Friday, August 21, 2009 (DT 25899)

This puzzle was originally published Friday, April 10, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

This was - for the most part - a fairly straightforward puzzle, although some UK slang and British spellings proved challenging to track down.

Today's Glossary

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

annexe - Brit. annex

billycan - Brit. & Austral. a metal pot for use when camping

ladette - Brit. boisterous, heavy-drinking young woman

neat - archaic an ox, bull or cow

OM - Brit. abbrev. (Member of the) Order of Merit

Today's Links

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

AnswerBank [DT 25899]-a: 1ac, 21ac

AnswerBank [DT 25899]-b: 14ac

Libellule's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 25899].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

23ac Love helping to put together a speech (7)

Although I got the correct solution without much effort, I seemed to have a mental block when it came to understanding how the wordplay leads to RATION. My error came in trying to equate ration with either "helping to" or "helping to put together", rather than merely "helping". The word "to" would appear to have been thrown in to aid the surface reading and seems to be superfluous to the cryptic wordplay. That is, "love" [O] and "helping" [RATION] "put together" form "a speech" [ORATION].

3d Girl's part of a dancing setup? That's a lie (14)

I thought Libellule's hint/explanation may have glossed over one aspect of this clue. As he indicates, the girl in question is the seemingly ubiquitous Di and a "dancing setup" is a "formation". However, rather than "part of" meaning "plus" as he indicates, it actually means "in". Putting all these elements together then gives the phrase "Di's in formation". It is hard to know whether this was an oversight on his part or merely due to the text being intended as a hint rather than a full explanation.

5d In a crevice - look there to find valuable material (5)

I failed to detect that this is a hidden word clue, and consequently felt that I had a choice between NACRE or NICHE as an answer. I opted for niche - thinking it might be deemed a crevice. While a niche might possibly contain valuable material, I was still somewhat uncomfortable with the wordplay - suspecting that I was probably missing some nuance. As it turns out, I had made the wrong selection.

Signing off for today - Falcon