Puzzle at a Glance
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Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph
DT 27317 | |
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph
Thursday, October 24, 2013 | |
Setter
Unknown | |
Link to Full Review
Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27317] | |
Big Dave's Crossword Blog Review Written By
pommers | |
BD Rating
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| 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
█ - solved but without fully parsing the clue
█ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Big Dave's Crossword Blog
█ - solved with aid of checking letters provided by solutions from Big Dave's Crossword Blog
█ - reviewed by Falcon for Big Dave's Crossword Blog
█ - yet to be solved
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Introduction
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
5a Sally and Harry originally are small parts
(6)
Perhaps the the clue is an allusion to When Harry Met Sally…[7], a 1989 American romantic comedy film starring Billy Crystal as Harry and Meg Ryan as Sally. The story follows the title characters from the time they meet just before sharing a cross-country drive, through twelve years or so of chance encounters in New York City. The film raises the question "Can men and women ever just be friends?" and advances many ideas about relationships that became household concepts, such as those of the "high-maintenance" girlfriend and the "transitional person".
8a Virgin Trains' pie not a crumble (8)
Virgin Trains[7] is a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by Virgin Group and Stagecoach. Virgin Trains operate long-distance passenger services between Greater London, the West Midlands, North West England, North Wales and Scotland connecting the major cities of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
9a Doctor Who always just the same (7)
Doctor Who[7] is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior appears as a blue police box. The show has had widespread distribution in North America and is currently available in Canada on the SPACE specialty channel on cable and satellite.
10a Marvellous making use of change in
purse (5)
11a Chase after stinkers -- a kind of fungus
(9)
Tool[5] is a verb meaning to impress a design on (leather, especially a leather book cover) ⇒
volumes bound in green leather and tooled in gold.
Chase[5] is a verb meaning to engrave (metal, or a design on metal), although it is most often seen in the form of a past participle used as an adjective ⇒
a miniature container with a delicately chased floral design.
13a Executed last of tasks before time's
called (6,2)
The usual method of execution in Crosswordland is through beheading; however, today's victim suffers a different fate.
14a Shun champ found with illegal tablets (6)
E[5] is an abbreviation for the drug Ecstasy or a tablet of Ecstasy ⇒ (i)
people have died after taking E; (ii)
being busted with three Es can lead to stiff penalties.
17a Health resort in southern Pennsylvania
(3)
Bath[5] [mentioned by pommers in his review] is spa town in southwestern England; population 81,600 (est. 2009). The town was founded by the Romans, who called it Aquae Sulis, and was a fashionable spa in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
19a Banks of earth eroded making work (3)
20a Pass English courses with low grade (6)
A lap[10] is one circuit of a racecourse or track. While I certainly don't view lap and course as being the same thing, Collins English Dictionary does list course[10] and lap[10] as synonyms for each other.
23a Dreadfully sick after one mushroom --
they can be deadly in the wrong hands
(3,5)
Leon Trotsky[5] (1879–1940) [mentioned by pommers in his review] was a Russian revolutionary; born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein. He helped to organize the October Revolution with Lenin, and built up the Red Army. He was expelled from the Communist Party by Stalin in 1927 and exiled in 1929. He settled in Mexico in 1937, where he was later murdered by a Stalinist assassin.
On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his home in Mexico with an ice axe by undercover agent Ramón Mercader. Trotsky suffered severe injuries to which he succumbed the following day[7].
26a Austria and Thailand once popular -- or
most of Turkey (4,5)
The International Vehicle Registration (IVR) code for Austria is A[5].
Siam[5] is the former name (until 1939) for Thailand.
Asia Minor[5] is the western peninsula of Asia, which now constitutes the bulk of modern Turkey.
28a What Edith Piaf regretted about piano's
age (5)
Edith Piaf[5] (1915–1963) was a French singer. She became known as a cabaret and music-hall singer in the late 1930s. Her songs included ‘La Vie en rose’ and ‘Je ne regrette rien’.
Piano[3,5] (abbreviation p[5]), is a musical direction meaning either (as an adjective) soft or quiet or (as an adverb) softly or quietly.
29a Fellow whose wife is sadly late (7)
30a Modest about one's discipline (8)
31a Horrified husband's gripped by stove’s
temperature (6)
Aga[5] is a British trademark for a type of heavy heat-retaining stove or range used for cooking and heating.
As I understand from perusing my British dictionaries, the British conception of a range is quite different from that of North Americans. On this side of the Atlantic, a range can be a cooking stove using any type of fuel (wood, coal, oil, gas, electricity, etc.). However, in Britain, a range[4] is specifically a large stove with burners and one or more ovens, usually heated by solid fuel. A cooking device that does not use solid fuel (such as one using gas or electricity) would be known over there as a cooker[5], not a range.
However, in his review, I note that pommers mashes the two terms together to produce a "range cooker".
