Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26359 | |
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Thursday, September 30, 2010 | |
Setter Unknown | |
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26359] | |
Big Dave's Review Written By Big Dave | |
Big Dave's Rating | |
| Difficulty - ** | Enjoyment - *** |
Falcon's Performance ***** (-) | |
Introduction
Big Dave found this puzzle "comparatively straightforward" - which undoubtedly explains why my Tool Chest saw no action today. I gave myself a minus (-) for not understanding the wordplay in 28a.
A Bit of Housekeeping
In case anyone is still catching up on puzzles published over the Christmas period, I have now posted a couple of reviews that I was not able to complete during that busy period.
Today's Glossary
Selected abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions appearing in today's puzzle
Appearing in Clues:
music hall - noun [1st entry] [clearly British]
- a form of variety entertainment popular in Britain from circa 1850, consisting of singing, dancing, comedy, acrobatics, and novelty acts. Its popularity declined after the First World War with the rise of the cinema.
- a theatre where music-hall entertainment took place.
Appearing in Solutions:
extra - noun [4th entry] Cricket a run scored other than from a hit with the bat, credited to the batting side rather than to a batsman. [With a wide being but one example of an extra.]
L2 - abbreviation [5th entry] British (on a motor vehicle) learner driver.
side - noun 7 British informal a television channel considered as one of two or more that are available: what's on the other side?
super - noun informal 1 a superintendent.
superintendent - nounvariety - noun 1 [4th entry] [seemingly British] a form of television or theatre entertainment consisting of a series of different types of act, such as singing, dancing, and comedy: [as modifier] a variety show.
Commentary on Today's Puzzle
This commentary should be read in conjunction with the review at Big Dave's Crossword Blog, to which a link is provided in the table above.
13a Banks viewing choices (5)
I didn't really question this clue when I solved it. I suppose the solution was evident from the first definition (banks) and the checking letters. It was only when I read Big Dave's review that I realized that side is a Briticism meaning (TV) channel. The usage example given in Oxford Dictionaries Online "what's on the other side?" evokes an image of a TV viewer physically turning a set around to watch the other side. British expressions sometimes make me wonder if Monty Python was really a British comedy show, or just examples of everyday speech that merely seemed absurd to those of us on this side of the Atlantic. Then again, we no doubt have expressions that seem just as bizarre to them.
22a Brilliant police chief (5)
I wondered whether a superintendent is actually a police chief. From what I was able to discover, the answer would seem to be generally not. Nevertheless, as there was no word of protest on Big Dave's site, I have to assume that the Brits were content with this definition.
According to Wikipedia, a superintendent is a police chief in a few U.S. cities. However, in most jurisdictions, a superintendent would appear to rank somewhat down the hierarchy. In British police forces, a superintendent ranks above a chief inspector and below a chief superintendent, with the chief police officer being called a Chief Constable (except in London, where the title is Commissioner).
26a Music hall collection (7)
I puzzled over this double definition until a bit of research revealed that, in Britain, it would seem that both music hall and variety are used as nouns to mean a type of entertainment popular from the mid-19th century until World War I. In North America, I am sure these terms would be used in this sense only as adjectives (a purpose they may also serve in Britain). It is perhaps instructive to note that in the entry for music hall in Oxford Dictionaries Online, its use to mean a form of entertainment seems to take precedence over its meaning as a venue for such entertainment.
28a Prepared most of pudding and day's over (7)
Although I got the correct solution (DRESSED), I failed to comprehend the wordplay here, mistakenly thinking that we needed a truncated six-letter word meaning "pudding" of the form RESSE? (or possibly ?RESSE) - inserted between DD (day's over, i.e., two Ds spanning this truncated pudding - although the apostrophe should probably have been sufficient to eliminate this supposition).
In fact, the wordplay is actually DESSER(t) (most of pudding) + D(ay), all reversed (over).
3d Exceptionally wide, perhaps (5)
I have discovered that when a clue seems to make no sense at all, I should start looking for cricket references. Such is the case in this clue, where a wide is a cricket term for "a ball that is judged to be too wide of the stumps for the batsman to play, for which an extra is awarded to the batting side".
By the way, in a comment to Big Dave's blog on one of the puzzles included above in A Bit of Housekeeping, Digby offers the following primer on the game of cricket:
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.18d Officer fit to restrain murderer? On the contrary (7)
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.
Here we encounter a style of clue that makes an appearance every now and then. The setter creates a containment type clue in which CAIN (murderer) contains APT (fit) by first fashioning a clue that says exactly the opposite - APT (fit) contains (to restrain) CAIN (murderer) - and then instructs us to reverse the roles (on the contrary).
Signing off for today - Falcon
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