Sunday, January 19, 2014 — ST 4253

Puzzle at a Glance

Puzzle Number in The Sunday Times ST 4253
Date of Publication in The Sunday Times Sunday, December 2, 2007
Setter Unknown
Link to Full Review Times for the Times [ST 4253]
Times for the Times Review Written By Peter Biddlecombe
Peter Biddlecombe's Solving Time ★
Date of Publication in the Toronto Star Not published[Note 3]
Date of Publication in The Vancouver Sun Saturday, January 18, 2014[Note 2]
Falcon's Experience ┌────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┬────┐ ███████████████████████████████████ └────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┴────┘ 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 █ - unsolved or incorrect prior to visiting Times for the Times █ - solved with aid of checking letters provided by solutions from Times for the Times
Notes [1] This puzzle appears on the Sunday puzzles pages in the Saturday, January 18, 2014 edition of the Ottawa Citizen. [2] Due to the paywall that has been erected on its web site, I am no longer able to verify the puzzle that is published in The Vancouver Sun. [3] On Saturday, January 11, 2014, the Toronto Star published ST 4569, a Christmas-themed puzzle that first appeared in the Sunday, December 22, 2013 edition of The Sunday Times.

Introduction

Today, as is the annual practice, the editors at the Ottawa Citizen dip into the archives for a puzzle to replace the seasonally-themed puzzle that appeared in the UK just prior to Christmas. They have come up with ST 4253, a puzzle that was first published in The Sunday Times on December 2, 2007. This puzzle would likely have been carried by the Citizen sometime in January 2008 — before the inception of my blog.

The Toronto Star usually follows this same practice by replacing the Christmas-themed puzzle with a substitute, although — if memory serves me correctly — not necessarily with the same one chosen by the Ottawa Citizen. However, this year, the Star has chosen to publish the Christmas-themed puzzle — on Saturday, January 11, 2014. It is a giant puzzle having a 23x23 grid (rather than the normal 15x15 grid).

It is interesting to note that the Toronto Star appears to have made a substitution the previous week (Saturday, January 4, 2014), running an unknown puzzle in place of ST 4568. Perhaps, the editors got a bit over-anxious and sent the sub in a week early!

I have no real way of knowing whether the substitution of puzzles is done by editors at the Sunday Times which distributes the syndicated puzzle or by editors of the papers in which it is published. However, the fact that the Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Star carry different puzzles suggests that the decision is made locally. Perhaps if it had been the editors at the Sunday Times who made the selection, they would not have chosen a puzzle exhibiting the warts seen in this one (as evidenced by 23d).

Nevertheless, this change does give us a bit of a breather from the very challenging series of puzzles that were pitched at us during the previous three weekends.

As a final note, Peter Biddlecombe's review at Times for the Times gives no solution for several of the clues in this puzzle. There are so many missing solutions, in fact, that I suspect the omissions may have been deliberate. Perhaps, Peter considered those clues to be so easy that they did not merit being included in the review.

Notes on Today's Puzzle

This commentary should be read in conjunction with the full review at Times for the Times, to which a link is provided in the table above. The underlined portion of the clue is the definition.

Across

1a   Not a direct flight coming out of Alsace airstrips (6,9)

9a   Rattle perhaps, in car (7)

Sir Simon Rattle^[5] is an English conductor. Principal conductor with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra 1980–91, he became chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 2000 and its artistic director in 2002.

The Austin Maestro^[7] is a compact five-door hatchback car (and two-door van derivative) that was produced from 1983 to 1995, first by the Austin Rover subsidiary of British Leyland (BL), and from 1988 by its successor, Rover Group. It was first sold as an Austin and a MG. Later models have sometimes been referred to as the Rover Maestro, but the model never wore the Rover badge. Descendants of the Maestro are still being produced in China.

10a   Vehicle contest date that is rejected (7)

11a   School managed without pressure (4)

In North America, a co-ed^[10] (spelled coed^[5] by Oxford Dictionaries Online) is a female student at a co-educational institution. However, in Britain, the term refers to a school or college providing coeducation. I suspect that this is but one more instance of the British propensity to convert adjectives into nouns. Thus co-ed school becomes shortened to co-ed in the same manner that an Indian restaurant becomes simply an Indian and an estate car [the British name for a station wagon] is known commonly as an estate.

