Thursday, February 2, 2012 - DT 26711

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26711
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Setter Jay
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26711]
Big Dave's Review Written By Pommers
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 █ - solved with aid of checking letters provided by puzzle solving tools █ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Big Dave's blog █ - reviewed by Falcon for Big Dave's blog

Introduction

Jay would appear to be playing games with us today. The one at 28a was new to me and it took a bit of research to establish that I, in fact, did have the correct solution.

Notes on Today's Puzzle

This commentary is intended to serve as a supplement to the review of this puzzle found at Big Dave's Crossword Blog, to which a link is provided in the table above.

25a   Working around motorway surrounded by deer and game (8)

The M1^[7] is a major motorway in England primarily connecting London to Leeds. In Britain, a

motorway^[5] is a dual-carriageway road^[5] (in North American parlance, a multi-lane divided highway) designed for fast traffic, with relatively few places for joining or leaving.

The Great Britain road numbering scheme^[7] is a numbering scheme used to classify and identify all roads in Great Britain. Each road is given a single letter, which represents the road's category, and a subsequent number, with a length of between 1 and 4 digits. Two schemes exist; one for roads of motorway standard (and classification), and another for non-motorway roads. Motorways are identified by the prefix M, and non-motorway roads by the prefixes A, B, C, D and U (unclassified).

The scheme applies only to England, Scotland and Wales. Alternative systems are used in Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and Jersey, Channel Islands.

28a   Game fish occasionally canned (8)

Sardines^[5] is a British children’s game based on hide-and-seek, in which one child hides and the other children, as they find the hider, join him or her in the hiding place until just one child remains.

2d   School board drowning in beer — delightful! (8)

In the cryptic reading of this clue, treat "school" as a verb (meaning to train) rather than a noun - thus qualifying it as an anagram indicator.

5d   Information on English characteristic thus passed on (4)

In Britain, gen^[5] is an informal term for information • you've got more gen on him than we have.

11d   Dismiss greyhound stalls as dangerous places in an emergency (9)

A trap^[5] is the compartment from which a greyhound is released at the start of a race.

19d   Plateful of sticky gunk? That’s sort of okay (7)

A "plateful of something" would signify a "plate" with 'something' on it. This being a down clue, that means that 'something' comes before "plate".

Key to Reference Sources: 

^[1] - The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition
^[2] - Search Chambers - (Chambers 21st Century Dictionary)
^[3] - TheFreeDictionary.com (American Heritage Dictionary)
^[4] - TheFreeDictionary.com (Collins English Dictionary)
^[5] - Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford Dictionary of English)
^[6] - Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford American Dictionary)
^[7] - Wikipedia
^[8] - Reverso Online Dictionary (Collins French-English Dictionary)
^[9] - Infoplease (Random House Unabridged Dictionary)

Signing off for today - Falcon