Tuesday, January 30, 2018 — DT 28561

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Daily Telegraph DT 28561
Publication Date in The Daily Telegraph Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Setter Jay (Jeremy Mutch)
Link to Full Review Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 28561]
Big Dave's Crossword Blog Review Written By Kath
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 found today's puzzle quite challenging and had to consult Kath's review on Big Dave's Crossword Blog to sort out the parsing for 6d.

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 semi-all-in-one (semi-&lit.) clues. All-in-one (&lit.) clues and cryptic definitions are marked with a dotted underline. Explicit link words and phrases are enclosed in forward slashes (/link/) and implicit links are shown as double forward slashes (//).

Across

1a   No-nonsense // police raid follows riot, ignoring regulars (6)

The phrase "ignoring regulars" indicates that we are to remove an unspecified regular sequence of letters from the fodder. Most often, the regular sequence will consist of every other letter (either the evens or the odds). On rare occasions, it may even be every third letter. In this case, the fodder is RIOT and we must remove the evens (I and T) leaving RO remaining.

Here and There
From a British perspective, bust[5] in the sense of a police raid is a North American term.

Scratching the Surface
The surface reading suggests a police raid on a pub following a riot in which only those who were not regulars at the establishment were taken into custody.

4a   Note amends // books seen in church (8)

The psalter^[5] (or Psalter^[10]) is a a devotional or liturgical book containing a version of the biblical Book of Psalms^* often with a musical setting ⇒ psalters and hymn books.

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^* Psalter^[10] is another name for Psalms, especially in the version in the Book of Common Prayer^[10], the official book of church services of the Church of England, until 1980, when the Alternative Service Book was sanctioned.

10a   Shame /of/ this person wrapped in shroud on getting busted (9)

"this person" = I (show explanation )

It is a common cryptic crossword convention for the creator of the puzzle to use terms such as (the or this) compiler, (the or this) setter, (this) author, (this) 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.

hide explanation

Scratching the Surface
In the surface reading, the speaker appears to one of those swept up in the North American-style police action in 1a.

11a   Copy // line seen in feature of roadworks (5)

Roadworks^[5,10] is a pretty self-evident British term for work done in building or repairing roads or services under a road, especially when forming a hazard or obstruction to traffic ⇒ (i) roadworks had caused a long traffic jam; (ii) roadwork delays.

12a   Might this identify // a Royal Marines troop? (7)

"Royal Marines" = RM (show explanation )

The Royal Marines^[5] (abbreviation RM)^[5] is a British armed service (part of the Royal Navy) founded in 1664, trained for service at sea, or on land under specific circumstances.

hide explanation

13a   Encourage // popular part of church (7)

14a   Line dance // music on game shows (5)

15a   Try twice /to get/ acclaim (4,4)

18a   Photographs // fail to be entered in competitions (5-3)

Here and There
Cup[5,10] is a British term for a sporting contest in which a cup is awarded to the winner ⇒ playing in the Cup is the best thing ever. In North America, we might play "for the Cup" but likely not "in the Cup".

20a   King wearing small child/'s/ hat (5)

"king" = R (show explanation )

In the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms^*, Rex^[5] (abbreviation R^[5]) [Latin for king] denotes the reigning king, used following a name (e.g. Georgius Rex, King George — often shortened to GR) or in the titles of lawsuits (e.g. Rex v. Jones, the Crown versus Jones — often shortened to R. v. Jones).

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^* A Commonwealth realm^[7] is a sovereign state that is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations and shares the same person, currently Elizabeth II, as its head of state and reigning constitutional monarch, but retains a crown legally distinct from the other realms. There are currently sixteen Commonwealth realms, the largest being Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom with the remainder being smaller Caribbean and Pacific island nations.

hide explanation

A mite^[5] is a small child or animal, especially when regarded as an object of sympathy ⇒ the poor little mite looks half-starved.

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A mitre^[5] (US miter) is a tall headdress worn by bishops and senior abbots as a symbol of office, tapering to a point at front and back with a deep cleft between.

23a   Knocked sharply on front of this, // cornered (7)

25a   Take off, /seeing/ Italian grabbed by single pal (7)

"Italian" = IT, in reference to either the country or the vermouth (show explanation )

This cluing might be explained in a couple of ways:

• It.^[10] is an abbreviation for Italian (or Italy).


