Thursday, January 20, 2011 (DT 26375)

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26375
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Setter Unknown
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26375]
Big Dave's Review Written By Gazza
Big Dave's Rating
Difficulty - ***	Enjoyment - ***
Falcon's Performance ┌────┬────┬────┬────┐ ████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┘

Introduction

Today, I gave my Tool Chest a day off. While I was able to complete the puzzle unaided, I did finish with unanswered questions concerning the wordplay in a couple of clues - as it turns out, both relating to rhymes. I got 1a solely from the wordplay and checking letters, not being familiar with this work of Coleridge. As well, the wordplay in 9d totally eluded me despite having identified the two composers. I was to learn from Gazza that the solution is Cockney rhyming slang.

Sliding on Snow and Ice

Some research pertaining to today's clue dealing with the Cresta Run sent me off on a time consuming tangent - but did clear up some long standing confusion for me. As Gazza does today, I have noticed on a couple of occasions in the past that British reviewers use the word toboggan where I would have said sled. It turns out that sled is a "North American term for sledge" [Ref: Oxford Dictionaries Online]. According to the same source, a sledge is either "a vehicle on runners for conveying loads or passengers over snow or ice, often pulled by draught animals" or "a toboggan". However, a toboggan to the Brits clearly is not the same thing as it is to a Canadian. Oxford defines toboggan as "a long, light, narrow vehicle, typically on runners, used for sliding downhill over snow or ice". Well, this definition is fine as far as being long, light and narrow, but a Canadian toboggan is typically not on runners. As Wikipedia states, "A toboggan differs from most sleds or sleighs in that it has no runners or skis (or only low ones) on the underside. The bottom of a toboggan rides directly on the snow."

Wikipedia is a bit contradictory with regard to skeleton and cresta racing. In one article, it states "The Cresta Run is a natural ice 1,212.5 m (3,978 ft, over three-quarter mile) long skeleton racing sled track in the Swiss winter sports town of St. Moritz, and one of the few runs dedicated primarily to skeleton." However, in another article, it says:

Skeleton sled

Skeleton is a fast winter sliding sport in which an individual person rides a small sled down a frozen track while lying face down, during which athletes experience forces up to 5g. It originated in St. Moritz, Switzerland as a spin-off from the popular British sport of Cresta Sledding. While skeleton "sliders" use equipment similar to that of cresta "riders", the two sports are different: while skeleton is run on the same track used by bobsleds and luge, cresta is run on cresta-specific sledding tracks only. Neither the skeleton sled or Cresta toboggan have a steering or braking mechanism although the cresta riders use rakes on their boots in addition to shifting body weight to help steer and brake.

Cresta toboggan

The Cresta Run was originally built by the owner of the Kulm hotel in St Moritz to cater to "devotees of sledding (tobogganing in British parlance)" in order to alleviate the peril posed by "British gentlemen [who] had long enjoyed racing one another down the busy, winding streets of the town, causing an uproar among citizens because of the danger to pedestrians and visiting tourists." In particular, note the reference in this quote to the term 'tobogganing' being "British parlance" for 'sledding'.

Traditional toboggan

It is clear from the pictures in the Wikipedia articles that a Cresta 'toboggan' very closely resembles a skeleton sled (and bears no similarity to a traditional Canadian toboggan). The word toboggan derives from the language of the Mi'kmaq (a native people of Atlantic Canada), and it is difficult to imagine that they used anything resembling a Cresta sled.

After all this, I note that today's setter uses the word "sled", rather than toboggan!

Today's Glossary

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

Appearing in Solutions:

Brahms and Liszt - adjective British informal drunk [origin: (1930s) rhyming slang for ‘pissed’]

Christabel - a lengthy poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in two parts - the first written in 1797, and the second in 1800.

Cresta Run - a hazardously winding, steeply banked channel of ice built each year at the Cresta Valley, St Moritz, Switzerland, as a tobogganing [actually skeleton] course, on which competitors race on light toboggans [British parlance for sleds] in a characteristic head-first position. Such a run was first built in 1884.

private means - plural noun British income from investments, property, or inheritance, as opposed to earned income or state benefit

redcap - noun 1 British informal a member of the military police 2 North American a railway porter

tally-ho - exclamation [fox hunting] a huntsman's cry to the hounds on sighting a fox

Abbreviations & Symbols:

ho. - abbreviation house

Lt - abbreviation [1^st entry] Lieutenant

MP - abbreviation [2^nd and 3^rd entries] military police, military policeman

R² - abbreviation 7 rupee

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.

7d   Assistant in kitchen, very good American, leading one astray (4-4)

Initially I couldn't see how "very good" might mean 'so'. It seems I was thinking in terms of an adverb, where 'so' means simply 'very' (she was so polite). However, Gazza points out that we need to look at it as a conjunction, where 'so' or 'very good' would be used to indicate 'that's fine as far as it goes' and be followed by a request for more information. For instance, a lawyer examing a witness might say "Let's see, you followed the purse snatcher to a bar. Very good, what did you do then?".

Signing off for today - Falcon