Thursday, January 1, 2015 — DT 27549 (Bonus Puzzle)

Prologue

As the National Post did not publish today, here is my New Year's gift to you — a little something to occupy you should you find yourself with time on your hands between the Winter Classic and college bowl games.

This is the puzzle that would have appeared on December 25, 2014 had the National Post published an edition on that date.

Happy New Year

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 27549
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Setter Jay (Jeremy Mutch)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27549]
Big Dave's Crossword Blog 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 █ - 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
Notes The National Post skipped this puzzle which would have appeared on Thursday, December 25, 2014 had a paper been published on that date.

Introduction

This puzzle was reviewed on Big Dave's blog by scchua who always grades puzzles a degree of difficulty lower than I feel they deserve. I guess I may be a bit more liberal in handing out stars — or perhaps just a somewhat less accomplished solver.

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

Today's Chatter on Big Dave's Blog

Visitor's to Big Dave's blog are reminiscing about listening to Radio Luxembourg on transistor radios.

Radio Luxembourg^[7] is a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. The English language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earliest commercial radio stations broadcasting to Ireland and Britain. It was an important forerunner of pirate radio and modern commercial radio in the United Kingdom. It was an effective way to advertise products by circumventing British legislation which until 1973 gave the BBC a monopoly of radio broadcasting on UK territory and prohibited all forms of advertising over the domestic radio spectrum. It boasted the most powerful privately owned transmitter in the world (1,300 kW broadcasting on medium wave) in the late 1930s, and again in the 1950s and 1960s, it captured very large audiences in Britain and Ireland with its programmes of popular entertainment.

Note: Growing up in Nova Scotia, I used to listen to stations such as WKBW in Buffalo, New York when atmospheric conditions permitted. Its 50,000 watts pales in comparison to Radio Luxembourg's 1.3 million watts.

Keynsham^[7] (pronounced CANE-SHAM) is a town and civil parish between Bristol and Bath in Somerset, south-west England. It has a population of 15,641.

Keynsham rose to fame during the late 1950s and early 1960s when it featured in a long-running series of advertisements on Radio Luxembourg for Horace Batchelor's Infra-draw betting system. To obtain the system, listeners had to write to Batchelor's Keynsham post office box, and Keynsham was always painstakingly spelled out on-air, with Batchelor famously intoning "Keynsham – spelt K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M – Keynsham, Bristol". This was done because the proper pronunciation of Keynsham – "Cane-sham" – does not make the spelling of Keynsham immediately obvious to the radio listener.

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 (//). Definitions presented in blue text are for terms that appear frequently.

Across

1a   Instruction given by head of commerce in Beijing // hierarchy (7,5)

Beijing^[10] (former English name: Peking) is the capital of the People's Republic of China, situated in the northeast in Beijing municipality (traditionally in Hebei province). The country's second largest city, it dates back to the 12th century BC. It consists of two central walled cities, the Outer City (containing the commercial quarter) and the Inner City, which contains the Imperial City, within which is the Purple or Forbidden City; many universities. Population: 10,849,000 (2005 est).

9a   Extended // alfresco meal (9)

10a   Case /of/ depression? Not right (5)

11a   Injury /sustained by/ vets regularly feeding cat (6)

"Regularly" indicates that a regular sequence of letters is required. As is the case today, this usually means every second letter — although I seem to recall at least one occasion where the required sequence was every third letter. As is customarily the situation, the setter does not specify whether we need the odd sequence or the even sequence — which we must figure out for ourselves.

12a   A container like this /needed for/ prickly plant (8)

The acanthus^[5] is a herbaceous plant or shrub with bold flower spikes and spiny decorative leaves, found in warm regions of the Old World.

13a   Ready to pick on good man /for/ sign of promotion (6)

15a   To applaud section retreating /is/ nonsense (8)

18a   What in Spain is covered by fights /for/ flowers (8)

In Spanish, qué^[8] is an expression meaning 'what'.

Hyacinth Bucket and her meek and mild,

long-suffering husband Richard.

In his review, scchua illustrates this clue with an image from the television sitcom Keeping Up Appearances^[7] which was broadcast on the BBC between 1990 and 1995. The show is centred on the life of eccentric social climber Hyacinth Bucket who insists that her surname is pronounced "Bouquet". The sitcom follows the obsessive and determined snobbish middle class woman who desperately and continually looks for opportunities to climb the social ladder by attempting to impress people (particularly rich people) and portray herself as more affluent than she truly is, despite being wedged between a working class background and upper class aspirations.

Keeping Up Appearances is one British series that did get an airing in Canada and the US. If you have never seen an episode of it, you have truly missed one of the funniest shows ever produced.

