Friday, January 3, 2014 — DT 27287

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 27287
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Thursday, September 19, 2013
Setter RayT (Ray Terrell)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27287]
Big Dave's Crossword Blog Review Written By Big Dave
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 █ - yet to be solved

Introduction

About half of this puzzle on the first sitting went in fairly easily on the first sitting. The other half took a bit more effort on the second sitting.

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   Confused tabby's followed around (11)

9a   Cover one undressed catching cold oddly (7)

10a   Tried hard recipe in oven (6)

Stove^[3,4,11] can mean any heating apparatus, such as a kiln.

12a   Heartless captains capturing state ships (7)

13a   Unusually clean licence ends for motor's cover (7)

A nacelle^[5] is a streamlined casing on the outside of an aircraft or motor vehicle, especially one housing an aircraft engine ⇒ a grey aircraft with NAVY painted on the engine nacelles.

14a   Rough copper replacing one in squad (5)

The symbol for the chemical element copper is Cu^[5] (from Latin cuprum).

15a   Nearly time, heads back for club (9)

17a   Shock receiving endless stir in judgement (9)

Raise^[3] meaning to awaken or arouse ⇒ noise that would raise the dead.

20a   Daily Mail's opening creating fascination (5)

The Daily Mail^[7] is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper which is the United Kingdom's second largest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun.

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.

22a   Seedy as could be getting tried (7)

24a   Caught fly producing temper (7)

25a   Queen's University is not commonly old-fashioned (6)

Not the customary use of Queen by Ray T — but one that he occasionally uses.

Queen's University^[7] is more likely to refer to the one in Belfast, Northern Ireland than the one in Kingston, Ontario.

26a   Seen in water, it reaches land (7)

27a   Sharp exercise needs web classification (11)

PE^[5] is the abbreviation for physical education (or Phys Ed, as it would likely be called by most school kids).

Down

2d   Work by Updike initially fast, becoming rich (7)

In music, Op.^[5] (also op.) is an abbreviation meaning opus (work). It is used before a number given to each work of a particular composer, usually indicating the order of publication.

John Updike^[5] (1932–2009) was an American novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He is noted for his quartet of novels Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit is Rich (Pulitzer Prize, 1981), and Rabbit at Rest (Pulitzer Prize, 1990).

3d   Rough sorts embracing hot birds (9)

Given that the setter is Ray T, I am sure that he intended us to interpret bird^[5] in the surface reading as British slang for a young woman or a man’s girlfriend.

4d   Writer of one's biography written up (5)

Henrik Ibsen^[5] (1828–1906) was a Norwegian dramatist. He is credited with being the first major dramatist to write tragedy about ordinary people in prose. Ibsen’s later works, such as The Master Builder (1892), deal increasingly with the forces of the unconscious and were admired by Sigmund Freud. Other notable works: Peer Gynt (1867), A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881).

5d   Tree providing copra it turned out (7)

Copra^[5] is dried coconut kernels, from which oil is obtained.

6d   Cover record penning novel arrangement (7)

7d   After nightclub 'Posh' went mad, getting down? (11)

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). As today, it is frequently clued by words such as posh or superior.

The clue is possibly a reference to Victoria Beckham^[7] (née Adams), a member of the the all-female 90s pop group Spice Girls who was dubbed Posh Spice by the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops.

8d   American state with cold upside-down tart (6)

11d   Reference to ailment is revolting (11)

16d   Clubs on break after midnight with early bird (9)

Here we encounter a common cryptic crossword construction, in which "midnight" is used to clue G, the middle letter (mid) of niGht. Other examples of this construction are "sweetheart" for E, the middle letter (heart) of swEet, and "redhead" for R, the first letter (head) of Red.

The goldcrest^[5] (Regulus regulus) is a very small Eurasian warbler with a black-bordered yellow or orange crest.

18d   Way between two rivers finding bearing (7)

It did not help that I tried for a while to make the solution be STATURE.

The Po^[7] is a river that arises in the Cottian Alps and flows eastward across northern Italy entering the Adriatic Sea through a delta near Venice.

The River Ure^[7] is a stream in North Yorkshire, England, approximately 74 miles (119 km) long from its source to the point where it changes name to the River Ouse.

19d   Eat in my mess whenever you like! (7)

20d   Audibly sea creature possesses a right trumpeting sound (7)

21d   Seeing that bird's behind (6)

In 3d, the setter was embracing her and her friends. Now he's checking out her derrière.

23d   Set without the compiler's check (5)

It is a common cryptic crossword convention for the creator of the puzzle to use terms such as compiler, setter, author, writer, or this person to refer to himself or herself. To solve such a clue, one must generally substitute a first person pronoun (I or me) for whichever of these terms has been used in the clue. Today, the setter has made the scenario slightly more complicated by using a possessive form "compiler's" which must be replaced by "mine".

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