This puzzle was originally published in The Sunday London Times on
October 18, 2009
Introduction
I completed today's puzzle still having question marks in my mind concerning a few of the clues.
Today's Glossary
Some possibly unfamiliar abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions used in today's puzzle
afters - singular noun, Brit colloq dessert; pudding.
ladette - noun Brit. 1. A young woman who behaves in a manner similar to a young man, namely being
boisterous and loud and drinking to excess
.
polythene - noun chiefly Brit. a tough, light, flexible plastic made by polymerizing ethylene, chiefly used for packaging.
ORIGIN contraction of
polyethylene. Beatles fans will surely remember
Polythene Pam.
RSC - abbreviation 1 Royal Shakespeare Company: a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, England
TV - abbreviation 2. Slang transvestite.
wind up - noun 1 Brit. informal an attempt to tease or irritate someone.
[Note that Oxford spells it wind-up, with a hyphen]
Links to Solutions
A review of today's puzzle by talbinho can be found at Times for the Times [ST 4351].
Commentary on Today's Puzzle
27a Forgetting one's complaint (8)
Talbinho seemed to like this clue fairly well, "... a much better CD.
" However, it took me quite a while to get my head around it - perhaps I am just obtuse. I finally came to the conclusion that the thrust of the clue is that if one is suffering from amnesia, they may well be unable to remember what illness they have (forgetting one's complaint) - and therefore would be described as being AMNESIAC.
4d Angry lady's maid on TV (5-7)
I did get the correct answer; but I was definitely puzzled by the wordplay. I looked in vain for a British television show called (or dealing with a) CROSS-DRESSER. It did not help that I did not think that a dresser is necessarily a "lady's maid". My understanding was reinforced by the fact that every reference I consulted defined it similar to Oxford, namely "noun 2 a person who looks after theatrical costumes".
I initially thought that "lady's maid" might be an abigail.
19d Two-piece practised here with explosive results (6)
A ''two-piece" is a BIKINI, and clearly the latter part of the clue relates to Bikini Atoll, a U.S. nuclear test site from 1946-1958. I was not convinced that I fully grasped the wordplay and thought that Talbinho might provide some guidance. However he was not much impressed with this clue, stating "Bikini Atoll was a nuclear testing site, but the second definition ('practised here with explosive results') is horribly worded.
"
At that point, I decided to undertake some further research which led me to think that it perhaps is not such a bad clue - if one understands a bit about nuclear physics. In an atomic (fission) bomb, two sub-critical masses of fissile material are combined into a single super-critical mass (the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction
). Thus could "two-piece" refer to the bomb (consisting of the two sub-critical masses of fissile material) that was tested ("practised") at Bikini Atoll "with explosive results". It still may not be the smoothest reading clue but perhaps it is not as bad as it originally might seem.
Should this reading of the clue be correct, then it would not be a two-part clue at all, but rather a cryptic definition with "two-piece" also serving as an additional reference to the swimsuit.
By the way, I found the story of the origin of the name bikini for the swimsuit rather interesting. "[T]he bikini swimsuit was named after the island in 1946. The two-piece swimsuit was introduced within days of the first nuclear test on the atoll, and the name of the island was in the news.
Introduced just weeks after the one-piece 'Atome' was widely advertised as the 'smallest bathing suit in the world', it was said that the bikini 'split the atome'.
"
Signing off for this week - Falcon
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