19a   Feature /of/ power invested in a religious group (6)

21a   Firm contact // is on head after surgery (8)

23a   Flipping odd agents /in/ part of Spain (6)

Flipping^[5] is an informal British term used for emphasis or to express mild annoyance ⇒ (i) are you out of your flipping mind?; (ii) it’s flipping cold today.

Rum^[5] is a dated informal British term meaning odd or peculiar ⇒ it’s a rum business, certainly.

The Central Intelligence Agency^[5] (abbreviation CIA) is a federal agency in the US responsible for coordinating government intelligence activities. Established in 1947 and originally intended to operate only overseas, it has since also operated in the US.

Murcia^[5] is an autonomous region in southeastern Spain. In the Middle Ages, along with Albacete, it formed an ancient Moorish kingdom.

26a   Longing /to see/ area in East Germany (5)

27a   One quickly welcomes tail wagging /in/ solitude (9)

28a   Incorrigible // drunken teenager ruined with no ID (12)

Unregenerate^[5] is an adjective meaning not reforming or showing repentance; obstinately wrong or bad ⇒ the most unregenerate and irredeemable people you could ever imagine.

Down

1d   Prince with lots /of/ lackeys (7)

Poodle^[5] is a British term for a person or organization who is overly willing to obey another ⇒ the council is being made a poodle of central government.

2d   Skin // lacerations injected with iodine (5)

The symbol for the chemical element iodine is I^[5].

Cutis^[5] is an anatomical term for the true skin or dermis.

3d   Optimum changes to include voting system // without any preparation (9)

Proportional representation^[5] (abbreviation PR) is an electoral system in which parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them ⇒ PR has been a success in Germany.

4d   Information about lake /and/ valley (4)

Gen^[5] is an informal British term for information ⇒ you’ve got more gen on him than we have.

A glen^[5] is a narrow valley, especially in Scotland or Ireland.

5d   Send up // regulation covering one police department making a comeback (8)

The Criminal Investigation Department (seemingly better known by its abbreviation CID^[2]) is the detective branch of a British police force.

6d   Record holder? (2-3)

7d   A case of rubbish in inferior // play (8)

There is an error in the enumeration in this clue; it should be (3,5).

War Horse^[7] is a play based on the book of the same name by children's writer Michael Morpurgo, adapted for stage by Nick Stafford. Originally Morpurgo thought "they must be mad" to try to make a play from his best-selling 1982 novel; nonetheless, the play was a success. The play features life-size horse puppets by the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa.

8d   Stands // to acquire drink (4,2)

As a verb, sup^[5] is a dated or Northern English term meaning to take (drink or liquid food) by sips or spoonfuls ⇒ (i) she supped up her soup delightedly; (ii) he was supping straight from the bottle. As a noun, it means (1) a sip of liquid ⇒ he took another sup of wine or (2) in Northern England or Ireland, an alcoholic drink ⇒ the latest sup from those blokes at the brewery.

14d   Food /offered by/ witch wearing blusher? (8)

16d   Put forward /for/ job, with university behind schedule (9)

17d   Express a view in support of new rat // poison (8)

In chemistry, atropine^[5] is a poisonous compound found in deadly nightshade and related plants. It is used in medicine as a muscle relaxant, e.g. in dilating the pupil of the eye.

18d   Hooter preceding the Queen/'s/ Cup (6)

In the surface reading, hooter^[5] may be used in the chiefly British sense of (1) a siren or steam whistle, especially one used as a signal for work to begin or finish or (2) the horn of a motor vehicle.

It seems that the Queen's Cup may be a figment of the setter's imagination that exists only in Crosswordland. I did suspect that "the Queen's Cup" likely referred to a British horse race but that does not seem to be the case. There is an Australian thoroughbred race^[7] known as the Queen's Cup as well as a steeplechase in North Carolina — not to mention an Ontario university hockey tournament^[7]. However, none of these is likely to be the event referenced in the clue.

In Britain, hooter^[5] is an informal term for a person's nose — and not (in the plural) vulgar slang for a woman's breasts.

The regnal ciphers (monograms) of British monarchs are initials formed from the Latin version of their first name followed by either Rex or Regina (Latin for king or queen, respectively). Thus, the regnal cipher of Queen Elizabeth is ER^[5] — from the Latin Elizabetha Regina.

20d   Strangely saturnine, neglecting US // set (7)

Tranny^[5] (also trannie) is a chiefly British term for a transistor radio, not — as it would be in North America — the transmission in a motor vehicle.

22d   Poles full of anger /giving/ warning (5)

24d   Country // church in Austria? (5)

The International Vehicle Registration (IVR) code for Austria is A^[5].

25d   The secret language /of/ fish -- English! (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)

Wishing all readers a Very Happy New Year — Falcon