Friday, May 25, 2012 - DT 26811

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26811
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Monday, March 12, 2012
Setter Rufus
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26811]
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 26810 which was published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, March 10, 2012

Introduction

I guess I fell short in the lateral thinking department, as two of the three clues for which I had to rely on the assistance of my electronic aids were ones that Libellule highlighted as requiring this ability.

Here's a note to those who read the comments on Big Dave's site. I have recently observed that all of the comments no longer display on the same page as the review. At the bottom of the first page of comments, you will now find three sets of navigation buttons. One set (<< Previous 1 2 Next >>) allows you to navigate to the previous page, the next page, or a specific page.  The other sets (<< Older Comments) and (Newer Comments >>) do pretty much the same thing as the (<< Previous" and ""Next >>" controls. I find that they are not very prominent, as it took me a while to notice this change. I believe that this behaviour is a change and that it is fairly recent. However, if I am mistaken on this point and this is a long-standing behaviour of the site, then I am definitely even less observant than I thought.

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.

9a   Ring Henry, love (4)

In tennis, squash, and some other sports, love^[5] is a score of zero or nil • love fifteen. The resemblance of a zero written as a number (0) to the letter O leads to the cryptic crossword convention of love equating to this letter.

10a   Mixes drink for fund-raiser (6,4)

In Britain, a jumble sale^[5] is a sale of miscellaneous second-hand articles, typically held in order to raise money for a charity or a special event. The North American term for this sort of event is rummage sale^[5]

I tried to force-fit the latter term into the space provided. I thought it looked strange with only one M but supposed either I must be mistaken thinking that it had two or that there was an alternative British spelling with only one. This messed me up on 3d until I discovered my error.

15a   Sort of map to study on journey (7)

Con^[5] is an archaic term meaning to study attentively or learn by heart (a piece of writing) • the girls conned their pages with a great show of industry.

16a   Scot returns to service somewhere in Scotland (5)

If one were guided by cryptic crossword puzzles, one would have to conclude that at least 99% of Scotsmen were named Ian. The Royal Navy (abbreviation RN)^[5] is the British navy. Nairn^[5] is a seaside resort on the east coast of Scotland located about 16 miles (26 km) east of Inverness.

21a   Snow shoe accepted by some backward Arctic people (7)

How one could confuse a snow shoe with a ski is beyond me. I suppose because they are both used to travel on snow, they are considered to be synonyms. Of course, using that reasoning, a car could be a truck. Apparently, the term Eskimo does not carry the same aura of offensiveness in Britain as it does in Canada - probably due to the lack of a significant Inuit population there!

22a   Tool for portions of lobster? (7)

Putting an H in the solution certainly did not help me at all!

3d   Some British submarines set up and spring a trap (6)

I think the Brits may have sprung a trap when they sold us their used Upholder-class submarines^[5] (which we call Victoria-class). In retrospect, they should have been called Lemon-class.

7d   Not a starter in the ocean race (4,6)

Starter^[5] is a chiefly British name for the first course of a meal.

8d   Dead bodies seen in protected areas for shooting? (4,6)

Despite – or perhaps due to – needing assistance from the electronic aids in my Tool Chest, this is my clue of the day.

13d   He won’t get the sack if the bag’s big enough (10)

Bag^[5] is the amount of game shot by a hunter • an estimated bag of 3,000 ducks.

15d   Move stealthily like Red Indian, quietly (5)

Piano^[3,5] (abbreviation p^[5]), is a musical direction meaning either soft or quiet (as an adjective) or softly or quietly (as an adverb).

Libellule defines Cree as "a North American native Indian that originally lived in central Canada". Many of them still do, but this people migrated west with the fur trade so that Cree are now found as far west as eastern British Columbia.

19d   It’s smoked chestnuts and hazelnut (7)

I believe that there is a subtle distinction between chestnuts and corn. An old chestnut becomes trite or boring from frequent repetition, while corn may be trite or boring on its first telling.

Chambers 21st Century Dictionary defines cob^[2] as a hazelnut or hazel tree. Collins English Dictionary characterises the meaning of cob^[10] as a hazel tree as being British and I would assume that this also would be true when applied to the hazelnut (although it is not stated as such in the dictionary entry).

23d   Tart and explicit Rice/Webber piece (6)

Tim Rice^[7] and Andrew Lloyd Webber^[7] collaborated on a number of musical theatre hits including Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita.

Given that the latter's surname is Lloyd Webber, should the clue not have read "... explicit Rice/Lloyd Webber piece".

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)

Signing off for today - Falcon