Friday, February 26, 2010 (DT 26082)

This puzzle was originally published Tuesday, November 10, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

Although I eventually completed today's puzzle, it did prove to be quite a challenge for me. Therefore, I was relieved to see that Gazza gave it four stars for difficulty.

Today's Glossary

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

cove - noun Brit. informal, dated a man.

Hammer Film Production - a film production company based in the United Kingdom, known for its horror films.

rating - noun 3 Brit. a non-commissioned sailor in the navy.

Today's Links
Gazza's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 26082].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

5d Formula One's new course outside (7)

It seems to me that this clue has a rather absurd surface reading, which essentially states "The new Formula One racetrack [is] outside". Are there any indoor Formula One tracks? However, as we well know, the surface reading is immaterial - what we are looking for is the cryptic reading. For the cryptic reading, we must insert some punctuation into the clue, as follows:

Formula One's new, course outside

which can be rearranged into a more natural order, producing:

Formula /\ course outside one's new

where I have also inserted a fulcrum symbol (/\) to separate the definition from the wordplay.

The solution to this is:

ROUTINE (formula) /\ ROUTE (course) containing (outside) {I (one's) N (new)}

I must say that I'm not a big fan of the 's in this clue. In clues, an 's may signify a possessive (as it does in the surface reading of this clue), an abbreviation for is, or an abbreviation for has. It is not uncommon for the 's to have a different meaning in the cryptic reading than in the surface reading. In this clue, the 's plays no role in the cryptic reading (as I see it), and is therefore merely padding to enhance the surface reading.

A visitor to Big Dave's site observes that three other clues in today's puzzle also contain an 's, and that the S is used in the solution in all of them. He wonders why the 's is treated differently in this clue. The setter of the puzzle responds "... the simple explanation is that I use the apostrophe ’s’ in the answer when I need to, and when I don’t need to, I don’t! ".

Now off to see how today's Olympic competitions are going - Falcon