In physics, the symbol for pressure is p^[10].

12a   Wise person includes time to teach diligence? (10)

Diligence^[10] is a historical term for a stagecoach. The name is a shortened form of the French expression carosse de diligence, which translates literally as 'coach of speed'.

13a   Two of us (according to Eastenders) wander about (7)

An East Ender^[10] is a native or inhabitant of the East End of London, an area whose residents are also referred to as cockneys. A cockney^[5] is a native of East London [specifically the East End], traditionally one born within hearing of Bow Bells (the bells of St Mary-le-Bow^[7] church). Cockney is also the name of the dialect or accent typical of cockneys, which is characterised by dropping the H from the beginning of words and the use of rhyming slang^[5].

Thus a cockney lad would refer to himself and his girlfriend as "me and 'er".

15a   Continues to travel in Laos moving around south (5,2)

Peter seems to have skipped over this clue in his review. The solution is SAILS ON, which is an anagram (moving) of IN LAOS containing (around) S (south).

17a   Nag's Head, for instance, accommodates awfully true characters (7)

19a   Could be jokers catching a number with unfounded stories (7)

20a   Engineer vacates pit entrances (10)

And Peter skips yet another clue. The solution is CAPTIVATES with the wordplay being an anagram (engineer) of VACATES PIT. In this clue, "entrances" plays the role of a verb, not a noun.

22a   Girl over in US restaurant getting bottom pinched (4)

The setter employs the phrase "US restaurant" as the term clued by it is apparently not used in the UK. Oxford Dictionaries Online defines diner^[5] as a North American term for a small roadside restaurant with a long counter and booths.

25a   Stop without proper gear on the warpath? (7)

The use of "proper" as an anagram indicator did spark a question in my mind. I presume that the rationale behind its use is that the letters making up the word GEAR must be rearranged in order to be "suitable or appropriate" for use in the solution.

26a   Calm prisoner alone (7)

27a   Approach training with careful consideration (6,2,7)

In his review, Peter Biddlecombe questions "training" being used as a synonym for "training". I would say that school may be intended in the sense of a place or sphere of activity that instructs ⇒ the school of hard knocks. I think the equivalence works better when the two phrases are considered in their entirety, with "school of thought" being viewed as a cryptic definition of "training with careful consideration".

Down

1d   French novelist climbing in tree (5)

Albert Camus^[7] (1913–1960) was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century.

2d   Gauche line sadly taken on say. worker (9)

According to longstanding custom, much of the work in Crosswordland is accomplished by ants.

3d   Singer in the nude, get her off! (4)

4d   "Observer" featuring the inventor of Gamesmanship briefly (7)

The surface reading is an allusion to The Observer^[7], the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. A sister paper to the daily The Guardian^[7], it takes a similar liberal or social democratic line on most issues.

Gamesmanship^[7] is the use of dubious (although not technically illegal) methods to win or gain a serious advantage in a game or sport. It may be inferred that the term derives from the idea of playing for the game (i.e., to win at any cost) as opposed to sportsmanship, which derives from the idea of playing for sport. The term originates from a humorous 1947 book by British author Stephen Potter (1900–1969) entitled The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship (or the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating).

The name of the originator (inventor) of the term Gamesmanship might be briefly expressed as S. Potter.

5d   Delegates behind arresting banner (7)

Ass is another North American term, although the setter does not make note of this fact as he did in 22a.

Ass^[3,4,11] is the North American term for the part of the body that is known in Britain as the arse^[3,4,11].

This word is clearly considered to be less vulgar in the UK than it is on this side of the Atlantic. With respect to the use of the word arse, Collins English Dictionary says:

Dating back at least a thousand years, and taboo till around the middle of the 20th century, this venerable "Anglo-Saxon" word now seems unlikely to cause offence in all but the most formal contexts. Its acceptability has possibly been helped by such useful verb formations as "to arse about'' and "I can't be arsed''.

The dropping of r before s seems to be a common fixture in North American English. In addition to the formation of ass from arse, we find cuss^[3,4,11] having been formed from curse in the same manner as well as passel^[3,4,11] from parcel.

6d   Editing a work on origin of Dada movement (9)

Dada^[5] is an early 20th-century movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurd. Dada was launched in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan Tzara and others, soon merging with a similar group in New York. It favoured montage, collage, and the ready-made. Leading figures: Jean Arp, André Breton, Max Ernst, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp.

