Puzzle at a Glance
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Puzzle number in The Daily Telegraph
DT 29704 | |
Publication date in The Daily Telegraph
Thursday, June 17, 2021 | |
Setter
Giovanni (Don Manley) | |
Link to full review
Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 29704]
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Big Dave's Crossword Blog review written by
Miffypops | |
BD rating
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| Difficulty - ★★★ | Enjoyment - ★★★ |
Falcon's experience
┌────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐
███████████████████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ | |
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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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Notes
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This puzzle appears on the Monday Diversions page in the Saturday, August 28, 2021 edition of the National Post. | |
Introduction
Judging by the comments on Big Dave's Crossword Blog, the consensus would seem to be that this crossword is a fair bit more difficult than the reviewer's rating might indicate.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.
| Markup Conventions | |
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| Click here for further explanation and usage examples of markup conventions used on this blog. | |
Across
| 1a | Lives quietly at first /and/ sits in chair? (8) |
| 5a | Show respect for // nineteenth eleven, as you might say? (6) |
Eleven[5] (often appearing as a Roman numeral XI) is the number of players in* a cricket[7] side [team] or an Association football[7] [soccer] team — and is frequently used as a metonym for such a team ⇒
at cricket I played in the first eleven.
* Note that, in Britain, the words "side" and "team" are synonymous and a player is said to be "in a side" or "in a team" rather than "on a team" as one would say in North America.
| 8a | Lord settled in US city? // Not quite (6) |
A lord[10] is a male member of the nobility, especially in Britain. An earl[5] is a British nobleman ranking above a viscount and below a marquess [in other words, the third highest of the five ranks of British nobility — duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron].
| 9a | Pair wandering around Iran having accident // by river (8) |
Riparian[5] is a legal term meaning relating to or situated on the banks of a river.
| 10a | Endless work to get information on // certain animals (8) |
Chordata[2] is the phylum of the animal kingdom which includes all animals that possess a notochord at some stage of their development.
* A notochord[2] is a flexible rod-like structure, which strengthens and supports the body in the embryos and adults of more primitive animals. In vertebrates it is replaced by the spinal column before birth.
| 11a | Welshman heading off with group /for/ broadcast (6) |
Dai[7] is a Welsh masculine given name, a diminutive form of Dafydd (David).
| 12a | Successful in life? Not American // fellow stranded on island (8) |
Prospero[7] is a fictional character and the protagonist of William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, whose usurping brother, Antonio, had put him (with his three-year-old daughter, Miranda) to sea on a "rotten carcass" of a boat to die, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda had survived and found exile on a small island.
| 13a | Rabbit // found in train at terminus (6) |
Rabbit[5] is an informal British term meaning:
- (noun) a conversation ⇒
we had quite a heated rabbit about it
- (verb) to talk at length, especially about trivial matters ⇒
stop rabbiting on, will you, and go to bed!
The term rabbit[5] (meaning talk) is Cockney rhyming slang arising from the expression
"rabbit and pork"[5]. (show more )
Cockneys[5,10], the natives of that part of East London known as the East End[5], speak a dialect (also known as cockney) that is characterised by dropping the aitch (H) from the beginning of words as well as the use of rhyming slang.
In Cockney rhyming slang, a word (in this case, "talk") is replaced by a phrase with which it rhymes (in this case, "rabbit and pork"). Although the entire rhyming phrase may sometimes be used, it is more often the case that the rhyming word (in this case, "pork") is dropped leaving the slang word (in this case, "rabbit"). Thus, through this process, "talk" becomes "rabbit".
The word "pork" , when pronounced in a non-rhotic accent* typical of dialects found in many parts of Britain (especially southeastern England), more or less rhymes with "talk" .
* Non-rhotic accents omit the sound < r > in certain situations, while rhotic accents generally pronounce < r > in all contexts. Among the several dozen British English accents which exist, many are non-rhotic while American English (US and Canadian) is mainly rhotic. This is, however, a generalisation, as there are areas of Britain that are rhotic, and areas of America that are non-rhotic. For more information, see this guide to pronouncing < r > in British English.
As for the expression "rabbit and pork", apparently it is common practice to combine these two meats in a dish (as a Google search for 'rabbit and pork recipe' will quickly prove). One recipe I found sheds some light on why these meats often appear together: "Rabbit can be dry some times so here it is cooked with belly pork and cyder [archaic spelling of cider] to create a warming substantial casserole".
hide
Cockneys[5,10], the natives of that part of East London known as the East End[5], speak a dialect (also known as cockney) that is characterised by dropping the aitch (H) from the beginning of words as well as the use of rhyming slang.
In Cockney rhyming slang, a word (in this case, "talk") is replaced by a phrase with which it rhymes (in this case, "rabbit and pork"). Although the entire rhyming phrase may sometimes be used, it is more often the case that the rhyming word (in this case, "pork") is dropped leaving the slang word (in this case, "rabbit"). Thus, through this process, "talk" becomes "rabbit".
The word "pork" , when pronounced in a non-rhotic accent* typical of dialects found in many parts of Britain (especially southeastern England), more or less rhymes with "talk" .
