Sunday, August 2, 2009 (ST 4334)

This puzzle was originally published in The Sunday London Times on June 21, 2009

Introduction

I achieved a fairly respectable completion time on this puzzle despite going down one dead end street.

Links to Solutions

A review of today's puzzle by talbinho can be found at Times for the Times [ST 4334].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

There were several new terms for me in today's puzzle, among them ODALISKS (9ac) and USANCE (28ac). However, I managed to work both of them out from the wordplay before going to the dictionary to confirm that these words actually exist. A somewhat similar case is the appearance of ID meaning "fish" in 8d. I searched through many reference sources before finding in Wikipedia (as did an anonymous commenter on Times for the Times) that this is an alternate spelling of ide (with which I am familiar from its frequent appearances in crossword puzzles).

Like those commenting on Times for the Times, I was a bit perplexed by the use of "required" in 19d, as the word seemed totally superfluous to both the cryptic wordplay and the surface reading.

In his blog on Times for the Times, talbinho wonders whether the Nursery Rhyme "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" would be known abroad. The Mother Goose rhymes are certainly well known in Canada and the U.S. - and I dare say throughout the English-speaking world.

In his blog , talbinho also expresses some disagreement with the use of "junction" for T. However, I thought this usage was fine, as junction can be defined as "2. A place where two things join or meet, especially a place where two roads or railway routes come together and one terminates" and a T-junction as "a junction where two roads or pipes etc. meet to form a T".

The dead end street that I ventured down was in 27d, where I initially had opted for HAIR as the solution on the basis that hair is often used to symbolize or indicate fineness (e.g., "to adjust a setting just a hair") and hair may need cutting. LAWN as a fabric was yet another new term for me.

Signing off for this week - Falcon