Friday, June 4, 2010 (DT 26166)

Today's puzzle, set by Jay, was originally published Wednesday, February 17, 2010 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

This is yet another occasion where I found the wordplay to be straightforward in hindsight, but rather difficult on the initial encounter. I dug into the Tool Chest relatively early in the solving process and had to reverse engineer a lot of the wordplay.

Today's Glossary

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

Used in Clues:

Lords - the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom

Used in Solutions:

Aran - adjective (of knitwear) featuring patterns of cable stitch and diamond designs, as made traditionally in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland

splodge - noun & verb Brit. another term for SPLOTCH [Note: Collins English Dictionary defines splotch as "the usual US word for splodge"]

Territorial Army (abbreviation TA) - noun in the UK a fully trained volunteer force intended to provide back-up to the regular army in cases of emergency

Today's Links

Big Dave's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26166].

Signing off for today - Falcon