Introduction
I found it to be a most enjoyable puzzle today, although definitely more difficult (in my books) than yesterday's puzzle. However, Big Dave awards it only three stars - the same number as were conferred on yesterday's puzzle. No doubt the large number of Briticisms (including a couple of recently appointed members of Cabinet) in today's puzzle ratchet up the difficulty level significantly on this side of the Atlantic. All in all, I derived a great deal of satisfaction from having successfully completed this puzzle - even if my Tool Chest did get a substantial workout today.
Today's Glossary
Some possibly unfamiliar abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions used in today's puzzle
Used in Clues:
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS (1806 – 1859) - a leading British civil engineer, famed for his bridges and dockyards, and especially for the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of famous steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges and tunnels
Theresa May - a British Conservative politician who serves as Home Secretary in the current Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition government
takeaway - noun 1 British
- a restaurant or shop selling cooked food to be eaten elsewhere: a fast-food takeaway
- [as modifier]: a takeaway pizza
- a meal or dish bought from a shop or restaurant to be eaten elsewhere
[Note: the equivalent North American expression is takeout]
Used in Solutions:
cru - [American Heritage Dictionary] noun
- 1. A vineyard or wine-producing region in France
- 2. A grade or class of wine: premier cru
M2 - abbreviation 10 British Motorway, followed by a number, as in M1
moor - noun chiefly British a tract of open uncultivated upland, typically covered with heather
OBE - abbreviation Officer of the Order of the British Empire
RE - abbreviation (in the UK) Royal Engineers, the field engineering and construction corps of the British army
term - noun 4 the end of a particular time, especially the end of pregnancy when the baby is about to be born
trainspotter - noun British
- a person who collects train or locomotive numbers as a hobby
- often derogatory a person who obsessively studies the minutiae of any minority interest or specialized hobby
Today's Links
Big Dave's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26275].
Commentary on Today's Puzzle
12a Vintage traveller through space in small vessel (5)
At Big Dave's site, the discussion of this clue revolved around the syntax of the clue - whether the structure of this clue ("{wordplay} in {definition}") follows proper cryptic clue syntax. However, the clue triggers a question in my mind that did not arise on Big Dave's site. My question is whether vintage and cru are the same thing. While both are terms used to describe wine, my research appears to indicate that vintage refers to the year in which the grapes were grown and cru refers to the location where the grapes were grown.
Signing off for today - Falcon
12A: Chambers dictionary has "a vintage" in its definition of "cru", and this fact might have persuaded the Telegraph's crossword editor that the clue was OK (other British one-volume dictionaries don't have this meaning). Looking at the two OED entries, you can just detect a shade of meaning where the two words coincide - a figurative indication of a level of quality.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair to Dave: the 3 stars were for difficulty, for enjoyment the puzzle got 4.
Hi Peter,
ReplyDeleteIt is always good to receive your perspective on things. I have come to expect Chambers to contain definitions that are to be found no where else. Unfortunately, the word cru does not even exist in the online edition of Chambers.
I probably could have phrased my opening comments a bit more precisely. They were not meant to dispute Big Dave's assessment of the difficulty or enjoyment factor of the puzzle. I, too, found this to be a very enjoyable puzzle and am in full agreement with Big Dave on his 4 star rating for that attribute. I also do not dispute his 3 stars for difficulty; my remark about the number of stars was meant to be merely a comment that, though the Brits found yesterday's and today's puzzles comparable in terms of difficulty, I found today's considerably more difficult (at least partly due to the fairly large number of specific British references it contained).
Falcon
Sorry, I guessed the wrong way after your first sentence mentioning both enjoyment and difficulty.
ReplyDeleteThe free online version of Chambers is "Chambers 21st Century Dictionary", which is a rather different beast to the "Chambers Dictionary" used by the setters and solvers of the hardest British puzzles. In particular, it lacks many of the archaic, literary and otherwise obscure words and meanings. But not having "cru" at all is a poor show.
As a free online UK-published dictionary, the best at the moment is the one on the new Oxford Dictionaries website - the "World English" version is the recent revision of the excellent Oxford Dictionary of English.
I do favour the Oxford Dictionaries site. One reason is that I find that this site tends (more so than other sites) to specifically identify instances of British usage. I have noted that the range of words on the new site also seems to be somewhat more extensive than on the old site. Unfortunately, after the establishment of the new site, many of the links from my earlier posts are now broken. And not just links from my posts, as I have noted that links to Oxford from other sites, such as the Onelook Dictionary Search site are now also often broken as well.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, in some cases, I find the format of entries on the new Oxford site to be a bit strange. For instance, where there are multiple subentries within a numbered entry, the first entry has no bullet causing the other subentries to look like subordinate entries to it, rather than peer entries. It is interesting that when I "cut and paste" such entries into my blog editor, a bullet sometimes magically appears on the first subentry.
Falcon