Friday, May 17, 2013 — DT 27116

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 27116
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Monday, March 4, 2013
Setter Rufus (Roger Squires)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27116]
Big Dave's Review Written By Libellule
BD Rating
Difficulty - ★★★	Enjoyment - ★★★
Falcon's Experience ┌────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐ ███████████████████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ 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

A wrong entry at 19d caused me some difficulty at 29a (on top of the fact that it was a term with which I was not familiar).

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.

Across

1a   Novel having pride without prejudice? (6,4)

Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero^[7] is a novel by English author William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1847–48, satirizing society in early 19th-century Britain. The book's title comes from John Bunyan's allegorical story The Pilgrim's Progress, first published in 1678 and still widely read at the time of Thackeray's novel. "Vanity Fair" refers to a stop along the pilgrim's progress: a never-ending fair held in a town called Vanity, which is meant to represent man's sinful attachment to worldly things.

Pride and Prejudice^[7] is a novel by English author Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England.

9a   Source of light  that's growing (4)

10a   Kipling's game forest and reserve? (6,4)

I have no idea why The Jungle Book should be clued as "Kipling's game". Judging by comments on Big Dave's Crossword Blog, British readers were equally mystified. This clue was also used by Roger Squires (as one of his other personae, Dante) in a Financial Times puzzle in December 2011 and those who tackled it then also seemed to be perplexed.

I wondered if the setter might have been thinking of Kim's Game^[7], a Boy Scout game based on Kipling's 1901 novel Kim^[7] rather than his 1894 collection of stories, The Jungle Book (which inspired many aspects of the Cub Scouts, a junior element of the Scouting movement). [I see that Scouts Canada seems to have adopted the American name Cub Scouts in place of Wolf Cubs — which is how they were known when I was a lad.]

11a   Enemy Zulu leader's resolved to be cause of ferment (6)

12a   Does some stock-taking with odd results (7)

15a   Such matters are usually kept secret (7)

16a   Bashful, say, moved forward or moved out (5)

Bashful is one of the seven dwarfs in Walt Disney's 1937 animated musical fantasy film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs^[7] based on a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. The story had earlier been made into a Broadway play that debuted in 1912. The dwarfs are not given names in the fairy tale. In the 1912 production they were named Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick and Quee. Disney renamed them Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey.

17a   Fruit's unpleasant, you'd have to say (4)

18a   Indian city starting point for a grand tour (4)

The solution is the starting letters of the phrase "a grand tour". A grand tour^[5] is a cultural tour of Europe formerly undertaken, especially in the 18th century, by a young man of the upper classes as a part of his education ⇒ the privileged few who made the grand tour.

19a   The enemy the Salvation Army has to beat (5)

This is a semi all-in-one clue of the WIWD (wordplay intertwined with definition) type. The entire clue serves as the definition, while the later part of the clue comprises the wordplay — SA (the Salvation Army) + (has) TAN (to beat).

21a   A one-handed wood-cutter (7)

22a   Having an educational degree in case, work on a newspaper (7)

24a   Makes a pretence a reality? (6)

27a   Wearing black before midday, say (2,8)

28a   Author had retired before fifty (4)

Roald Dahl^[7] (1916 – 1990) was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter.

29a   Girl who is tender to domestic animals (10)

A kennelmaid^[5] is a woman who works in a kennels.

Down

2d   Come very close to a qualification (4)

3d   Eat, but not seriously, we hear (6)

4d   Produced  admitted superiority (7)

5d   In the morning, getting round to a little matter (4)

6d   Clear  share of the profit (4-3)

Rake-off^[3,4,11] is a percentage or share of the profits of an enterprise, especially one given or accepted as a bribe.

7d   Panel fixed in a makeshift way (4-6)

Jury-rigged^[5] is an adjective meaning (of a ship) having temporary makeshift rigging. Oxford Dictionaries Online indicates that the application of the term to a more general situation is a chiefly North American usage ⇒ jury-rigged classrooms in gymnasiums. American dictionaries give jury-rig^[3,11] as a verb in this broader sense (with jerry-rig^[3] as an alternative spelling).

8d   Started job making items of aesthetic worth (6,1'3)

12d   Rule of thumb for pilot lacking refinement (5,5)

13d   Describing one who was his own master? (4-6)

In Britain, a male schoolteacher is known as a master^[5].

14d   Go into liquidation when working hard? (5)

15d   Hanging in a French town (5)

An arras^[5] is a wall hanging made of a rich tapestry fabric, typically used to conceal an alcove ⇒ he pulled back the arras on the far wall and went into his secret chamber. It is named for Arras^[5], a town in NE France; population 43,663 (2006). In medieval times it was a centre for the manufacture of tapestries.

19d   Feeling swell? Yes and no (7)

This is an implied double definition. The first is "Feeling swell? Yes" (the swell on the ocean making you ill) and the second is "Feeling swell? No" (you are not felling swell at all — in fact, you are feeling pretty miserable).

I had initially put in SENSING as the solution — which severely handicapped me on 29a.

20d   Run true to form in training (7)

23d   Derby, for example, with me mounting horse to enter (6)

An eponym^[5] is (1) a person after whom a discovery, invention, place, etc., is named or thought to be named or (2) a name or noun formed after a person.

The Derby is (1) an annual flat race [a race without jumps] for three-year-old horses, founded in 1780 by the 12th Earl of Derby and run on Epsom Downs in England in late May or early June or (2) a race similar to the Derby, run elsewhere ⇒ the Irish Derby.

25d   Female lost her head somewhere in Arabia (4)

26d   He's against the proposal and ain't changing! (4)

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)
^[11] - TheFreeDictionary.com (Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary)

Signing off for today — Falcon