• Italian^[10] is another name for Italian vermouth. It^[5] is an informal, dated British term for Italian vermouth ⇒ he poured a gin and it.

hide explanation

In Britain, mate^[5] — in addition to being a person’s husband, wife, or other sexual partner — is an informal term for a friend or companion ⇒ my best mate Steve.

26a   Prospect /of/ victory, as it falls (5)

V^[10] is the symbol for victory. The victory-freedom sign^[7] is famously associated with British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill in World War II. In a later incarnation, it became the "peace sign" of the 1960s hippy movement. However, one should be certain one knows how to properly make the sign lest they repeat the faux pas made by US President George H. W. Bush and others (show explanation ).

A V sign^[7] made with the fingers and with the palm facing out may be a victory sign (as made famous by Sir Winston Churchill) or a peace sign (arising from the 1960s counterculture movement). However, in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, when made with the palm facing in, it means "F**k off"^*.

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^* The Brits would seem to need two fingers to get across an idea that North Americans manage to convey with a single finger.

For a time in the UK, "a Harvey (Smith)" became a way of describing the insulting version of the V sign, much as "the word of Cambronne" is used in France, or "the Trudeau salute" is used to describe the one-fingered salute in Canada. This happened because, in 1971, show-jumper Harvey Smith was disqualified for making a televised V sign to the judges after winning the British Show Jumping Derby at Hickstead. (His win was reinstated two days later.)

Harvey Smith pleaded that he was using a Victory sign, a defence also used by other figures in the public eye. Sometimes foreigners visiting the countries mentioned above use the "two-fingered salute" without knowing it is offensive to the natives, for example when ordering two beers in a noisy pub, or in the case of United States president George H. W. Bush, who, while touring Australia in 1992, attempted to give a "peace sign" to a group of farmers in Canberra—who were protesting about U.S. farm subsidies—and instead gave the insulting V sign.

Steve McQueen in Le Mans

Steve McQueen gives a British (knuckles outward) V sign in the closing scene in the 1971 motorsport movie 'Le Mans'. A still picture of the gesture was also recorded by photographer Nigel Snowdon and has become an iconic image of both McQueen and the 24 hours of Le Mans.

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27a   Drops measuring equipment (4,5)

28a   Stars head off /for/ shelter (8)

29a   Enthusiastic // study in painting (6)

Down

1d   Artist steps around one /for/ light (8)

"artist" = RA (show explanation )

A Royal Academician (abbreviation RA^[10]) is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts^[5] (also Royal Academy; abbreviation also RA^[10]), an institution established in London in 1768, whose purpose is to cultivate painting, sculpture, and architecture in Britain. 

hide explanation

2d   Match commentator? (4,3)

3d   Tug on a path to intercept ship/'s/ freeloaders? (9)

On the seas of Crosswordland, you will rarely go wrong in assuming that a ship is a steamship (abbreviation SS^[5]).

5d   Alcohol /providing/ morale in the theatre? (8,6)

Surgical spirit^[5] is a British term for denatured alcohol, typically perfumed, used for cleaning and disinfecting the skin or medical instruments before an injection or surgical operation.

6d   Beats // speed speaking without coming to a climax (5)

The phrase at a lick^[5] denotes at a fast pace ⇒ the hearse was going at a fair lick for that normally sedate vehicle. I have certainly heard this synonym for speed but failed to recognize it when presented out of context.

Like others, I had presumed that the phrase "without coming to a climax" was intended to indicate the truncation of a word. However, that would certainly involve merely the deletion of the final letter — not nearly the whole bloody word. My thought was that far from coming to a climax, one had barely got started.

It turns out that the explanation is actually quite different — S is being clued by S[PEAKING] with PEAKING (coming to a climax) deleted (without).

7d   Art form // mounting tacit or easy displays (7)

8d   Country // garden linked with the Cornwall area (6)

Eden^[5] (also Garden of Eden) is the place where Adam and Eve lived in the biblical account of the Creation, from which they were expelled for disobediently eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Cornwall^[5] is a county occupying the extreme southwestern peninsula of England.

