Sunday, January 10, 2010 (ST 4357)

This puzzle was originally published in The Sunday London Times on November 29, 2009

Introduction

The southwest quadrant gave me the most trouble today. The Cockney rhyming slang at 7d totally flummoxed me, and I missed wordplay on one or two other clues.

Today's Glossary

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

bash - noun 3 Brit. an attempt: she’ll have a bash at anything

have (or take) a butcher’s - phrase Brit. informal have a look; butcher’s from butcher’s hook, Cockney rhyming slang for a look

HE - abbreviation His (or Her) Excellency noun a title or form of address for certain high officials of state, especially ambassadors, or of the Roman Catholic Church (in which case it would presumably only exist in the masculine)

REME - abbreviation Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers

tiddler - noun Brit. informal 2 a young or unusually small person or thing

tiddly - adjective informal, chiefly Brit. slightly drunk

Links to Solutions

A review of today's puzzle by talbinho can be found at Times for the Times [ST 4357].

Commentary on Today's Puzzle

1a Magician let off about puzzles (11)

Hint: In this clue, "about" is neither a container/contents indicator nor a reversal indicator; it is part of the definition.

18a One embraced by unusually small person is more drunk (8)

Hint: The reference here is not to toddler (small person, as a child) but rather to tiddler (a British term for an unusually small person)

24a Pick second to last in polls (9)

Before checking Times for the Times, I was puzzled about the wordplay in this clue. However, when I saw that talbinho offered no explanation of the wordplay, I took another look at the clue and eventually sorted it out.

My original thesis was that one must need to take the second to last letters (i.e., the second letter to the last letter) in SELECTIONS to get ELECTIONS. However, this would have produced the following parsing of the clue:

ELECTIONS (pick?) /\ use all but first letter (second to last) in SELECTIONS (polls?)

Obviously, polls = selections and pick = elections are both more than a little questionable.

Eventually, I worked out that pick = SELECTION and one needs to move S (second) to the last position to produce ELECTIONS (polls), which would parse as:

SELECTION (pick) S (second) moved to end (to last) /in\ ELECTIONS (polls)

26a Reserve remains with coach, tense to the end (9)

Although the solution RESTRAINT could have been clued as REST (remains) containing TRAIN (coach), the setter has chosen another route. Before reading talbinho's review, I had believed it had been clued as REST followed by (to the end) an anagram (tense) of TRAIN. I must confess that tense as an anagram indicator seemed to be a bit of a stretch (a bit tense, you might say). It seems that I may have had reason to doubt tense as an anagram indicator. According to talbinho, the wordplay is actually REST followed by RAINT, where RAINT is formed from TRAIN (coach) by moving T (tense) to the end. Note that this is very similar wordplay to 24a. I presume that the abbreviation T for "tense" may come from the field of linguistics, although it does not appear in the online version of Chambers (or any other reference that I could find).

7d Peer's own advanced retail food outlet (4,1,7,1)

This clue certainly lends itself to much analysis. First, "peer" is not a lord, but rather means "look" and forms the definition. The wordplay (officially) is TAKE (own) A (advanced) BUTCHER'S (retail food outlet). However, as is vehemently stated on Times for the Times, the alternative form of this expression (HAVE A BUTCHER'S) would seem to much better fit the wordplay. Of course, I was totally unfamiliar with either version of this expression.

Although I did get the BUTCHER part and considered that the first two words might possibly be HAVE A, the result HAVE A BUTCHER _, made so little sense that I never dreamed that I was actually on the right track. I should have learned by now never to underestimate the inanity of British expressions.

It did not help that the numeration is actually (4,1,7'1) although (since I don't recall ever having previously encountered it) I just presumed that it might be standard cryptic crossword practice to clue an 's as a one-letter word. Judging by comments on Times for the Times, the clue as it appeared in the printed version of The London Sunday Times was the same as it appeared in the Citizen. However, I infer that the clue in the online version was different - I presume that would be (4,1,7'1).

I also suspect that I may not fully comprehend the significance of the abbreviation A (for advanced). The best explanation I could cobble together is this reference from Chambers:

A¹ or a - noun 3 (usually A) someone or something of first class, first in a sequence, or belonging to a class arbitrarily designated A

15d Tried stew with a small fish in it (3,1,4)

Apart from the fact that both contain meat and potatoes, stew and hash are really not the same thing in a culinary sense. Perhaps the setter intends us to think in a more figurative vein where stew means "a state of anxiety or agitation" and hash means "a jumble; a mess".

25d Former guards you heard at the right time (2,3)

I have to admit that I totally failed to get the wordplay here, being absolutely convinced that the homophone indicator was "you heard" and that I was looking for a word meaning "former guards" that sounds like ON CUE (at the right time). In reality, the wordplay is:

ONCE (former) contains (guards) U {sounds like (heard) YOU}

Signing off for this week - Falcon