Tuesday, March 1, 2011 (DT 26411)

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26411
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Setter Unknown
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26411]
Big Dave's Review Written By Gazza
Big Dave's Rating
Difficulty - **	Enjoyment - ***
Falcon's Performance ┌────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐ ███████████████████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ Legend: █ - solved without assistance █ - solved with assistance from puzzle solving tools █ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Big Dave's blog

Introduction

I had to use help from my Tool Chest on two clues today, in particular for the Welsh dandy at 14d. The clue at 25a also proved a bit knotty - not having encountered this shore bird up to now.

Cricket Anyone?

There is a cricket themed clue at 9a in this puzzle - which elicits the expected discussion at Big Dave's site. So, this is perhaps an appropriate occasion to make mention of the Cricket World Cup, currently underway in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. I must say that this event is garnering very little attention here in Canada. Although Canada is a participant, we unfortunately seem to be the doormats of the competition, having lost our first two matches by very decisive margins (one might even be tempted to say embarrassing margins). Canada does hold one World Cup record though, for lowest score - a 36 against Sri Lanka in 2003.

Below, I have included a few excerpts from the report on Canada's second game. Although the words are from the English language, the account would certainly defy comprehension by anyone not versed in cricket. I wonder if passing it through Babelfish would make it understandable? Actually, I was able to understand some bits of the the report, mainly due to having picked up a number of cricket terms and concepts from British crossword puzzles! Even without that limited knowledge, it would not be difficult to see that Canada's performance was not good.

Tatenda Taibu just missed a maiden World Cup century while Raymond Price grabbed three early wickets as Zimbabwe crushed hapless Canada by 175 runs ... Zimbabwe were indebted to former captain Taibu (98) and Craig Ervine (85) for posting 298-9 before dismissing Canada for a paltry 123, with left-arm spinner Price finishing with 3-16 off eight tight overs ... Leg-spinner Graeme Cremer (3-31) and off-spinners Prosper Utseya (2-24) and Greg Lamb (2-29) then built on Price's superb effort as Canada continued to struggle against spin ... Balaji Rao broke the partnership when he had Ervine caught behind, but not before the batsman had smashed two sixes and six fours in an 81-ball knock for his second half-century in one-day internationals.

Housekeeping Notes

You may have noticed a minor change to my performance chart today. The bar now shows the actual number of clues in the puzzle (e.g., today there were 29) rather than normalizing the results and presenting the performance on a percentage basis. In the past, as I could only show results to the nearest 5%, I was constantly having to round up or round down, an issue which is avoided by the new method of presentation.

On another note, some time back - based on feedback from readers that red text was difficult to read - I began indicating entries in Today's Glossary that had already appeared in recent reviews by marking them with an asterisk (rather than the red text that I had been using for a brief period). I mark these entries primarily so that I can readily identify entries that have already been included when I compile the Cumulative Glossary.

Today's Glossary

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

[Items marked with an asterisk are from a Cumulative Glossary of entries appearing, since the beginning of this year, in either this blog or its companion blog, the Ottawa Citizen Cryptic Crossword Forum.]

Appearing in Clues:

The meanings listed in this section may reflect how the word is used in the surface reading of the clue. Of course, that meaning may be contributing to the misdirection that the setter is attempting to create.

crit - noun British informal a review of a literary or artistic work or production (short for criticism or critic)

*don¹ - noun 1 British a university teacher, especially a senior member of a college at Oxford or Cambridge

host² - noun 2 archaic an army

(Richard) Nash (1674–1762) - Welsh dandy; known as Beau Nash. He was an arbiter of fashion and etiquette in the early Georgian age.