7d   Some maniac cracked in capital (5)

This makes three clues that Peter has skipped in his review. The solution is hidden (some) in maniAC CRAcked.

Accra^[5] is the capital of Ghana, a port on the Gulf of Guinea; population 1,970,400 (est. 2005).

8d   Hears? Nope, when sporting these (9)

I would say that this is a semi-& lit. clue. The entire clue serves as the definition, while the first part of the clue (in fact, all except the final word) constitutes the wordplay.

As an anagram indicator, sport is used as a verb meaning to play in a lively, energetic way^[5] or frolic^[3] ⇒ the children sported in the water.

13d   Handles detractors around N Ireland (9)

Skipped clue number four — and counting.

The solution is MONICKERS with the wordplay being MOCKERS (detractors) containing (around) NI (N Ireland).

Northern Ireland^[5] (abbreviation NI^[5]) is a province of the United Kingdom occupying the northeast part of Ireland; population 1,775,000 (est. 2008); capital, Belfast.

14d   Brave actions going wrong in Democratic party (7-2)

16d   Alert child good with alluring music (5.4)

Siren song^[5] (or siren call) is a phrase used in reference to the appeal of something that is alluring but also potentially harmful or dangerous ⇒ a mountaineer who hears the siren song of K2 [the second highest mountain in the world, located in the Karakoram Range on the border between Pakistan and China].

The expression is an allusion to the sirens of Greek mythology whose singing lured unwary sailors on to rocks.

18d   Two notes from awkward customer (2-3-2)

Awkward^[2] is used in the sense of difficult or inconvenient to deal with ⇒ an awkward customer.

I found British dictionaries to be rather more polite in their definitions of so-and-so than are American dictionaries.

• Oxford Dictionaries Online: informal a person who is disliked or is considered to have a particular characteristic, typically an unfavourable one ⇒ nosy old so-and-so!^[5]
• Collins English Dictionary: (euphemistic) a person or thing regarded as unpleasant or difficult ⇒ which so-and-so broke my razor?^[10]
• Chambers 21st Century Dictionary: a word in place of a vulgar word or oath ⇒ You crafty little so-and-so!^[2]
• American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Informal A son of a gun^[3]
• Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary: a bastard (used as a euphemism)^[11]

19d   Hairstyle for the team? (4,3)

This is likely an instance of the origin of term having become lost with time resulting in a definition appearing to be cryptic when, in fact, it is not. As Peter Biddlecombe alludes to in his review, the term crew cut^[4] comes from from the style of haircut worn by the boat crews at Harvard and Yale Universities.

21d   Measure of freshwater fish (5)

We finally arrive at the last of the skipped clues.

This is a double definition in which the first definition is an obscure unit of measure and the second definition is a (presumably) well-known freshwater fish.

A perch is a historical unit of measure that was once used in Britain. A perch^[5] (also called a pole or a rod) is a measure of length, especially for land, equal to a quarter of a [surveyor's] chain
 or 5½ yards.

A chain^[3,4] (abbreviation ch.^[10]) is either of two units of length. In surveying, it is a unit of 66 feet (Gunter's chain) while, in engineering, it is a unit of 100 feet (engineer's chain).

To further confuse matters, a perch (also known as a square perch, pole, square pole, rod, or square rod) is a measure of area, especially for land, equal to 160th of an acre or 30¼ square yards.

All of which goes a long way to explaining why we needed the metric system!

23d   A house in Germany you and I left empty (5)

I spent considerable time trying to discover why "house" would mean "dwelt". Apparently, judging by the very strong remarks of Peter Biddlecombe in his review, there is no explanation. The clue is just plain incorrect.

The International Vehicle Registration (IVR) code for Germany is D^[5] [from German Deutschland].

24d   Gen's pregnant. Al's gone missing! (4)

Gen^[5] is British slang for information ⇒ you’ve got more gen on him than we have.

Key to Reference Sources: 

^[1]   - The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition
^[2]   - Search Chambers - (Chambers 21st Century Dictionary)
^[3]   - TheFreeDictionary.com (American Heritage Dictionary)
^[4]   - TheFreeDictionary.com (Collins English Dictionary)
^[5]   - Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford Dictionary of English)
^[6]   - Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford 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)

Signing off for this week — Falcon