Tuesday, December 16, 2014 — DT 27542

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 27542
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Setter Shamus (Philip Marlow)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27542]
Big Dave's Crossword Blog Review Written By Gazza
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 █ - 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

Introduction

By Gazza's reckoning this puzzle was a bit more difficult than one's we have seen recently. I therefore felt rather pleased — or as the Brits would say, chuffed — to have finished it without resorting to electronic aids.

I invite you to leave a comment to let us know how you fared with the puzzle.

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.

Primary indications (definitions) are marked with a solid underline in the clue; subsidiary indications (be they wordplay or other) are marked with a dashed underline in all-in-one (&lit.) clues, semi-all-in-one (semi-&lit.) clues and cryptic definitions. Explicit link words and phrases are enclosed in forward slashes (/link/) and implicit links are shown as double forward slashes (//).

Across

1a   Former partner's place found by address // search (11)

Pl.^[5] (also pl.) is the abbreviation for Place (in street addresses) ⇒ 3 Palmerston Pl., Edinburgh.

7a   Shirt, say, no longer wanted /with/ players away? (4-3)

In this clue, the word "with" serves as a link (expressing causality) between the definition and wordplay. The preposition with^[5] may be used to indicate the cause of condition ⇒ he was trembling with fear. Used in this sense, the word "with" essentially means "resulting from".

8a   Maybe Mohican /gets/ dry and cold in cabin (7)

Mohican^[5] is the British name for a Mohawk^[5] [haircut].

10a   Window /makes/ admirer easy to pick up (8)

In addition to being a semicircular window over a door or window, often having sash bars like the ribs of a fan, the Brits also use the name fanlight^[10] for a transom or skylight.

11a   Beef /in/ hotel consumed by footballer right away (6)

Hotel^[5] is a code word representing the letter H, used in radio communication.

A winger^[5] is an attacking player in football [soccer] as well as in other sports, such as hockey [which, to the Brits, would mean field hockey] and ice hockey [the word "ice" being redundant to a Canadian].

Whinge^[5] is an informal British term that, as a verb, means to complain persistently and in a peevish or irritating way ⇒ stop whingeing and get on with it! and, as a noun, denotes an act of complaining persistently and peevishly ⇒ she let off steam by having a good whinge.

13a   Jug /in/ dirty place initially covered (4)

Cover means to hide or conceal. Thus "initially covered" is used to clue 'with the initial letter hidden or concealed'.

14a   Get hat and coat confused? /That's/ to be idiotic (3,3,4)

Goat^[5] is an informal British term for a stupid person or fool. Thus, to act the goat is to act like a fool ⇒ just for once, stop acting the goat.

16a   Place in which sound quality is cultivated? (6,4)

Health farm^[5] is a chiefly British term for a residential establishment where people seek improved health by a regimen of dieting, exercise, and treatment.

18a   House in the Home Counties /for/ trainer perhaps (4)

The Home Counties^[5] are the counties surrounding London in southeast (SE) England, into which London has extended.

However, no exact definition of the term exists and the composition of the Home Counties^[7] remains a matter of debate. Oxford Dictionaries Online restrictively lists them as being chiefly Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Hertfordshire while the cited Wikipedia article provides a considerably longer list.

21a   Remove travel items /from/ peacekeeping group? (6)

22a   A top firm that's defending case in unusual // resort (8)

Acapulco^[5] is a port and resort in southern Mexico, on the Pacific coast; population 616,384 (2005). Full name Acapulco de Juárez.

24a   Competitor // hurried into makeshift tent (7)

25a   Appropriately presented // like a nun? (2,5)

26a   Green /and/ wild cornfield bound by banks of estuary (11)

Down

1d   Ascetic restricting source of comfort /in/ perfume (7)

An Essene^[5] is a member of an ancient Jewish ascetic sect of the period from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD in Palestine, who lived in highly organized groups and held property in common. The Essenes are widely regarded as the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

2d   Visionary figure announced // gain (6)

3d   Old fellows on strike carrying article /that's/ improvised (3,3,4)

F^[2] is the abbreviation for Fellow (of a society, etc). For instance, it is found in professional designations such as FRAIC (Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada).

4d   Scented bag missing sides? // A pain (4)

5d   Man's here /getting/ independent shares I distributed (5,3)

The Isle of Man^[5] is an island in the Irish Sea which is a British Crown dependency having home rule, with its own legislature (the Tynwald) and judicial system.

I^[1] is the abbreviation for independent, perhaps in the context of a politician with no party affiliation.

6d   Admission of failure /in/ retrograde study a don demolished (2,3,2)

Con^[5] is an archaic term meaning to study attentively or learn by heart (a piece of writing)  ⇒ the girls conned their pages with a great show of industry.

A don^[10] is a member of the teaching staff at a university or college, especially at Oxford or Cambridge.

7d   Establishment unlikely to favour instant consumption? (6,5)

9d   One regularly boosting a rep's income? (7-4)

Rep^[5] is an informal shortened form of repertory^[5]. It can refer either to the performance of various plays, operas, or ballets by a company at regular short intervals,  or to a repertory theatre or company.

12d   Fetching // a pamphlet I have consumes short time (10)

15d   Being jumpy in bars? (8)

Staccato^[5] is a musical direction denoting that a piece is to be performed with each sound or note sharply detached or separated from the others ⇒ a staccato rhythm.

In music notation, a bar^[7] (or measure) is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats, each of which are assigned a particular note value. The word bar is more common in British English, and the word measure is more common in American English, although musicians generally understand both usages. Originally, the word bar derives from the vertical lines drawn through the staff [or stave] to mark off metrical units. In British English, these vertical lines are called bar, too, but often the term bar-line is used in order to make the distinction clear. In American English, the word bar stands for the lines and nothing else.

17d   Mate up at sea close to gunwale /for/ Nelson, perhaps (7)

Horatio Nelson^[5], Viscount Nelson, Duke of Bronte (1758–1805) was a British admiral. Nelson became a national hero as a result of his victories at sea in the Napoleonic Wars, especially the Battle of Trafalgar, in which he was mortally wounded.

Nelson^[7] was wounded several times in combat, losing one arm in the unsuccessful attempt to conquer Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the sight in one eye in Corsica.

19d   Champion cyclist going over top with a // break (7)

Sir Chris Hoy^[5] is a Scottish cyclist. A multiple world champion in track cycling, he won his sixth Olympic gold medal in 2012, more than any other British athlete in history. He shares with Bradley Wiggins the record for the highest total number of Olympic medals won by a British athlete (seven).

20d   Maintain // rising part of ship (6)

23d   Disturb // bird (4)

Stir^[5] is an informal term for prison [on both sides of the Atlantic] ⇒ I’ve spent twenty-eight years in stir.

Bird^[10] is British slang for prison or a term in prison, especially in the phrase do (one's) bird. This is yet another instance of Cockney rhyming slang (of which we saw several examples in yesterday's puzzle). Bird is shortened from birdlime, rhyming slang for time (as in a prison sentence).

In his review, Gazza mentions porridge^[5], another informal British expression for time spent in prison — a term which appeared in yesterday's puzzle.

Although Gazza indicates that stir is "another informal term for bird or porridge", that would not be my understanding. Stir is slang for prison and porridge is slang for time spent in prison, while bird is slang for either prison or time spent in prison. Thus, although stir and porridge are each synonyms of bird (in different senses of this word), they are not synonyms of each other — unless I have misread the dictionaries or the dictionaries do not correctly reflect the way that Brits actually use these terms.

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