Thursday, February 25, 2010 (DT 26081)

This puzzle was originally published Monday, November 9, 2009 in The Daily Telegraph

The National Post has skipped DT 26080 which was published on Saturday, November 7, 2009

Introduction

I found it to be a moderate to moderately easy puzzle today. Although I had expected that the Brits would rate it as being easy, Big Dave commented "This one seemed tougher than a lot of recent Rufus puzzles". There are some cricket terms and other Briticisms that make it a bit more challenging for those of us on this side of the Atlantic.

Today's Glossary

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

Billy Bunter - is a fictional character featured originally in stories set at Greyfriars School in the boys weekly story paper The Magnet first published in 1908, and has since appeared in novels, on television, in stage plays, and in comic strips.

cover - noun 6 Brit. protection by insurance.

extra cover - noun cricket 1 a fielding position between cover and mid-off (see under mid-on). 2 the person in this position.

form - noun 6 chiefly Brit. a class or year in a school.

guillotine - noun 3 Brit. (in parliament) a procedure used to limit discussion of a legislative bill by fixing times at which various parts of it must be voted on.

remove - verb 5 (remove to) dated relocate to (another place).

remove - noun 2 a form or division in some British schools.

run out - PHRASES 4 Cricket dismiss (a batsman) by dislodging the bails with the ball while the batsman is still running.

Today's Links

Big Dave's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Telegraph Crossword Blog [DT 26081].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

18a Woman given note and present (4)

Interestingly, this clue could have equally well been worded "Man given note and present (4)" where the solution would have been:

HE (man) + (given) RE (note) /and\ HERE (present)

27a Additional insurance against being driven off (5,5)

This is a cryptic definition involving a play on the name of a defensive position in the sport of cricket. "Additional" is EXTRA and "insurance" is COVER. In cricket, an "extra cover" is a fielding position between cover and mid-off.

To understand some of the cricket fielding positions, suppose we superimposed a baseball diamond over a cricket field. As can be seen from the accompanying diagram (cribbed from Wikipedia), in the case of a right-handed batsman, the cover would be positioned relative to the bowler and batsman at roughly what would be first base in baseball, the mid-wicket at what would be third base, the mid-on at shortstop, and the mid-off between first and second bases (where the second baseman usually plays). The extra-cover is positioned between the cover and mid-off as "additional insurance" against a ball batted (driven) to the off side of the field.

Whereas, in baseball, the ball can only be hit safely within the quadrant of the field between first base and third base, it seems that in cricket the ball can be hit in any direction. Also, the naming convention in cricket appears to depend upon which side of the wicket the batsman bats from and if a player were to bat left-handed, the names of all the positions would be reversed. Presumably, the players would not actually change positions on the field; rather, I would think that while a left-handed batsman was up (although I believe that cricket batsmen may be said to be "in" whereas baseball batters are "up"), the player who was playing cover (against a right-handed batsman) would be called a mid-wicket (with corresponding changes to the names of all the other positions on the field). That must be a nightmare for play-by-play announcers (especially if there are switch-hitters in cricket, as there are in baseball).

By the way, if a fielder were to move from his normal position to a position very near the batsman, the position would be described as silly (e.g., a silly mid-on or silly cover).

23d Bunter's form to change houses (6)

For me, the last clue to be solved - although, I bet for many Brits, it would be among the first. There are lots of Briticisms to wade through here. Billy Bunter is a fictional character, well known in Britain, who is also known by the nickname "the fat owl of the Remove". A form in Britain is what we in North America would refer to as a grade (a class or year in a school). Remove is defined by Oxford as "a form or division in some British schools" and by Random House as "Brit. a promotion of a pupil to a higher class or division at school".

Big Dave provides the following explanation for forms: "Billy Bunter, if my memory serves me correctly, was the Fat Owl of the Remove – a year group that came between the Fourth and Fifth forms at my old school, there being no First form as that used to be a prep year in the dim and distant past. We had no upper and lower Sixth either, going through Transitus to get to the Sixth!". It seems that British educational terminology is almost as convoluted as cricket jargon.

The situation is made quite a bit clearer (and the connection between the Oxford and Random House definitions emerges) in this comment posted on Big Dave's site "It's only taken 40 years for me to realise that the R in 4th year at my old school (4A, 4B and 4R) must have stood for Remove and not Rapid as the majority of my peers also thought i.e. the 3rd year was missed out by this group and went straight from 2 to 4 ."

Remove is also a rather antiquated term meaning move, in the sense of relocating from one premise to another.

Wikipedia describes Billy Bunter as "essentially a comic anti-hero, whose actions puncture and deflate the serious world of the English public school, inverting conventional values like a 'Lord of Misrule'. His main physical characteristics are obesity, brought about by over-eating, and short-sightedness (hence his nickname 'the fat owl of the Remove'). He is dishonest, greedy, pathologically self-centered, snobbish, conceited, lazy, cowardly, mean-spirited and stupid. Nevertheless, he succeeds in achieving reader sympathy by virtue of the humour which the character generates, partly through his brazen effrontery and persistence in the face of inevitable failure."

Signing off for today - Falcon