Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - DT 26721

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26721
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Monday, November 28, 2011
Setter Rufus
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26721]
Big Dave's Review Written By Libellule
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
Notes The National Post has skipped DT 26720 which was published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, November 26, 2011

Introduction

Libellule explains the five stars for enjoyment that he awarded to this puzzle as follows, "This crossword from Rufus gets five stars for enjoyment because it is 25 years since his first Telegraph crossword was published. So I would like to add my congratulations to what I suspect will be many." Allow me to second that motion.

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.

10a   Holiness surprisingly intact in the outskirts of Surrey (8)

In yesterday's puzzle, we paid a visit to Hertfordshire (Herts for short) which is located just a bit northwest of London. Today we travel south to Surrey which is just a bit southwest of London. Surrey^[5] is a county of SE England, another of the Home Counties^[5] (the English counties surrounding London, into which London has extended; they comprise chiefly Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Hertfordshire). Prior to 1965, this list would also have included Middlesex^[7]. However, in that year, almost all of the original area of the county was incorporated into an enlarged Greater London , with small parts transferred to neighbouring Hertfordshire and Surrey. The surrounding counties of Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, and East and West Sussex are also sometimes considered to belong to the Home Counties^[7].

19a   Ways to get round little children’s demands (6)

Wee^[5] is a chiefly Scottish adjective – albeit one that is certainly very well known in North America – meaning little • (i) when I was just a wee bairn; (ii) the lyrics are a wee bit too sweet and sentimental.

Sweet^[5] is the British name for candy^[5].

21a   The second man to hoist a flag? (6-2)

"To hoist a flag" might be "to run 'er up" – especially if the speaker were a Cockney.

7d   Property conveyance? (6,3)

In Britain, a station wagon^[5] is known as an estate car^[5] (which is often shortened to just estate^[5]). I have observed that the Brits tend to shorten expressions such as this (consisting of an adjective and noun) by dropping the noun and using the adjective as a noun (thus, estate car becomes shortened to estate). North Americans, on the other hand, tend to just drop the adjective (with station wagon being shortened to wagon).

13d   Foreign city bank headed by scoundrel (9)

Rotter^[5] is an informal, dated British term for a cruel, mean, or unkind person • Rosemary had decided that all men were rotters.

15d   Important person that’s going round in London (3,5)

The London Eye, or Millennium Wheel, is a giant Ferris wheel situated on the banks of the River Thames, in London, England. The entire structure is 135 metres (443 ft) tall and the wheel has a diameter of 120 metres (394 ft). It is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe, and the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom, visited by over 3.5 million people annually. When erected in 1999, it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, until surpassed first by the 160 m (520 ft) Star of Nanchang in 2006, and then the 165 m (541 ft) Singapore Flyer in 2008. It is still described by its operators as "the world's tallest cantilevered observation wheel" (as the wheel is supported by an A-frame on one side only, unlike the Nanchang and Singapore wheels).

17d   Craft operatives who twist one’s arm (7)

It was easy to pick the solution out of a list of words matching the checking letters. However, if I had detected the presence of an anagram, there would have been no need to activate my electronic assistants.

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)
^[10] - CollinsDictionary.com (Collins English Dictionary)

Happy Valentine's Day - Falcon