Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - DT 26963

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26963
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Setter Jay (Jeremy Mutch)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26963]
Big Dave's Review Written By Scchua
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

Today's puzzle was not overly challenging — with the exception of the homophone clue where both sides of the homophone are Briticisms. When the solution to 23a finally dawned on me, it brought with it a big smile.

When this puzzle originally appeared in the UK, Pommers suggested that Jay might have slipped 12a into the puzzle thinking that I might be blogging the puzzle. This idea is further supported by several references in the puzzle to engineering and electricity [my career was spent in the field of electrical engineering]. If this was, in fact, Jay's intent, Big Dave messed up his plan by rejigging the duty roster shortly before this puzzle was published.

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.

1a   Helicopter ejecting hotel inspector, for example (6)

Hotel^[5] is a code word representing the letter H, used in radio communication.

5a   Restricted dealing in trade covering source of oil (8)

For cryptic purposes, deal^[5] is used in the sense of to distribute (cards) in an orderly rotation to players for a game or round. Thus "dealing in trade" is deciphered as 'distributing the letters forming the words IN TRADE in a particular order'.

11a   City dweller getting personal in match (6)

When I first encountered this usage of tie in a previous puzzle, I surmised that match must somehow denote tie^[5] in the sense (as a verb) to achieve the same score or ranking as another competitor or team ⇒ (i) Norman needed a par to tie with Nicklaus; (ii) [with object] Muir tied the score at 5-5 or (as a noun) a draw ⇒ there was a tie for first place. However, as you will discover if you try, one cannot simply substitute match for tie in any of the foregoing usage examples.

Rather, we have a British meaning of tie^[5] as a sports match between two or more players or teams in which the winners proceed to the next round of the competition  ⇒ Swindon Town have won themselves a third round tie against Oldham. This usage example does not mean that Swindon Town and Oldham played to a draw in the third round. Instead, it means that Swindon Town and Oldham each defeated their respective competitors in the second round and advanced to play each other in the third round.

14a   Good man! Steak and French tart (8)

Et^[8] is a French conjunction meaning 'and'.

25a   Polite and direct person such as Brunel? (5,8)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel^[7] (1806–1859) was an English mechanical and civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.

26a   Fine source of water, I say (4,4)

I started out with VERY WELL and only changed it when I discovered (somewhat belatedly) the solution to 13d.

8d   Facilities in empty European train? (2,5)

Train^[5] may denote a retinue of attendants accompanying an important person ⇒ a minister and his train of attendants. One meaning of suite^[5] is a group of people in attendance on a monarch or other person of high rank ⇒ the Royal Saloon was built for the use of the Queen and her suite.

13d   Not in favour of new form of literature (4-5)

An antinovel^[5] (anti-novel^[1] in The Chambers Dictionary but antinovel^[2] in Chambers 21st Century Dictionary) is a novel in which the conventions and traditions of the genre are studiously avoided. [Does this make The Chambers Dictionary an anti-dictionary since it is so often at odds with other dictionaries?]

17d   Help for a newsreader reporting traffic jam? (7)

Despite having solved a similar clue in the past without assistance, today I only managed to get this one after a gentle nudge from my electronic helpers.

Autocue^[5] is a British trademark for a device which projects an enlarged image of a script on to a clear glass screen in front of a person speaking on television or in public, so enabling the speaker to read their speech while appearing to be looking at the viewers or audience.

The wordplay in this homophone clue is sounds like (reporting) AUTO QUEUE (traffic jam; "a line of waiting vehicles" in the words of Scchua).

Of course, on the previous occasion the solution was a bit more obvious. In DT 26746 (which appeared in The Daily Telegraph on 2011-12-27 and the National Post on 2012-03-14), the clue was:

• 9a   Teleprompter showing report of traffic jam (7)

24d   Expert said sexpot needs to get rid of regulars (5)

Here "regulars" refers to a regular series of letters, which almost always means every other letter. However, the setter has not specified whether he is referring to the odd-numbered letters or the even-numbered ones. While regular usually means every other letter, I do vaguely recall at least once having seen "regular" used to refer to a sequence involving every third letter.

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