Thursday, October 1, 2009 (DT 25931)

This puzzle was originally published Monday, May 18, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

I found this puzzle to be moderately challenging, which provides a nice sense of satisfaction on completing it. It has a fair amount of clever wordplay - and a couple of pretty convoluted clues.

Today's Glossary

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

Number 10 - 10 Downing Street: address of the office and residence of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Today's Links

Tilsit's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 25931].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

4d An arm put round pretty girl in a game (9)

I found this clue to have a rather convoluted construction - but one that seems to crop up fairly often in crossword clues. It would initially appear (at least to me) that the meaning of the wordplay is "An arm; put it round pretty girl" (i.e., take a phrase meaning 'an arm' and put it around a word meaning 'pretty girl'). However, one must actually interpret the clue as "An arm; put round it pretty girl" (i.e., take a phrase meaning 'an arm' and put around it a word meaning 'pretty girl'). Notice that merely changing the position of the pronoun "it" (which is implicit in the clue itself) produces a totally opposite result.

22d It is in fact a point of view (5)

Another clue with a seemingly convoluted construction. Here, "it" represents the solution, so the meaning of the wordplay is "The solution is in fact a point" or, in other words, put a (cardinal) point (E for East) inside "fact" to get FACET (a view). Perhaps the construction only seems convoluted because one is misled by the surface reading. I doubt that few would consider the following sentence to be convoluted "Put in the bowl a cup of flour and a teaspoon of salt" which I believe has a construction similar to that of this clue.

Signing off for today - Falcon