links

Those of you who have followed this blog will know that James Cary, the author of the Crossword Ends in Violence (5) blog to which I regularly link, has threatened on several occasions to discontinue his daily discussion of the DT cryptic crossword. Well, today he does it again, and this time he carries through. But do not despair. He has passed the torch to Big Dave - a frequent contributor to his blog - who begins coverage of the DT cryptic on his own site starting with today's puzzle.

James' closing post is found at Crossword Ends in Violence (5) [DT 25846] with a postscript at Crossword Ends in Violence (5) [DT 25847].

I have found James' site to be an immensely valuable resource and will certainly miss his chatty and lighthearted approach.

Beginning today, I will be linking to solutions posted on Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog. In addition to the Daily Telegraph Cryptic Crossword that is carried by the National Post in syndication, Big Dave's site covers other puzzles appearing in The Telegraph newspapers.

As regular readers will know, puzzles (such as today's), which are published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, are "prize puzzles" (reader's can win a prize by submitting the correct solution). It is the policy of Big Dave not to publish a complete solution until the prize puzzle submission deadline has passed. Therefore, for these puzzles, you will see two links to Big Dave's site, one for the hints blog posted on the day the puzzle is published and one for the solution blog posted after the submission deadline.

Hints for solving today's puzzle can be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 25846] - Hints) and a full review at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 25846] - Review.

I found seven questions on AnswerBank discussing today's puzzle. They are (together with the clues to which they relate):

• AnswerBank [DT 25846]-a: 19d
• AnswerBank [DT 25846]-b: 18ac, 23ac, 23ac, 4d
• AnswerBank [DT 25846]-c: 2ac, 9ac, 10ac
• AnswerBank [DT 25846]-d: 26ac
• AnswerBank [DT 25846]-e: 11ac
• AnswerBank [DT 25846]-f: 3d
• AnswerBank [DT 25846]-g: 3d

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

1d Beat the unending spots (6)

Note that there is a typo in the solution given in Big Dave's review, which should read:

THRASH - th (the, unending) rash (spots)

[Note: As indicated in his comment below, Big Dave has subsequently corrected the typo.]

6d Lady producing many a song (5)

Despite having been instructed on this point not so long ago by xwd_fiend, I confess I missed the many → 1000 in Roman numerals → M connection.

20d Face six wise men, not second saint (6)

For a long time, I was quite perplexed by this clue, which I initially parsed as:

20d Face [VISAGE] /\ six [VI] {wise men [SAGES], not second (delete S) → [SAGE_]} saint (6)

which leaves the word "saint" unaccounted for in the wordplay.

After much deliberation, I concluded that the only possible explanation is that S is an abbreviation for "saint" (new to me) but I was able to confirm it on Chambers. Since SAGES contains two S's, the setter is specifying that the second S is to be deleted. The revised parsing then becomes:

20d Face [VISAGE] /\ six [VI] {wise men [SAGES], not second saint (delete second S) → [SAGE_]} (6)

Solution to Today's Puzzle

It looks like Big Dave is going to make my task much easier. He provides a full solution to today's puzzle in his review.

Signing off for today - Falcon