Tuesday, March 10, 2015 — DT 27602

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 27602
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Setter Unknown
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 27602]
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

I thought that this was perhaps a tad more difficult than most "Tuesday" puzzles. While I did manage to fill in the grid without assistance from my electronic helpers, I did need a bit of assistance from them to decipher the wordplay for 20d.

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

Across

1a   Bust, // Rodin's last put in park but vandalised (8)

Scratching the Surface
Auguste Rodin[5] (1840–1917) was a French sculptor. He was chiefly concerned with the human form. Notable works: The Thinker (1880) and The Kiss (1886).

5a   Give out drugs to get higher /as/ an exercise (4-2)

Americanism Alert
The Tuesday setter once again introduces an Americanism. As Gazza points out in his review, push-up[5] is a chiefly North American term for what is known in Britain as a press-up[5].

9a   Swift, perhaps, // educational test facing girl getting tense (8)

Either the British SAT or the US SAT will lead you to the correct solution.

National Curriculum assessments^[7] are a series of educational assessments, colloquially known as Sats or SATs, used to assess the attainment of children attending maintained schools in England. They comprise a mixture of teacher-led and test-based assessment depending on the age of the pupils.

This test should not be confused with the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test or Scholastic Assessment Test), a Reasoning Test administered by the US examination boards College Board and Educational Testing Service and taken by high school students in the United States of America for admission into colleges.

Grammatically speaking, t.^[10] is the abbreviation for tense.

Jonathan Swift^[5] (1667–1745) was an Irish satirist, poet, and Anglican cleric; known as Dean Swift. He is best known for Gulliver’s Travels (1726), a satire on human society in the form of a fantastic tale of travels in imaginary lands.

10a   Trouble with greed, say, upset // Greek idol (6)

In theology, the seven deadly sins^[10] are the sins of pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. Since greed^[10] is synonymous with both gluttony and covetousness, I guess that makes it doubly sinful.

In Greek mythology, Adonis^[5] was a beautiful youth loved by both Aphrodite and Persephone. He was killed by a boar, but Zeus decreed that he should spend the winter of each year in the underworld with Persephone and the summer months with Aphrodite.

11a   Draw back tool initially with trouble -- // a screwdriver? (8)

12a   Place for pilgrims kept by councillor /in/ Norfolk resort (6)

Cr^[5] is the abbreviation for Councillor.

Cromer^[7] is a coastal town and civil parish in north Norfolk, England that bills itself as the Gem of the Norfolk Coast. Tourism is an important part of the local economy with the town a popular resort and a touring base for the surrounding area.

14a   Moan at sign that's whipped up // hostility (10)

A strict parsing of the wordplay would result in an anagram (that's whipped up) of MOAN AT SIGN.

18a   Protective garment pierced by dislodged stake /in/ industrial feature (10)

22a   Popular diplomat's skill /is/ undiminished (6)

23a   Best // vehicle leaves without time to go to hotel (8)

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

Best^[5] is used as a verb meaning to outwit or get the better of (someone) ⇒ she refused to allow herself to be bested. Ironically, in this sense best is a synonym of worst^[5], a verb meaning to get the better of or defeat ⇒ this was not the time for a deep discussion—she was tired and she would be worsted.

24a   Artist following a writer /in/ foreign language (6)

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.

25a   Conflict // rages sadly in exit (8)

26a   Come out /from/ English commercial move ending prematurely (6)

27a   Measure taken by American in church yard, // place of rest (8)

Meter^[5] is the US spelling of metre.

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

Down

1d   Cut /in/ British cricket, perhaps, that's not new (6)

Cricket is not a sport — at least not in this clue.

2d   Sign // relating to hearing organ in confines of nave (6)

3d   Bit of sun around river? It /is/ an unusual occurrence (6)

4d   Hand over a note touring island /being/ enthusiastic (10)

It seems to have taken a while for the parsing of the wordplay to be decided on Big Dave's site [see Comment #3]. In the end, Gazza settled for:

• {PASS ON (hand over) + (over) A (from the clue) + TE ([musical] note)} containing (touring; going around) I (island)

Note that Gazza has used the word "over" twice in his explanation, which is a no-no. I would suspect that this is an oversight that crept in during all the revisions that the review entry would appear to have undergone. However, if we strike the second instance, the clue does parse correctly:

• {PASS ON (hand over) + A (from the clue) + TE ([musical] note)} containing (touring; going around) I (island)

A variation on one of Gazza's discarded explanations might also work:

• {PASS (hand) + (over) TE (a [musical] note)} containing (touring; going around) IONA ([Hebridean] island)

Pass equates to hand when used as in the request Pass me the dictionary, please.

I suspect that a purist might argue that had the setter intended the clue to be parsed in this latter fashion, he (or she) would have written merely "note" rather than "a note". Upon reading Big Dave's blog, I discover that my suspicions are well-founded, as Big Dave writes "It’s bad practice for a clue to contain a surplus indefinite article".

In music, te^[5] is the seventh note of a major scale in sol-fa notation. Oxford Dictionaries Online gives the spelling as te with ti being shown as the North American spelling.

Judging by entries in other American and British dictionaries, the only recognized spelling in the US would seem to be ti^[3,4,11] whereas, in the UK, the principal spelling would appear to be te^[2,3,4,11], with ti given as an alternative (not necessarily American) spelling in some dictionaries.

 Iona^[5] is a small island in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Mull. It is the site of a monastery founded by St Columba in about 563.

6d   Cook lightly bit of gristle? // Such is unlikely to succeed (8)

7d   Female attendant // established, we hear, measure of animal first (8)

A hand^[5] is a a unit of measurement of a horse’s height, equal to 4 inches (10.16 cm).

8d   Finished with strike over one // beef (8)

13d   Sickly // son fidgeting in each car (10)

15d   Assess // car that's covered northerly road (8)

In the UK, estate^[5] is short for estate car^[5], the British name for a station wagon^[5].

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

16d   Computer stuff // mistaken for waste (8)

17d   Fine work by engraver /that's/ attractive (8)

F^[5] is an abbreviation for fine, as used in describing grades of pencil lead [a usage that Oxford Dictionaries Online surprisingly characterizes as British].

19d   Sixteen, maybe, /and/ uncool (6)

20d   Note heartless Chancellor of the Exchequer /being/ brutal (6)

I was able to get the correct solution from the definition and checking letters and the contribution made by the "Chancellor of the Exchequer" was pretty obvious. However, I needed a nudge from my electronic helpers to track down the heartless note. I'm afraid that earlier clues had put me in a musical frame of mind.

In any event, I felt somewhat less chagrined after seeing that quite a few Brits failed to decipher the heartless note.

Fiver^[5] is an informal British name for a five-pound note.

21d   Trite // characteristic of a fondue? (6)

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