Thursday, June 2, 2011 (DT 26496)

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26496
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Thursday, March 10, 2011
Setter Ray T
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26496]
Big Dave's Review Written By Big Dave
Big Dave's Rating
Difficulty - ★★★	Enjoyment - ★★★★
Falcon's Performance ┌────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐ ███████████████████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ Legend: █ - solved without assistance █ - incorrect prior to use of puzzle solving tools █ - solved with assistance from puzzle solving tools █ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Big Dave's blog █ - reviewed by Falcon for Big Dave's blog

Introduction

Although I completed - or, at least, thought I had completed - the puzzle without electronic assistance, my paper was littered with question marks prompting me to verify that some of the solutions that I had constructed from the wordplay actually do exist or to investigate meanings of words in order to understand some bit of wordplay. I was to discover that my initial efforts were faulty in a couple of cases - having put SPRIT in at 10a and RAROTONGA at 14d.

Today's Glossary

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

[An asterisk beside an entry merely indicates that it has been taken it from a Cumulative Glossary of entries which have previously appeared, in either this blog or its companion blog, the Ottawa Citizen Cryptic Crossword Forum.]

Appearing in Clues:

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.

brief - noun 2 [3^rd entry] British informal a solicitor or barrister: it was only his brief's eloquence that had saved him from prison

crew¹ - [The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition] noun a gang

Oliver Hardy - (1892–1957), together with partner Stan Laurel (born Arthur Stanley Jefferson) (1890–1965) made up the American comedy duo Laurel and Hardy . British-born Stan Laurel played the scatterbrained and often tearful innocent, Oliver Hardy his pompous, overbearing, and frequently exasperated friend. They brought their distinctive slapstick comedy to many films from 1927 onwards.

[Anthony] Hope - (1863 – 1933), English novelist and playwright. Although he was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels, he is remembered best for only two books: The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau (1898). These works are set in the contemporaneous fictional country of Ruritania and spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance.

*motor - noun 2 British informal a car

peak¹ - noun 2 [2^nd entry] British a stiff brim at the front of a cap.

smack - noun (a smack of) a flavour or taste of: anything with even a modest smack of hops dries the palate

style - verb 2 [with object and complement] designate with a particular name, description, or title: the official is styled principal and vice chancellor of the university

Appearing in Solutions:

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

*DI - abbreviation [2^nd entry] (in the UK) Detective Inspector

Within the British police, inspector is the second supervisory rank. It is senior to that of sergeant, but junior to that of chief inspector. Plain-clothes detective inspectors are equal in rank to their uniformed counterparts, the prefix 'detective' identifying them as having been trained in criminal investigation and being part of or attached to their force's Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

[Margaret] Drabble - English novelist, biographer and critic.

eglantine - noun a fragrant species of wild rose, the sweet-brier.

Fr¹ - abbreviation 3 (Fr.) French.

GR - [2^nd entry] abbreviation King George. [from Latin Georgius Rex]

*M² - abbreviation 10 British Motorway, followed by a number, as in M1.

*or² - noun gold or yellow, as a heraldic tincture.

posse - [The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition] noun a gang or group of (especially young) friends (slang)

postbag - noun 1. Chiefly British another name for mailbag

R - [The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition] abbreviation Rector

*Romeo - noun 2 a code word representing the letter R, used in radio communication.

Ruritania - an imaginary kingdom in central Europe used as a fictional background for the adventure novels of courtly intrigue and romance written by Anthony Hope (1863–1933).

scut¹ - noun the short tail of a hare, rabbit, or deer.

Tamar - a river in South West England, that forms most of the border between Devon (to the east) and Cornwall (to the west).

Ur - an ancient Sumerian city formerly on the Euphrates, in southern Iraq. It was one of the oldest cities of Mesopotamia, dating from the 4th millennium bc , and reached its zenith in the late 3rd millennium bc .

V² - abbreviation 2 victory.

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   'Marine! Get moving, bud!' (9)

The definition is "bud" and the wordplay is an anagram (moving) of MARINE GET producing the solution GERMINATE. While bud and germinate hardly mean the same thing in a literal sense, they can be synonyms in a figurative sense - as developing ideas may be described as either budding or germinating.

25a   Smacks and spanks gripping end of thong (5)

In the surface reading, "smacks" is a verb. However, in the cryptic reading it is a noun. Judging by the comments at Big Dave's site, a great many of the Brits not only missed this subtlety, they failed to realize (as did I before consulting a dictionary) that smack can function as a noun as well as a verb.

Signing off for today - Falcon