Thursday, October 24, 2013 — DT 27232

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 27232
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Setter Jay (Jeremy Mutch)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27232]
Big Dave's Review Written By scchua
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

Today, I got bogged down by the Broads in Norfolk.

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. The underlined portion of the clue is the definition.

Across

1a   General bearing water in the east of England (6)

The Broads^[5] (often called the Norfolk Broads) is a network of shallow freshwater lakes, traversed by slow-moving rivers, in Norfolk and Suffolk. They were formed by the gradual natural flooding of medieval peat diggings.

4a   Concluded actors may be not very bright (8)

10a   Event at which Irish town mostly follows attempt on the radio (9)

Athlone^[7] is a town on the River Shannon near the southern shore of Lough Ree in Ireland. It is the largest town in the Midlands Region.

11a   Support service by Britain (5)

12a   Catch when covering hot pipes? (7)

To understand scchua's comment, remember that "hooker" would be a homophone of "hookah" when the former word is pronounced with a soft British R at the end.

13a   Inexperienced army sadly left out of rudimentary training (7)

14a   Son in row about exam after failure (5)

Resit^[5] is a British term which, as a verb, means to take (an examination) again after failing it  ⇒ she is resitting her maths GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education] and, as a noun, denotes an examination that is resat ⇒ the system allows the office to timetable all resits in a single block.

15a   Island church, with youths full of energy, rocks (3,5)

The Church of England (abbreviation CE)^[10] is the reformed established state Church in England, Catholic in order and basic doctrine, with the Sovereign as its temporal head.

18a   Daily aims to develop personal appeal (8)

Daily^[5] (also daily help) is a dated British term for a woman who is employed to clean someone else’s house each day. Char^[5] is another name for a charwoman^[5], a dated British term for a woman employed as a cleaner in a house or office. 

20a   Empty gesture welcomed by standard caller (5)

23a   Outline cost initially, before working trip (7)

25a   Devastated by popular works covering source of industry (2,5)

26a   Encouragement having right for British to settle (5)

The wordplay is BOOST (encouragement) with (having) R (right) replacing (for) B (British).

27a   Flag's back -- make a speech and disappear (9)

Flag^[10] (as a noun) is short for flagstone and (as a verb) means to to furnish (a floor) with flagstones.

In Britain, pave^[5] means to cover (a piece of ground) with flat stones or bricks ⇒ the yard at the front was paved with flagstones. In North America, one would be more likely to think of the word as meaning to cover with asphalt.

28a   Arrange to end her rule? (8)

29a   Easy place to be wise? (6)

Although scchua identifies this as a double definition, I don't see it as such since the clue cannot be cleanly separated into two definitions. I would prefer to think of it as a cryptic definition. As scchua rightly indicates, the clue is a play on the expressions "easy street" and "streetwise".

Down

1d   A look around London commonly kills (8)

Butcher's^[10] is Cockney rhyming slang for a look. In Cockney rhyming slang, the slang word is obtained by replacing a word (in this case, "look") by a phrase with which it rhymes ("butcher's hook") and then dropping the rhyming word in the phrase. Through this process, "look" becomes "butcher's".

A cockney^[5] is a native of East London [specifically the East End], traditionally one born within hearing of Bow Bells (the bells of St Mary-le-Bow^[7] church). Cockney is also the name of the dialect or accent typical of cockneys, which is characterised by dropping the H from the beginning of words and the use of rhyming slang^[5].

The wordplay tells us that we need a substitute for "look" that is used by members of the lower class (commoners) in London.

2d   Zero common sense applied to motorway is threatening (7)

The M1^[7] is a north–south motorway [controlled access, multi-lane divided highway] in England connecting London to Leeds.

Nous^[5] is an informal British term meaning common sense or practical intelligence ⇒ if he had any nous at all, he’d sell the film rights. 

3d   Knocker hauled up on hill (9)

5d   Guess Athens, say, should get finance for new business (7,7)

6d   Machine to steal books? (5)

In Crosswordland, the word "books" often refers to either the Old Testament (OT) or the New Testament (NT).

7d   Greed of artist swallowed up by a weakness (7)

A Royal Academician (abbreviation RA^[5]) is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts^[5], an institution established in London in 1768, whose purpose is to cultivate painting, sculpture, and architecture in Britain.

8d   Weak ineffectual boys oppressed by those with no socks or trousers (6)

Weed^[5] is British slang for a contemptibly feeble person ⇒ he thought party games were for weeds and wets [persons lacking forcefulness or strength of character].

In general, tweeds^[10] are clothes made of tweed, especially a man's or woman's suit. However, in Australia, tweeds is slang for trousers.

9d   Smooth operator who might fix one's credit card record? (7,7)

I think that the entire clue constitutes a cryptic definition.

16d   Top hairdo in socially acceptable situation (9)

In Britain, U^[5] is used informally as an adjective (in respect to language or social behaviour) meaning characteristic of or appropriate to the upper social classes ⇒ U manners. The term, an abbreviation of  upper class, was coined in 1954 by Alan S. C. Ross, professor of linguistics, and popularized by its use in Nancy Mitford's Noblesse Oblige (1956). In Crosswordland, it is frequently clued by words such as posh or superior — but today it merely adopts its straightforward meaning.

17d   The outlook for bent coppers tending to overlook conclusion (8)

The wordplay is an anagram (bent) of COPPERS + T (Tending with the final six letters deleted). While the phrase "to overlook conclusion" might indicate that only the final letter is to be deleted, today it indicates that the final six letters are to be removed.

19d   Paper distributed as a gift to the needy (7)

21d   Expression of one married in holy state (7)

22d   Terrified by concern in case of scaffold (6)

24d   Animal's excessive energy on runs (5)

On cricket scorecards, the abbreviation R^[5] denotes run(s).

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