Tuesday, October 5, 2010 (DT 26284)

This puzzle, by Rufus, was originally published in The Daily Telegraph on Monday, July 5, 2010

The National Post has skipped DT 26283 which was published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, July 3, 2010

Introduction

Today we have a typically enjoyable - if slightly less difficult than usual - puzzle from Rufus. Libellule awards it two stars for difficulty and three for enjoyment. I was able to complete it unaided as I sat in my doctor's waiting room, out of reach of my Tool Chest.

Today's Glossary

Selected abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions appearing in today's puzzle

Appearing in Solutions:

boob¹ - noun

• 1 British an embarrassing mistake (also verb make an embarrassing mistake)
• 2 North American a foolish or stupid person

Note: not to be confused with its appropriately superscripted companion definition boob²

c. - abbreviation 1. cricket caught

circus - noun [in place names] British a rounded open space in a town where several streets converge: Piccadilly Circus

departmental store - noun British a department store

Note: Judging by the rarity of its appearance in dictionaries (including British ones), I would have to think that this term is not in common use in the U.K.. Presumably, the Brits, like North Americans, use the term department store. Most of the instances of usage that I found were in reference to India, so the term may be used there. Perhaps it is a vestige of usage from colonial times that has since fallen out of favour in Britain but survived in India.

feather-brain - noun a silly or absent-minded person

Note: The meaning of this term is fairly self-evident. However, Oxford (ODE) is the only dictionary to spell it with a hyphen. Without exception, every other dictionary (at least, among the extensive list of them that I regularly consult) spells it as as a single word, featherbrain.

nick¹ - [Collins English Dictionary] verb 2. Slang, chiefly British a. to steal; b. to take into legal custody; arrest

warren (also rabbit warren) - noun

• a network of interconnecting rabbit burrows
• British historical an enclosed piece of land set aside for breeding game, especially rabbits

Today's Links
Libellule's review of today's puzzle may be found at Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26284].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

28a For an NCO such punishment may well involve stripes (8)

Before reading Libellule's review I had not twigged to the possibility that the punishment could have been a couple of lashes. Perhaps as I had first entered DEMOTION here, I was fixated on the idea that we were dealing with a sergeant who had a stripe removed (actually two, one from each arm).

21d Show where traffic goes round (6)

My first entry here was CIRCLE, but it failed on two counts. First, as I was soon to discover, it does not match the checking letter provided by 30a. Second, a circle is not a show - but a circus is. In Britain, a circus is 'a rounded open space in a town where several streets converge'. Traffic goes round there because a circus almost invariably contains a traffic circle. Another definition for circus is 'a public scene of frenetic, noisy, or confused activity', and I can't help but wonder whether this sense of the word evolved from the shenanigans of the travelling company of performers or from the traffic chaos in the centre of British towns.

By the way, traffic circles are beginning to be introduced into Ottawa. We have long had one intersection in the middle of the Central Experimental Farm (a large park in Ottawa that is also an active agricultural research institution) that looks like a traffic circle but which does not adhere to the rules of traffic flow for a traffic circle. When I first moved to Ottawa from Nova Scotia, where I was familiar with traffic circles (called rotaries there), I was nearly involved in an accident when I attempted to navigate this intersection as if it were a traffic circle - and all the other drivers followed a different set of driving rules. Now that we have several real traffic circles in the city, it seems that the potential for disaster can only increase if we continue to allow this abomination to exist.

Signing off for today - Falcon