Tuesday, June 8, 2010 (DT 26168)

This puzzle, from Giovanni, was originally published Friday, February 19, 2010 in The Daily Telegraph

Introduction

Today's puzzle reminded me of a strenuous workout at the gym. It involves a lot of hard work, it may sometimes not seem like all that much fun while you're at it, but you know its good for you and you feel a real sense of accomplishment (not to mention relief) once it is completed. The Tool Chest was opened early and used extensively today. Gazza rates the puzzle four stars for difficulty.

Today's Glossary

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

Used in Clues:

churchwarden pipe - a tobacco pipe with a long stem

Used in Solutions:

Arian² - noun someone who believes in the doctrine of Arianism, ultimately pronounced heretical in the 4c, according to which Christ is not divine but only the first and highest of all created beings.

blotto - adjective rather dated Brit slang helplessly drunk.

detective inspector (abbreviation DI) - in the U.K., an officer having the rank of inspector who is attached to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of a police service

Tracey Emin -

fete - noun 1 Brit. an outdoor public function to raise funds for a charity or institution, typically involving entertainment and the sale of goods. 2 chiefly N. Amer. a celebration or festival.

lotto - noun 1 a children’s game similar to bingo, using illustrated counters or cards. 2 chiefly N. Amer. a lottery. [Note: Chambers defines lotto as "noun an earlier name for the game now usually called bingo."]

Today's Links

Gazza's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26168].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

9a Student beginning to spurn female artist - "heretic" (10)

Although the solution was not terribly difficult to decipher from the definition and checking letters, the wordplay proved elusive (at least, I found it to be so). I got off to a bad start, by heading down a dead-end street thinking that the string "emin" might somehow come from the word "feminine". Unfortunately, despite having first met the notorious Ms. Emin just over four months ago in DT 26060, and again just this past weekend in an article in the Ottawa Citizen concerning an exhibition opening this Friday at the National Gallery of Canada (more on that later), I failed to recognize her. I also had never heard of the Arians. I did, however, recognize that S was "beginning to spurn" - small consolation for a less than stellar performance on this clue.

Wikipedia sums up Tracey Emin's contribution to art as follows:

In 1997, her work Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, a tent appliquéd with names, was shown at Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibition held at the Royal Academy in London. The same year, she gained considerable media exposure, when she appeared drunk and swearing on a live Channel 4 TV discussion.^[1] In 1999, she was a Turner Prize nominee and exhibited My Bed — an installation, consisting of her own unmade dirty bed with used condoms and blood-stained underwear. There has been an ongoing dispute with former boyfriend, artist Billy Childish, particularly over the Stuckism movement, founded in 1999 and named after an insult by her.

In 2004, her tent artwork was destroyed in the Momart warehouse fire. In March 2007, Emin was chosen to join the Royal Academy of Arts in London as a Royal Academician. She represented Britain at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Her first major retrospective 20 Years was held in Edinburgh 2008, and toured Europe until 2009.

Emin's art takes many different forms of expression including needlework and sculpture, drawing, video and installation, photography and painting.

Those of you living in Ottawa or planning to visit this summer will have an opportunity to see some of her work as she is one of a number of artists featured in a show entitled Pop Life: Art in a Material World that will run at the at the National Gallery of Canada from June 11 to September 9. According to the National Post, "It’s been the talk of the London art world, and in June, it’s coming to the National Gallery of Canada, its only North American stop on a world tour."

12a This could lead to baker performing acrobatic moves (12)

Although Gazza provides an explanation of this clue in his review, it may be worthwhile to say a few words about it as well. The definition is "performing acrobatic moves" which has the solution BREAKDANCING. The wordplay is "this could lead to baker" which is a reverse anagram. That is, the wordplay is asking us to supply the fodder and indicator of an anagram for which the solution is BAKER. The required anagram clue is "break dancing", since an anagram (dancing) of BREAK is BAKER.

4d Song introduced by army officer - it's ropy (6)

Here "introduced" is used in the sense of "inserted". Also, "by" is not (as it might appear) a charade indicator. This is actually a container type clue where the wordplay is ARIA (song) contained in (introduced by) LT (army officer). It would seem that one must interpret the clue to implicitly mean "song introduced [into himself] by army officer]".

7d Unsophisticated friend keeps wanderin' about on island (10)

Yet another case where I found the solution without being able to figure out the wordplay. Gazza (with a bit of an assist from Vince) provides an explanation.

13d One may relax with a church-warden (4-6)

Here is another clue where I initially did not understand the wordplay, not being familiar with a churchwarden pipe. My first web search (based on the seemingly incorrect spelling appearing in the clue) did not help. However, when it became obvious from Gazza's review that the explanation must be so trivial that he didn't even deem it worthy of mention, I was motivated to undertake another search (this time using the correct spelling appearing in his review). The hyphen appearing in "church-warden" is almost certainly not part of the spelling of the word, but rather merely a result of a compound word being split across two lines of text. The initial search on "church-warden" returned only a single result which did not mention the pipe meaning of the word. However, the subsequent search on "churchwarden" produced numerous results, with the pipe meaning prominent among them. I wonder if it is cricket for editors to hyphenate words in clues in cryptic crosswords in this way where precise spelling can sometimes be crucial.

Signing off for today - Falcon