Sunday, November 1, 2009 (ST 4347)

This puzzle was "originally" published in The Sunday London Times on September 20, 2009

Introduction

In the text above, you may have observed that I placed quotation marks around the word originally. The reason for doing this is that talbinho, in his blog at Times for the Times, has identified that much of the puzzle is not at all original, having been recycled from a puzzle published in the Times in July 2008 (which would have subsequently appeared in the Citizen in the late summer or early fall of 2008). This was before I started this blog and I do not remember doing the puzzle myself. In any event, I certainly do not profess to have the remarkable power of recall that talbinho so obviously possesses. Since the puzzle was as good as new to me, I rather enjoyed doing it. I also enjoyed reading the comments on Times for the Times, especially sotira's anecdote about the newspaper astrology columnist fired for recycling predictions.

Today's Glossary

Some possibly unfamiliar abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions used in today's puzzle

Arkle - a famous Irish Thoroughbred racehorse

sp - abbrev. starting price: horse-racing the final odds that are offered on a horse just before the race begins

Links to Solutions

A review of today's puzzle by talbinho can be found at Times for the Times [ST 4347].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

17a Problem about copper - short, fat and beefy (8)

Although I got the correct solution, I was not able to fathom the wordplay. I discovered from talbinho's review that my difficulty arose from blindly assuming that "about" must be a container indicator, when, in reality, it is a reversal indicator.

4 Boy's final poem (6)

Even after determining the correct solution, I had to ponder the wordplay in this clue for quite a while before understanding it. As has been pointed out to me (probably on more than one occasion), "'s" (apostrophe-s) can have several meanings; among which are the possessive, an abbreviation for "is", and an abbreviation for "has". In this case, it is the latter. Thus the clue is equivalent to, "Boy has final poem" and the wordplay is SON (boy) has (charade indicator) NET (final). I have noticed that the word "has" often seems to be used as a charade indicator (as though it meant "plus").

Signing off for this week - Falcon