* Non-rhotic accents omit the sound < r > in certain situations, while rhotic accents generally pronounce < r > in all contexts. Among the several dozen British English accents which exist, many are non-rhotic while American English (US and Canadian) is mainly rhotic. This is, however, a generalisation, as there are areas of Britain that are rhotic, and areas of America that are non-rhotic. For more information, see this guide to pronouncing < r > in British English.
As for the expression "rabbit and pork", apparently it is common practice to combine these two meats in a dish (as a Google search for 'rabbit and pork recipe' will quickly prove). One recipe I found sheds some light on why these meats often appear together: "Rabbit can be dry some times so here it is cooked with belly pork and cyder [archaic spelling of cider] to create a warming substantial casserole".
hide
| 15a | Pole that is restricting a // traveller (6) |
| 18a | Stop with gold and meet // authorised receiver (8) |
| 20a | Geese /in/ high wind to keep going in extremis (6) |
| 21a | Capital city // in Caribbean containing pub with little spirit (8) |
WI[5] is the abbreviation for West Indies.
Peg[5] is an Indian term for a measure of spirits ⇒
have a peg of whisky.
| 23a | Trick /that's/ bad played on us -- I'll get caught (8) |
| 24a | They go out /in/ pursuit when leader's gone missing by river (6) |
The River Exe[7] rises on Exmoor in Somerset, 8.4 kilometres (5 mi) from the Bristol Channel coast, but flows more or less directly due south*, so that most of its length lies in Devon. It reaches the sea at a substantial ria, the Exe Estuary, on the south (English Channel) coast of Devon.
* and, thus, away from the Bristol Channel
The term exeunt[5] (Latin 'they go out') is used as a stage direction in a play to indicate that a group of actors leave the stage.
| 25a | Anger? /It's/ that bad before peace finally comes (6) |
I think a linguist would say that this clue is written in subject-object-verb[7] (SOV) style instead of the standard English style of subject-verb-object (SVO).
* Although not Yoda-speak, it sounds as foreign—if not more foreign—than Yoda-speak which employs an object-subject-verb[7] (OSV) order.
The first step in solving this clue is to replace the word "that" by its antecedent "anger". Thus the wordplay is "anger bad before peace finally comes". Now, restate the wordplay in standard English SVO style instead of SOV sequence to get "anger bad comes before peace finally" which parses as an anagram of (bad) ANGER preceding (comes before) E (peace finally; final letter of peacE).
What did he say?
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In his review on Big Dave's Crossword Blog, Miffypops writesYes, "anger" is both the definition and part of the anagram fodder. However, I don't consider the word "anger" to be doing "double duty" (a definite no-no) as the pronoun "that" essentially represents a second instance of the word "anger" in the clue. Perhaps a subtle distinction, but—in my judgment—it justifies the clue.The word anger is doing double duty here as anagram fodder and definition. |
| 26a | Boy gets confused -- last requirement for actor /or/ performer (8) |
Down
| 1d | Fear /of/ pagan deity in charge (5) |
In Greek mythology, Pan[5] is a god of flocks and herds, typically represented with the horns, ears, and legs of a goat on a man's body. His sudden appearance was supposed to cause terror similar to that of a frightened and stampeding herd, and the word panic is derived from his name.
| 2d | Gentleman rated highly said to be // astonished (9) |
| 3d | 24-hour protection needed? // This help isn't available overnight (3,4) |
| 4d | Act as a proud bird might /and/ find new things to do (6,4,5) |
A double definition, the first a bit cryptic.
| 5d | No longer obvious // what one must do to make things clear (7) |
| 6d | Title is special -- // does one ignore ordinary folk? (7) |
| 7d | Beasts /in/ a good lake descended on by soldiers (9) |
| 12d | Bird // erring badly when diving into water (9) |
One would certainly want to avoid diving into this water!
| 14d | Quality of slow service /with/ sailor needing to eat on ship (9) |
| 16d | By no means resembling a rounded character (7) |
I guess this is a (not very) cryptic definition.
| 17d | Recluse /has/ some productive time reflecting when standing on head (7) |
An eremite[5] is a Christian hermit or recluse.
| 19d | Unlimited desire to enter fellow/'s/ place of confinement (7) |
At Oxford and Cambridge universities, a fellow[10] is a member of the governing body of a college who is usually a member of the teaching staff.
A don[10] is a member of the teaching staff at a university or college, especially at Oxford or Cambridge.
| 22d | Toothy beast // jumping at oranges -- only some taken (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] - TheFreeDictionarycom (Collins English Dictionary)
[5] - Lexico (formerly Oxford Dictionaries Online) (Oxford Dictionary of English)
[6] - Lexico (formerly Oxford Dictionaries Online) (Oxford Advanced 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)
[14] - CollinsDictionary.com (COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary)
[15] - CollinsDictionary.com (Penguin Random House LLC/HarperCollins Publishers Ltd )
Signing off for today — Falcon
I was a couple of days late in getting to this because of weekend visitors and thought as I was solving it that this was the most challenging C&R puzzle I had encountered in some time. It was only after I finished it that I realized that I had forgotten that I had already done the Saturday puzzle and that this was a particularly sticky DT one.
ReplyDeleteYes, Giovanni is quite a different kettle of fish than C&R.
ReplyDelete