Friday, August 12, 2011 - DT 26556

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26556
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Thursday, May 19, 2011
Setter Ray T
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26556]
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

As usual, Ray T provides a fun puzzle with just a soupçon of naughtiness - and perhaps a little easier than customary. I handicapped myself by putting BUCCANEER in at 16d, but was able to recover once I had found the solution to 15a. I also needed a little help on the clue dealing with the Yorkshire dialect. However, a search for words matching the checking letters turned up only three candidates and the correct one jumped out at me as I remembered that the principal distinguishing characteristic of the Yorkshire dialect (at least, as far as crossword puzzles go) is Definite Article Reduction (in linguists' lingo). The clue at 26a reminded me of high school where, at the start of the school year, teachers would hand out textbooks and students would vie for a new mint-condition book rather than a used one. That is, they did so in every class except Latin, where everyone wanted to score a copy of an older version of the text which contained a reproduction of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (which authorities had seen fit to remove from later printings of the book). Last year, on a trip to Italy, I had the opportunity to see the original hanging in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

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.

bird - noun 3 British informal a young woman or a man's girlfriend.

Heston Blumenthal - English chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray, Berkshire voted Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide 2007 and 2009, and voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2005.

cracking - adjective [attributive] British informal excellent: he is in cracking form to win this race; [as submodifier] a cracking good story

*grass - verb 2 British informal inform the police of someone's criminal activities or plans: [no object]: someone had grassed on the thieves; [with object]: she threatened to grass me up

Pomerol - noun a red Bordeaux wine produced in Pomerol, a region in the Gironde, France.

Appearing in Solutions:

*Ag¹ - symbol the chemical element silver.

Che Guevara - (1928–67), Argentinian revolutionary and guerrilla leader ; full name Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. He played a significant part in the Cuban revolution (1956-9) and became a government minister under Castro. He was captured and executed by the Bolivian army while training guerrillas for a planned uprising in Bolivia.

cove² - noun British informal, dated a man: he is a perfectly amiable cove

H² - abbreviation [1^st entry] hard (used in describing grades of pencil lead): a 2H pencil

Henrik Ibsen - (1828–1906), Norwegian dramatist. He is credited with being the first major dramatist to write tragedy about ordinary people in prose. Ibsen‘s later works, such as The Master Builder (1892), deal increasingly with the forces of the unconscious and were admired by Sigmund Freud. Other notable works: Peer Gynt (1867), A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881).

Harold Pinter - (1930–2008), English dramatist, actor, and director. His plays are associated with the Theatre of the Absurd and are typically marked by a sense of menace. Notable plays: The Birthday Party (1958), The Caretaker (1960), and Party Time (1991). Nobel Prize for Literature (2005).

rattling - adjective 2 informal, dated very good of its kind (used for emphasis): a rattling good story

scupper - verb British 2. Informal.to prevent from happening or succeeding; ruin; wreck.

t' - Yorkshire Dialect the

Definite Article Reduction (DAR) is the term used in recent linguistic work to refer to the use of vowel-less forms of the definite article the in Northern dialects of English English, for example in the Yorkshire dialect and accent.

voilà - French there is, there are

While voilà literally means there is or there are, it can take a wide range of idiomatic senses. For instance, if someone were to ask to borrow your pen, as you handed it to them you might say in English "There you are" or "There you go". In French, the equivalent reply would be "Voilà".

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.

28a   Garter men undo, endlessly excited finding stocking? (12)

The definition is "stocking" and the wordplay is an anagram (excited) of GARTER MEN UND (UNDO endlessly; i.e., without its final letter). The solution is UNDERGARMENT. My interpretation is that the setter considers stockings to be undergarments, not because they are worn under another article of clothing (as Big Dave indicates in his hint), but because they are worn on the lower part of the body (with this non-conventional meaning being signalled by the question mark at the end of the clue).

Signing off for today - Falcon