Appearing in Solutions:

beau monde - noun (the beau monde) fashionable society

*CE - abbreviation [1^st entry] Church of England

cover - noun 3 British protection by insurance against a liability, loss, or accident: your policy provides cover against damage by subsidence

The equivalent North American term would be:
coverage - noun 3 US [and Canada] the amount of protection given by an insurance policy

docile - [Collins English Dictionary] adjective 2. Rare ready to learn; easy to teach

extra cover - noun Cricket a fielding position between cover point and mid-off but further from the wicket; a fielder at extra cover

G-man - noun 1 US informal an FBI agent [1930s: probably an abbreviation of Government man]

gownsman - noun dated man gown wearer: a man, e.g. an academic, who wears a gown for professional reasons

knot² - noun a small, relatively short- billed sandpiper, with a reddish -brown or blackish breast in the breeding season. [Genus Calidris, family Scolopacidae: two species, in particular the red knot (C. canutus), which breeds in the Arctic and winters in the southern hemisphere]

*RA - abbreviation [3^rd entry] (in the UK) Royal Academician, a member of the Royal Academy of the Arts (an institution established in London in 1768, whose purpose is to cultivate painting, sculpture, and architecture in Britain)

Staffa - a small uninhabited island of the Inner Hebrides, west of Mull. It is the site of Fingal's Cave and is noted for its basalt columns

swell - noun 5 informal, dated a fashionable or stylish person of wealth or high social position: a crowd of city swells

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.

5a   Don, perhaps, has fed FBI agent (8)

Perhaps this clue has more of an American flavour (or should I say flavor) than even the "FBI agent" reference. In the cryptic reading, a "don" is a British university teacher (someone who would traditionally wear a gown, a gownsman). However, in the surface reading, a "don" is an American Mafia boss. The wordplay is OWNS (has) contained in (fed) GMAN (FBI agent).

The term 'gownsman' is not found in the online versions of Chambers, Oxford or Collins (at TheFreeDictionary.com). It does appear in The American Heritage Dictionary (also at The FreeDictionary.com), the U.S. version of Encarta, and the World (U.K.) version of Encarta. This, combined with the fact that most of the Brits had never heard of the term, would tend to make me suspect that it may be primarily American. Encarta does characterize the term as 'dated'.

13a   One makes notes in Oxford Book of Essays, initially (4)

While I can't be certain that Gazza was not responsible for the quotation marks in the version of the clue which appears in his review, I would doubt it. At any rate, there are no quotation marks in the clue as published in the National Post - not that it really matters.

In case you might be wondering, the setter did not invent this book just to suit the clue. The Oxford Book of Essays is an actual  publication of Oxford University Press.

15a   Former wife's erotic dancing is popular (8)

I was able to work out the correct solution from the wordplay, but it was a new word for me. I thought it was highly ironic that I should be totally familiar with 'esoteric' and totally ignorant of 'exoteric'. The conclusion that 'esoteric' is an exoteric word while 'exoteric' is an esoteric word is further supported by the Blogger spellchecker which is placing squiggly red lines under each instance of 'exoteric' in the text and suggesting that I change it to 'esoteric'.

26a   Fresh landlord brought round special bulletin (10)

I suppose we should just accept on faith that, in some context, 'S' is a recognized abbreviation for "special". I was not able to find it in any of several sources - it did not even appear in the acronym list found at TheFreeDictionary.com (which lists 90 other things that 'S' may stand for). [If I were to look, I would expect to find that "It's in Chambers."]

22d   Game, extremely tight once opener's removed (5)

This clue can be read on several levels. In the surface reading, it almost certainly refers to a game of cricket. The opener is 'a batsman who opens the batting'. Thus once he has been removed (is out) the game becomes extremely close (tight).

From a cryptic standpoint, the definition is "game" for which the solution is LOTTO (which can mean either a lottery or a game similar to bingo). The wordplay tells us that we will have discovered the solution once we have removed the first letter (opener) from a word meaning highly intoxicated (extremely tight). That word, of course, is BLOTTO.

However, my inclination was to read the clue as a whole (rather than split it into two distinct parts) which led to the mistaken interpretation "a word meaning 'game' would become a word meaning 'extremely tight' if the first letter (of the former) were removed". There was really no excuse for this, as the comma in the clue clearly indicated the proper break point and I was, in effect, mentally inserting yet another comma after "tight". The logic in this interpretation also happens to be completely the reverse of the correct logic. While this bit of misdirection may not have been intended by the setter, it certainly was an effective stumbling block - holding up my progress for several minutes as I sorted it out.

Reading Gazza's review, I see that he fell into a similar trap. He offers up a somewhat different explanation for the clue - one that I don't buy and, judging by his own comments, one in which he doesn't place much faith.

Signing off for today - Falcon