Tuesday, November 17, 2009 (DT 25987)

This puzzle was originally published Wednesday, July 22, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

Either the clues were especially obscure or I was particularly obtuse but I found most of today's puzzle to be extremely difficult. I finished about a third of the puzzle fairly readily but at that point I seemed to hit a brick wall. Although I did eventually complete the puzzle, it was only done through a lot of hard work and I was left with questions about some of the wordplay. I must say that on completion I felt more a sense of relief than of accomplishment. It was indeed gratifying to read Big Dave's assessment, "Even the seasoned pros amongst you will find this difficult!".

Today's Glossary

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

duck - (noun, defn. 5) cricket a batsman's score of zero

ducks - (noun, defn. 4b) Brit. a term of endearment or (loosely) of address

How's your father? - Brit. slang euphemism for sexual intercourse

Peter Oosterhuis - English golfer

Little Venice - nickname for part of the Maida Vale area of central London. "The southern part of Maida Vale around Paddington Basin, a junction of three canals with many houseboats, is known as Little Venice".

the other - Brit. slang euphemism for sexual intercourse (while the reference is Irish, I am quite sure that this term is also used in the UK)

Porterhouse Blue - a 1974 satirical novel by Tom Sharpe dealing with life at Cambridge University

Spurs - Tottenham Hotspur F.C., an English football (soccer) club

Today's Links

Big Dave's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 25987].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

4a Your crooked mates smuggled in a gem (8)

Like Big Dave, I always find the style of construction used in this bit of wordplay to be counter-intuitive. That is, it is my natural inclination to expect THY (your) to contain AMEST (crooked mates) rather than vice versa. However, when one thinks carefully about it, the structure of the wordplay is pretty much equivalent to the phrase "Contraband smugglers concealed" where I don't think there is any ambiguity about who is concealing what.

12a One Roman assassin's head turned by something creepy in the garden (7)

The solution ARBUTUS (or more fully, creeping arbutus) is commonly known as the mayflower and is the floral emblem of both Nova Scotia and Massachusetts. Given that this is a North American plant, I had to wonder how the ship known as the Mayflower (on which the Pilgrims sailed) got its name. It seems that in Britain there are various other plants, including the hawthorn, which are known as mayflower.

18a Tripe from hand to mouth (8)

Big Dave foresees "trouble in store for overseas solvers with this slang term for mouth!". Not at all, trap is a very common term in North America for mouth, as in "Shut your ugly trap, or I'll shut it for you!" meaning "Shut up or I'll punch you out.".

26a Darling, we won't trouble the scorers (5)

I presume that ducks (scores of zero in cricket) won't trouble the scorers because they don't have to go to the trouble of changing the figures on the scoreboard.

5d Giver and taker of orders, I'm first to read Porterhouse Blue? (6,8)

As Big Dave so aptly surmised ("I bet you didn’t get this one from the wordplay!"), I found the solution from matching the checking letters and then reverse engineering the wordplay (or at least part of it). Even with the correct solution in hand, I wasn't able to completely sort out the wordplay. I could see that there was obviously some connection to "religious orders". Furthermore, while I did recognize the existence of the anagram, I'm not sure what (aside from the fact that Big Dave seems to have enjoyed the novel) qualifies "blue" to be an anagram indicator; certainly, "orders" would appear to be a far more logical (though incorrect) choice. For a brief moment, I also thought that "I'm first" might be suggesting "superior", but that also seems not to be the case. But thankfully Big Dave explains all in his blog.

7d The elderly admitting dreadful drag covers a measured area (7)

Surely "yardage" is a measured length and not a measured area. In fact, that is the way it is defined in most dictionaries. However, Chambers (seemingly the Holy Bible to DT crossword setters) does define yardage as "the length (or (rare [emphasis theirs]) the area or volume) of something, measured in yards".

9d The other relative question for art house - why fake? (4,4,6)

The solution, HOW'S YOUR FATHER, is an anagram of FOR ART HOUSE WHY which is signalled by the anagram indicator "fake". "How's your father?" seemingly is a British euphemism for sexual intercourse. Gazza, in his comments on Big Dave's Blog, provides a most amusing explanation of the "alleged" origin of this phrase. "The other" is yet another British slang term for sexual intercourse. Thus "the other relative question" can be interpreted as "a question involving a relative concerning the subject of sexual intercourse" or, in other words, "How's your father?".

Of course, I was not aware of the above while I was attempting to solve the clue. As a result, I expended a great deal of time on it, and even though I seem to have spent most of it off on a wild goose chase, the experience perhaps serves as good fodder for the blog. While it didn't take me too long to find what I thought was the solution to this clue, my answer turned out to be incorrect. This error caused me to spend a lot of time fruitlessly trying to decipher the wordplay for this clue, and a lot more time on attempting to solve the intersecting clue 10a. My initial (incorrect) answer was WHO'S YOUR FATHER - my thinking being that "other relative" was signalling a change from the expression "Who's your mother". Despite there being countless references on the Internet to "Who's your mother?", "Who's your mama?", "Who's yo' mamma?", and many other similar permutations and combinations, I could find no reference that actually defined what this expression meant or from where it was derived. The most interesting and informative reference I found is this one from The Washington Post which deals with the expression, "Who's your daddy?".

Anyway, after spinning my wheels for a long while on 10a, I eventually discovered that the correct solution to 9d is HOW'S YOUR FATHER rather than WHO'S YOUR FATHER.

After subsequently solving 5d, it occurred to me that the setter might have intended clues 5d and 9d to be viewed as a pair, being the two longest clues and occupying a central position in the puzzle. Thus since 5d dealt with "mother", it might seem appropriate that 9d deals with "the other relative", namely "father". If this indeed was the intent, it failed to help me as I tackled the clues in the reverse order (9d before 5d). However, based on Gazza's comments, I suspect that I may be reading something into the puzzle that was not intended by the setter.

By the way, I have no idea what Big Dave means in his review by the statement "the other as in something that you can’t remember what it is called".

16d Suitable output for the Stones? (4,5)

I know The Who composed a rock opera (Tommy) but what about The Rolling Stones? I suppose that the question mark at the end of the clue might suggest the scenario is hypothetical.

Signing off for today - Falcon