Thursday, September 16, 2010 (DT 26268)

This puzzle, by Jay, was originally published in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Introduction

Although today's puzzle is certainly quite a bit easier than the very challenging one that we saw yesterday, it is not without its tricky clues. One clue alone involves an archaic name for a farm animal, a British name for a farm building plus not one - but two - cricket terms.

Today's Glossary

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

Used in Clues:

extra - Cricket a run scored other than from a hit with the bat, credited to the batting side rather than to a batsman

hole in the wall - noun informal

• 1 British an automatic cash dispenser installed in the outside wall of a bank
• 2 chiefly North American a small dingy bar, shop, or restaurant

neat - noun archaic

• a bovine animal
• [mass noun] cattle

Used in Solutions:

breadline - noun

• 1 (the breadline) British the poorest condition in which it is acceptable to live: they are not well off , but they are not on the breadline
• 2 North American a queue of people waiting to receive free food

bye¹ - 2 Cricket a run scored from a ball that passes the batsman without being hit (recorded as an extra, not credited to the individual batsman)

byre - noun British a cowshed

pint - noun British informal a pint of beer: we'll probably go for a pint on the way home [Note: a fairly common expression in Canada as well]

SP - abbreviation starting price, the final odds at the start of a horse race

splodge - noun & verb British another term for splotch

sup¹ - verb dated or Northern English take (drink or liquid food) by sips or spoonfuls:

• [with object] she supped up her soup delightedly
• [no object] he was supping straight from the bottle

sup¹ - noun

• a sip of liquid:he took another sup of wine
• [mass noun] Northern English & Irish alcoholic drink

Today's Links
Big Dave's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26268].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

1a Pet given oxtail? (7)

After finding the solution, I wrote a big question mark against this clue as I could not figure out the wordplay. That is a signal to myself to come back to the clue for another attempt. Well, I did eventually figure it out. The wordplay is a charade of another name for an ox + a word meaning to trail closely behind (dog). For the first part of the charade, it might also say a word for what the ox would be today if not for some fairly life-changing surgery in his youth.

11a People deputising to cover golf rankings (9)

One might wonder if G as an abbreviation for golf is allowed in cryptic crosswords, then why not F for football or H for hockey? The answer is that golf is the code word for G in the international radio-telephony spelling alphabet. For the same reason, O for Oscar and R for Romeo are permissible, but T for Thomas is not.

23a Poor people waiting at the hole in the wall? (9)

Two expressions that Oxford says have different meanings in Britain and North America come into play here. The first of these is breadline, which in Britain means "the poorest condition in which it is acceptable to live" while in North America is "a queue of people waiting to receive free food". There does seem to be a certain connection between the two meanings, and one wonders how the former understanding of the expression could come into being without the existence of the latter. Chambers indicates that the latter meaning is "Originally US", suggesting that it is used in Britain as well. Of course, in North America, we would not commonly call it a queue. If we did (or if the expression had developed in Britain), it would likely have been breadqueue rather than breadline.

The second is the phrase "hole in the wall" which in Britain is an ATM, while in North America this could mean a dingy bar, for example (prompting me to unsuccessfully attempt to fit dive into the solution).

The clue is a cryptic definition of people waiting their turn to withdraw "bread" from an ATM.

17d Sounds like an insult, but it's not what it seems! (7)

A nice homophone that works on this side of the Atlantic also.

23d Extras, for example, include right to neat housing (5)

There are four terms in this clue that are likely to cause problems for solvers:

• neat, an archaic word for cattle;
• extra, a cricket term meaning "a run scored other than from a hit with the bat";
• bye, another cricket term meaning "a run scored from a ball that passes the batsman without being hit" (a particular instance of an of extra); and
• byre, a British term for a cowshed.

I quickly recognized the first two terms (from having seen them in previous puzzles) and spent quite some time, to no avail, attempting to justify BARNS as the solution. A search for words matching the checking list turned up a fairly short list, with the last one being byre. Upon seeing it, I immediately recalled having visited one at a museum in Ireland - not a stand-alone one like Big Dave shows us in his review, but one that was integrated right into the house (if I remember correctly, the entire dwelling may have been called a byre).

The house is a two-room cottage, with one room being a bedroom and the second room (shown in the picture below) a combination kitchen and cattle stall. The picture is taken from in front of the fireplace looking across the kitchen to the stable area. The dining table is in the left foreground and a sideboard holding the family's dishes is on the right. You can see a trough in the floor separating the kitchen from the area occupied by the livestock. I well remember an American tourist pointing to the trough and saying to her husband "Oh, that must be where they put the cows' food." and his reply "Hmph! It wasn't used for food. The cows were pointed in the other direction!" I can say this, the milk would definitely be fresh - one could almost reach it from the dining table (removing any need for refrigeration!).


24d Live with daughter, in good health (5)

I was fine here, once I had figured out whether daughter came first or last.

Signing off for today - Falcon