Friday, November 30, 2012 - DT 26973

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26973
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Monday, September 17, 2012
Setter Rufus (Roger Squires)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26973]
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 26972 which was published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, September 15, 2012.

Introduction

Go figure! After an entire week of three and four star degree of difficulty puzzles for which I did not need to resort to the use of my electronic assistants, I had to call upon them for today's one star offering. Oh well! We seem to scale mountains with ease but stumble over mole hills. The two clues for which I sought help were 21a and 12d. As is often the case, there is no obvious reason why the solutions to these particular clues should have eluded me.

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   Neat electrical network that keeps farm animals in a field (6,4)

Neat^[5] is an archaic term for (1) a bovine animal or (2) cattle. In Britain, a cattle grid^[5] is a metal grid covering a ditch, allowing vehicles and pedestrians to pass over but not cattle and other animals. The North American name for this device is a cattle guard.

11a   Architectural style about right? That's sarcastic! (6)

A classical order^[7] is one of the ancient styles of classical architecture, each distinguished by its proportions and characteristic profiles and details, and most readily recognizable by the type of column employed. Three ancient orders of architecture—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—originated in Greece. To these the Romans added the Tuscan, which they made simpler than Doric, and the Composite, which was more ornamental than the Corinthian.

12a   Not birds, but they chirp and fly (7)

... and, to my mind, not very cryptic, but a style of clue that we have come to expect from Rufus — one often characterised as "barely cryptic".

18a   Pay attention or bend over (4)

I spent a good deal of time poring over dictionaries to justify my answer here. I had to choose between LIST, TILT and possibly WILT. I was leaning toward the former and it proved to be the winner. List^[10] is an archaic or poetic word for listen.

19a   Starts the game off with defeats (5)

Start^[5] is used in the sense to rouse (game) from its lair. Beat^[5] is to move across (an area of land) repeatedly striking at the ground cover in order to raise game birds for shooting ⇒ they hire boys to beat the Yorkshire moors for game birds.

27a   One holds hands during the game (4,6)

Pontoon^[5] (mentioned by Libellule in his hint) is (1) another name for the card game blackjack or vingt-et-un ⇒ he got me to go into his room for a hand of pontoon or (2) a hand of two cards totalling 21 in pontoon.

28a   Growth of love at first sight (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 numeral (0) to the letter O leads to the cryptic crossword convention of the word "love" being used to clue this letter.

7d   Hire candle out, giving superior illumination (10)

Here "superior illumination" is a cryptic indication that we are looking for a lighting fixture that one might expect to find in an elevated position.

8d   Smart girl seen in a city (10)

Chichester^[5] is a cathedral city in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, South-East England. Hester — a rarely encountered girl's name — is best known to me as the given name of Hester Prynne^[7], the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter. The name may well be more popular in the UK than it is in North America as the list of entries on Wikipedia for Hester^[7] is overwhelmingly populated by women from Britain.

13d   Chars at night to get debt written off (5,5)

Char^[5] (as a noun) is an informal shortened version of charwoman^[5], a dated British term for a woman employed as a cleaner in a house or office. As a verb, char means to work as a charwoman ⇒ she’d had to char and work in a grocery store to put herself through university.

14d   Where we can buy with money off drink on board (5)

As is customary in cryptic crosswords, "on board" implies 'on a steamship (abbreviation SS^[5])'.

25d   Time to come up before a court (4)

It initially seemed to me that the definition might be a bit vague, but I was compelled to change my mind after consulting a dictionary. Court^[5] is defined as (1) a quadrangular area, either open or covered, marked out for ball games such as tennis or squash or (2) a quadrangular area surrounded by a building or group of buildings.

26d   Electric wire to act as a conductor (4)

In Britain, a lead^[5] is a wire that conveys electric current from a source to an appliance, or that connects two points of a circuit together.

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