Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 (DT 26001)

This puzzle was originally published Friday, August 7, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

We are back to a fairly standard level of difficulty today after the very taxing effort yesterday. I'm sure that today's puzzle was a bit more challenging for me than it was for the Brits due to a few Briticisms that took some time to track down.

Today's Glossary

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

advert - noun Brit. informal an advertisement [Note: in North American usage, one would almost certainly say "ad" rather than "advert"]

Anfield - a football (soccer) stadium in Liverpool, England, home to the Liverpool F.C. football club

local - noun 2 Brit. informal a pub convenient to a person’s home

pit - noun 9 (the pit) literary hell

scruff - noun Brit. informal a scruffy person

slate - verb 2 Brit. informal criticize severely

snib - chiefly Scottish & Irish noun 2 a small catch on a lock which holds the bolt in or out

Mark Thompson - Director-General (DG) of the British Broadcasting Corporation ("BBC boss")

Today's Links

Libellule's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 26001].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

7a Fuel Norm needs to get a couple of females home (8)

I'm afraid that I was a bit sloppy in solving this clue. I got it into my head that the wordplay was PARA, which sounds like "pair of" (couple of), FF (females) IN (home). Having got that far, I was at a loss to explain how the remainder of the wordplay constituted a homophone (sounds like) indicator. Perhaps if I had exercised the discipline to rigourously parse out the clue, I would have discovered the proper wordplay. However, sometimes (as with this clue) I just seem to find the solution through intuition - with less than stellar results in this case.

6d I con lass so wickedly in a holy letter (10)

Before arriving in the New Testament, I test drove a number of possibilities for "holy letter"including encyclical, bull, and epistle.

Signing off for today - Falcon

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