For Those in the Know

Many British solvers saw "garden" in a different light. The Eden Project[7] is a popular visitor attraction in Cornwall, England that displays plants collected from many diverse climates and environments. The complex is dominated by two huge enclosures consisting of adjoining domes that house thousands of plant species, and each enclosure emulates a natural biome. The biomes consist of hundreds of hexagonal and pentagonal, inflated, plastic cells supported by steel frames. The largest of the two biomes simulates a Rainforest environment and the second, a Mediterranean environment. The attraction also has an outside botanical garden which is home to many plants and wildlife native to Cornwall and the UK in general; it also has many plants that provide an important and interesting backstory, for example, those with a prehistoric heritage.

9d   Ignored // Conservative with elderly bore (4-10)

"Conservative" = C (show explanation )

The abbreviation for Conservative may be either C.^[10] or Con.^[10].

The Conservative Party^[5] is a a major British political party that emerged from the old Tory Party^* under Sir Robert Peel in the 1830s and 1840s. Since the Second World War, it has been in power 1951–64, 1970-74, and 1979–97. It governed in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats from 2010 until the general election of May 2015, in which it was returned with a majority.

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^* Historically, a Tory^[10] was a member of the English political party that opposed the exclusion of James, Duke of York from the royal succession (1679–80). Tory remained the label for subsequent major conservative interests until they gave birth to the Conservative Party in the 1830s.

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16d   Lulu/'s/ thirst absorbing doctor and the writer (9)

Taking Root

Here we encounter an American word that seems to have become so well established across the pond that it no longer draws howls of protest over the contamination of British English by Americanisms. Humdinger[5] is an informal (originally US*) term denoting a remarkable or outstanding person or thing of its kind. * Oxford Dictionaries[5] and Collins English Dictionary[4,10] show the expression as originating in the (early) 20th century while the Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary[11] and Chambers 21st Century Dictionary[2] date it to the (late) 19th century.

While physiologically thirst and hunger are somewhat different feelings, in a figurative sense the words can be used interchangeably.

For a change, the doctor is one that North Americans would recognize.

In 10a, the setter referred to himself as "this person". Here, he chooses to use "the writer". However, in both cases, he is using the same cluing device.

17d   Torn about always /being/ respectful (8)

19d   Back trouble in so stormy // an affair (7)

21d   Malign // deal protecting University College (7)

UC, rather than being the abbreviation for University College, may be (as Kath shows in her review) merely the abbreviation for University plus the abbreviation for College.

In addition to countless examples around the world, there are several institutions that go by the name University College in the UK. Among these are University College London^[7] (a founding college of the University of London) which is known as UCL, University College, Oxford^*[7] (the oldest college of the University of Oxford, established in 1249) which is colloquially referred to as "Univ", and the former University College, Cambridge (founded in 1965) which changed its name to Wolfson College^[7] in 1973 in recognition of the benefaction of the Wolfson Foundation [if it were a sports stadium, Wolfson would be said to have bought the naming rights, but that terminology is surely too crass to be applied to such an esteemed educational institution].

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^* the official name in full is The Master and Fellows of the College of the Great Hall of the University of Oxford.

22d   Music bars /will need/ refurbished seats to muffle volume (6)

"volume" = V (show explanation )

In physics and chemistry, V^[5] is a symbol used to represent volume in mathematical formulae ⇒ pV = nRT.

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Stave is a British term (or maybe not^*) for the set of lines and spaces on which music is written.

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^* Both Oxford Dictionaries and Collins English Dictionary characterize stave^{[1,2,3,4,5,10,11]} as a British term, although American dictionaries do not seem to consider this to be the case. Furthermore, most dictionaries show stave^{[1,2,3,4,10,11]} as an alternative term for staff^{[1,2,3,4,10,11]}. Oxford Dictionaries, on the other hand, takes a contrarian view, listing staff^[5] as an alternative term for stave^[5].

Misreading the Score
In music terminology, staves and bars are not the same thing — with staves being the horizontal lines and bars the vertical lines on a piece of sheet music. The five horizontal lines of a musical stave may give the appearance of bars — in a general sense. However, in musical notation, the bars are actually the vertical lines drawn through the stave to mark off metrical units.

24d   Fruit /and/ veg needed by church (5)

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)
^[12] - CollinsDictionary.com (Webster’s New World College Dictionary)
^[13] - MacmillanDictionary.com (Macmillan Dictionary)

Signing off for today — Falcon