Monday, December 17, 2012 - DT 26986

Puzzle at a Glance

Daily Telegraph Puzzle Number DT 26986
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Setter Petitjean (John Pidgeon)*
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 26986]
Big Dave's Review Written By Gazza
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 consensus among those visiting on Big Dave's blog is that the identity of the setter is Petitjean, although that seems never to have been unequivocally established.

Introduction

Virtually all of my difficulty today occurred in the southeast quadrant.

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   Penelope in 'Some Like It Hot'? (5)

Penelope Keith^[7] is an English actress. Having started her television career in the 1950s, Penelope Keith became a household name in the United Kingdom in the 1970s when she played Margo Leadbetter in the sitcom The Good Life. This role earned Keith her first of two BAFTAs, the second being in 1978 for The Norman Conquests. One year after The Good Life's finale, Keith was the lead character in another BBC sitcom, To the Manor Born, a show that received audiences of more than 20 million. In the 1980s and 1990s, she appeared as the lead character in six other sitcoms. Since the 1990s, Keith has appeared rarely on television and works mainly in the theatre.

4a   Claimant's ugly pet (9)

Would you not think that equating plain and ugly is a bit of a stretch?

9a   At home with dishonest office-holder (9)

In Britain, the word "bent"^[5] has the same connotation (dishonest or corrupt) as does the word "crooked"^[5] in North America. [It would appear that the British might use both bent and crooked in this sense].

10a   Good German car? Spanish designer! (5)

Antoni Gaudí^[7] (1852 – 1926) was a Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.

11a   Where sleeper may find overnight accommodation (7)

I became derailed here by thinking that the clue was referring to railways. I imagined that there might exist an overnight train called the EuroOne. Only when my research turned up no evidence of such a thing, did I realize that sleeper^[4] (a chiefly British term) refers to a small plain gold circle worn in a pierced ear lobe to prevent the hole from closing up (rather than a sleeping car or railway crosstie).

12a   In retirement boxer is the opposite of romantic (7)

Muhammad Ali^[7] (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.) is an American former professional boxer whose nicknames included "The Greatest" and "The Louisville Lip".

20a   Whispering walls of château? (6)

Mur^[8] is the French word for wall.

24a   Giant in fairy story (7)

In addition to being a children’s tale about magical and imaginary beings and lands, the term fairy story^[5] may be used figuratively to mean an untrue account  ⇒ they deserve honest treatment, not fairy stories.

29a   Fear entry to dean's study (5)

A dean^[7], in a religious context, is a cleric holding certain positions of authority within a religious hierarchy. The title is used mainly in the Anglican Communion, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Lutheran Church. In the Church of England and elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, the dean is the chief resident cleric of a cathedral or other collegiate church and the head of the chapter of canons. If the cathedral or collegiate church has its own parish, the dean is usually also rector of the parish.

In Britain, to read^[5] means to study (an academic subject) at a university ⇒ (i) I’m reading English at Cambridge; (ii) he went to Manchester to read for a BA in Economics.

3d   Stock ingredient of Rambo -- hard rather than right, and outwardly naive (3,4)

Rambo^[7] is an action film series based on the David Morrell novel First Blood and starring Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, a troubled Vietnam War veteran and former Green Beret who is skilled in many aspects of survival, weaponry, hand to hand combat and guerrilla warfare.

8d   Fellow is not commonly liable to lose consciousness (5)

F^[2] is the abbreviation for Fellow (of a society, etc).

16d   Lost for words with dire Spurs thrashed (9)

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club^[7], commonly referred to as the Spurs, is an English football [soccer] club based in Tottenham, London, that plays in the Premier League (the top level league in English football). Based on Gazza's comment, it would appear that this may very well be Big Dave's favourite team.

17d   Air needs to be recycled where passenger sits (8)

In Britain, nearside (usually the nearside) refers to the side of a vehicle nearest the kerb [curb] (in Britain, the left) ⇒ (i) he veered to the nearside and crashed into a van; (ii) the front nearside wheel.

22d   Cute plainclothes officer in country attire (6)

Twee^[5] is a British expression denoting excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental (although the film’s a bit twee, it’s watchable).

A detective sergeant (abbreviation DS)^[10] is a police officer who investigates crime and who ranks above a detective constable but below a detective inspector.

A detective inspector (DI)^[5] is a senior police officer in the UK. Within the British police, inspector^[7] is the second supervisory rank. It is senior to that of sergeant, but junior to that of chief inspector. Plain-clothes detective inspectors are equal in rank to their uniformed counterparts, the prefix 'detective' identifying them as having been trained in criminal investigation and being part of or attached to their force's Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

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