Down
1d Son blocks unwanted email then second
starts (6)
2d John Lennon for one left melody first (7)
Liverpool John Lennon Airport[7] is an international airport serving the North West of England. The airport, which is located within the City of Liverpool some 7.5 miles (12.0 km) southeast of the city centre, is named after Liverpudlian musician John Lennon (1940–1980) of the English rock band The Beatles. It was formerly known as Speke Airport, RAF Speke, and Liverpool Airport.
3d Bald head can be severe condition (9)
Usually found in place names, ness[5] means a headland or promontory ⇒
Orford Ness.
4d Demonstration rearranged by university
at the designated place (2,4)
In his review, pommers wonders "Is it just me or is this verging on being a secondary anagram? ". A secondary anagram (or, as it is also known, an indirect anagram) would be an anagram in which the fodder did not appear in the clue. By convention, such a construction is not generally permitted.
An anagram consists of two components, an anagram indicator and the fodder (the letters that must be rearranged to obtain the outcome). For instance, in clue 10a in today's puzzle, the anagram indicator is "change in" and the fodder is PURSE. The outcome of the anagram is SUPER.
If one were to deem the present clue to be an anagram, then the anagram indicator would be "rearranged" and the fodder would be SIT IN (a synonym for demonstration), with the outcome being IN SIT (which constitutes the first part of a charade).
However, in a technical sense, rather than indicating an anagram, "rearranged" is indicating that we are to change the order of the words SIT IN to produce IN SIT.
The point that pommers is making in his comment is that the distinction between this and an indirect (or secondary) anagram is an exceedingly fine one indeed.
5d Did hero's treatment get more slapdash?
(8)
6d Decline not in short representative (5)
7d Sties are blots on the landscape (8)
12d Settle old vacant plot (3)
15d Latest worry involving work pressure
(4,5)
In physics, the symbol for pressure is p[10].
Stop press[5] is a British term for late news inserted in a newspaper or periodical either at the last moment before printing or after printing has begun (especially as a heading) ⇒
stop-press news.
16d 'Doris' (she writes) below book dedication
(8)
Doris Lessing[5] is a British novelist and short-story writer, brought up in Rhodesia. An active communist in her youth, she frequently deals with social and political conflicts in her fiction, especially as they affect women. Notable novels: The Grass is Singing (1950); The Golden Notebook (1962). Nobel Prize for Literature (2007).
18d Architectural feature mapped -- I'm
enthralled somewhat (8)
21d Briton's oddly brief history (3)
22d Doubting Thomas, Charlie and Penny are
among names revived (7)
Charlie[5] is a code word representing the letter C, used in radio communication.
In Britain's current decimal currency system, a penny[5] is a bronze coin and monetary unit equal to one hundredth of a pound (and is abbreviated p).
A doubting Thomas[5,7]. is a person who is sceptical and refuses to believe something without proof ⇒ (i)
I was a real doubting Thomas. I didn’t believe the stuff would work; (ii)
those doubting Thomases still can’t figure out how the show became a hit. The term is a biblical allusion to the apostle Thomas (John 20:24–29), who refused to believe that the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the eleven other apostles, until he could see and feel the wounds received by Jesus on the cross.
24d Mini Minors may be parked here? (6)
In Britain, a crèche[5] is a nursery where babies and young children are cared for during the working day. The Brits apparently do not use this term — as we do in North Americans — for a representation of the nativity scene.
The surface reading evokes an iconic British car — but we should not be surprised to discover that quite a different meaning emerges when we decipher the clue.
The Mini[7] is a small economy car made by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors from 1959 until 2000. The Mini was marketed under BMC's two main brand names, Austin and Morris until 1969, when it became a marque in its own right.
The Morris version was known as "the Mini" or Mini-Minor. "Morris Mini-Minor" seems to have been a play on words; the Morris Minor was an already existing larger, well known and successful car. The word minor is Latin for "lesser"; so an abbreviation of the Latin word for "least" – minimus – was used for the new even smaller car.
Through a series of corporate takeovers and reorganizations, the Mini marque became the property of German automaker BMW. Since 2001, BMW has marketed a "retro" redesign of the original Mini, under the brand name MINI (written in capital letters) to distinguish it from its predecessor (the 'classic Mini').
25d Depressed with range of knowledge
shown by tabloid (6)
The Sun[7] is a daily tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and Ireland by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. [You may recall that we last had a look at The Sun yesterday.]
27d Savour run by Farah back among
amateurs (5)
While I as familiar with the word as a verb, I was not aware that savour[5] was also a noun meaning a characteristic taste, flavour, or smell, especially a pleasant one ⇒
the subtle savour of wood smoke.
Mohamed "Mo" Farah[7] is a Somali-born British international track and field athlete in the long distance and middle-distance. He is the current 10,000 metres Olympic and World champion and 5000 metres Olympic, World and European champion as well as being the British and European record holder in the 1500 metres. He will make his marathon debut in 2014 in London.
Key to Reference Sources:Signing off for today — Falcon
[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)
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