Puzzle at a Glance
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Puzzle number in The Daily Telegraph
DT 29747 | |
Publication date in The Daily Telegraph
Friday, August 6, 2021 | |
Setter
proXimal (Steve Bartlett) | |
Link to full review
Big Dave's Crossword Blog [DT 29747]
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Big Dave's Crossword Blog review written by
Deep Threat | |
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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Introduction
It's a very enjoyable puzzle today and I share what seems to be the consensus opinion of those commenting at Big Dave's Crossword Blog that the difficulty level is higher than the single star awarded by Deep Threat.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 | Figure reportedly plump, that lady/'s/ ancestor (10) |
Above I have parsed her as an object pronoun (standing for "that lady"); however, one could also parse her as a possessive pronoun (standing for "that lady's"):
- Figure reportedly plump, that lady's // ancestor (10)
| 6a | Returning, share // carriage (4) |
A trap[5] a light, two-wheeled carriage pulled by a horse or pony.
| 9a | One making binders // correct after failing to open (5) |
Binder[10] is used in the sense of something used to fasten or tie, such as rope or twine.
Roper[10] is another name for rope maker.
| 10a | Soothe // everyone English through endless tea (9) |
| 12a | Sports bats // suppress noises (6,7) |
A racket[5] (also racquet) is a bat with a round or oval frame strung with catgut, nylon, etc., used especially in tennis, badminton, and squash.
* Despite all the dictionaries that I consulted (both British and US) showing racquet to be a variant spelling of racket, it is the spelling used by each of the several Canadian retailers whose websites I visited.
| 14a | Poorly rate poet/'s/ musical work (8) |
| 15a | Silk worker/'s/ rest on table (6) |
A spider[5] is a long-legged rest for a billiard cue that can be placed over a ball without touching it.
| 17a | Rejected injection around November with outsize // instruments (6) |
| 19a | View turned rigid on Time // magazines (8) |
| 21a | Girls getting drunk with a new pink // prosecco, maybe (9,4) |
Prosecco[5] (trademark in the UK) is a sparkling white wine from the Veneto region of north-eastern Italy.
| 24a | Uncouth // diner peeled limb attached to insect (9) |
| 25a | What holds policeman back? // Age (5) |
| 26a | Removes contents of // bottle (4) |
Bottle[5] is an informal British term denoting the courage or confidence needed to do something difficult or dangerous ⇒
I lost my bottle completely and ran.
* Origin: bottle (from "bottle and glass") is Cockney rhyming for arse (buttocks) [which in the non-rhotic Cockney dialect is pronounced 'ahse' and, thus, does rhyme with glass]. Apparently 'to lose one's bottle' originally meant to be so scared that one loses control of one's bowels.
Triple Definition?
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| As Chriscross points out in Comment #4 on Big Dave's Crossword Blog, one could possibly interpret this as a triple definition, where "removes", "contents", and "bottle" are all synonyms for GUTS. Together with the combination "removes contents", might we even call it a quadruple definition? |
| 27a | Discharges // divisions including Royal Engineers (10) |
"Royal Engineers " = RE [Royal Engineers]
Down
| 1d | Rage /of/ social reformer gripping you, reportedly (4) |
Elizabeth Fry[5] (1780–1845) was an English Quaker prison reformer, a leading figure in the early 19th-century campaign for penal reform.
| 2d | Fencer's thrust // one support piercing uncovered area (7) |
A riposte[5] (noun) is a quick return thrust in fencing.
| 3d | One's eaten, holding lot in Chinese restaurant? (7,6) |
From a British perspective, fortune cookie[5] is a North American term for a small biscuit* containing a slip of paper with a prediction or motto written on it, served in Chinese restaurants.
* The British use the term biscuit[3,4,11] for a range of foods that include those that would be called either cookies or crackers in North America. Cookies might be referred to as sweet biscuits and crackers as savoury biscuits. A North American biscuit[5] is similar to what is known in Britain as a scone.
Fortune cookies are often served as a dessert in Chinese restaurants in the United States, Canada and other countries, but they are not Chinese in origin. They most likely originated from cookies made by Japanese immigrants to the United States in the late 19th or early 20th century.[7]
| 4d | Shipments /of/ tons managed before rests (8) |
I can see that transit and shipment can be synonyms when used in the singular (especially in the phrase "in transit"), but I cannot think of an example where they can be used as synonyms in the plural.
Transit[5] is the carrying of people or things from one place to another ⇒
a painting was damaged in transit.
| 5d | Mathematician /from/ Spain developed rule (5) |
| 7d | Make further changes to // last sheet of paper, presumably (7) |
A ream[5] is a quantity of 500 (formerly 480) sheets of paper.
| 8d | Purse's tight, increase // force (10) |
As an anagram indicator, tight[5] is used in the informal sense of drunk ⇒
he got tight on brandy.
Pressurise[5] (an alternative British spelling* of pressurize) is used here in a British sense meaning to attempt to persuade or coerce (someone) into doing something ⇒
don't let anyone pressurize you into snap decisions.
* While British dictionaries show the principal spelling of words such as pressurize as ending in -ize [note the spelling used by Lexico (Oxford Dictionaries) in the usage example], many Brits will argue vehemently that this is an American spelling and the word should end in -ise. As I understand it, such words come from Greek and that is where the z originates—not America. The -ise spelling comes from French, so perhaps this British propensity to use it is a long-lasting carry over from the Norman invasion of 1066.
| 11d | Politician/'s/ immorality with power over citizen (4-9) |
| 13d | Burning // artwork in future (10) |
| 16d | Relative // died giggling with head falling off (8) |
| 18d | Most spruce // home for birds including swallow (7) |
| 20d | US band in Toledo removing editor/'s/ musical effect (7) |
R.E.M.[7] was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry. The group disbanded amicably in September 2011.
In music, tremolo[5] denotes a wavering effect in a musical tone, produced either by rapid reiteration of a note, by rapid repeated slight variation in the pitch of a note, or by sounding two notes of slightly different pitches to produce prominent overtones.
| 22d | Italy game tricky // match (5) |
Image[10] is used in the sense of a person or thing that resembles another closely; in other words, a double or copy.
| 23d | As I've shown, // wordsmith uses traps (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] - 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
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