DT 26056 – Hints – Big Dave's Crossword Blog
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DT 26056 – Hints

by Big Dave  

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26056 – Hints

Big Dave’s Saturday Crossword Club

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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment **

Tilsit is spending the weekend with me and we will be in Cheltenham on Saturday afternoon at the Kemble Brewery Inn and later at a nearby curry house. The following day we will be cheering (very quietly) for Peter Biddlecombe and John “Elgar” Henderson at the Times Crossword Championship.  This all means that I will not be available from lunchtime today, but our very own double act of Gazza & Libellule will do their best to answer your queries and maintain law and order.

Latst update:  Unfortunately Tilsit has had a bad fall – that alone would not have stopped him from coming but he broke his spectacles as well and can’t get a replacement pair until Monday at the earliest.  I will at the pub from about 4.00 pm onwards.

Those of you that like your Saturday puzzles to be easy are going to be very happy today.  This one is responsible for me having a very early night!

Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.

As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them. A full review of this puzzle by Tilsit will be published at 12.00 on Thursday, 15th October.

Across

1a Plum post at the end of the line (8,7)
A charade of a type of plum and one’s post or position in life gives you the point of disembarkation for many travelling into London from the south

11a Pressing one bloke once earlier (7)
A word meaning pressing is derived from replacements for “one” and “bloke” preceded by the person who was once your partner in life

17a Emotionally shocking nervous reaction follows wound (9)
This word meaning emotionally shocking is found by putting a nervous reaction after the wound that may have caused the condition in the first place – there’s not a lot of difference here between the wordplay and the definition

25a A foot’s growth by bed in American building (8)
A veruca-like growth on the foot is followed by an old-fashioned type of bed for a baby  to get this North American ventilated building for storing maize – work it out from the wordplay and then look it up; look out for a feature about obscure words which is scheduled for publication at midday today


27a Beastly hair under one’s nose? (6,9)

Down
1d It can come as a forceful blow (7,5)
… from a very strong wind

7d In haste he went over to put sword in place (9)
An anagram, indicated by “went over”, of IN HASTE HE is required to get an obscure spelling of word meaning to put a sword in the place where it is usually kept

19d Where in France, West Indian went before reindeer (7)
The French for where is preceded by another obscure word, this one means a member of a race of Native Americans inhabiting parts of Central America and northern S America (which covers the West Indies) – the sea in this area is named after them – the result is a reindeer from the frozen north

The Saturday Crossword Club will open at 10.00 am (after Sounds of the Sixties on BBC Radio 2).  Membership is free and open to all. Feel free to leave comments or ask questions before that time.

Please don’t put whole or partial answers in your comment, else they may be censored!

49 comments on “DT 26056 – Hints”

  1. Agree with you BD about it being fairly easy today. Finished it but not sure if I got 3d right. I presume that the last word is a piece of gymnastic equipment but have never heard of the phrase. 25a bit obscure this side of the pond – needed to look it up. 16a was a tricky anagram (for me). Enjoyed a few of the clues- 1a, 10d, 14d. Not sure where answer for 19d comes from but reindeer gives it away. Is nobody else up yet?

  2. Toby,
    The last word in 3d is indeed a piece of gymnastic equipment, but its also “the greatest width of a ship or boat”.

      1. I first came across this expression working on missile guidance in the RN. I believe it originated in WW2 RAF in relation to radio guidance systems for bombing missions. Even if I’m wrong, R V Jones’ book “Most Secret War” brilliantly tells the story.

        1. Rob

          You needed to be moderated because you dropped the W from your name – either will work in future.

          Chambers gives this meaning along with “at right angles to a ship’s course” (which Libellule alluded to) and the more common metaphorical meaning.

            1. And similar, from memory (gee rings a bell). The nautical term is a direction, not necessarily the right direction (although it is at a right-angle to the ship’s heading); the RAF form directly fits the first part of the clue, and so that was the one that immediately struck me. My uncle, an ex-WW2 RAF navigator used to tell me a little of the missions (wish I’d listened more), and so again this would be at the forefront for me, along with missile guidance.

  3. There were some nice definitions today. I liked 1a and 27a. Unusally for a Saturday, there was a fair smattering of unusual words but at least the answers to these were well clued. I disagree with your one star rating for difficulty – personally I would say is was somewhere between a two and three star.

    Good luck to Peter and John in the competition. Make sure that John in his guise of Elgar buys you all that pint to atone for Wednesday!

  4. This is the sort of puzzle I enjoy very much and I finished it over breakfast. Very encouraging after yesterday. Though, that said, I’d probably get bored if it was like this every day. The clues were witty and pretty clear for a cryptic — although I didn’t see that 7d was an anagram and worked it out from the words across. Was there an indicator?

    I particularly enjoyed 1a, 27a and (having lived in Canada) 19d.

  5. There seems to be an acceptance of foreign words in answers and I always think it a bit unfair.
    This compiler has a ‘penchant’ for such as in 16d.
    I have seen answers like ‘pied a terre’ and ‘en plein’
    Is everyone au fait with what I mean and am I being pendantic…probably yes

    Todays was facile, Je pense

    1. I made a small adjustment to your comment to remove the answer!

      Almost all words in the English language are foreign in origin. Those that have become accepted into the language do not need to be qualified. In others, such as 19d, the language should be there expliciltly (where in French) or implicitly (where in Paris).

      1. Sorry about the faux pas B Dave, I forgot it was Saturday.. I agree with the clues that contain explicit or implicit indicators although I seem to remember the the clue that had the answer ‘en plein air’ used the justification of the French by saying something like ” a picnic in the Luxembourg Gardens” which I think was pushing it a bit.
        Still, thanks for your thoughts

  6. What an enjoyable way to spend Saturday morning. Did it in good time – got my bonus points on clued up and didn’t even have to resort to any letter hints.

    Really enjoyed some of the clues – being a transplanted Canadian I particularly liked 19d and 25a – both of which I knew.

    I wish both John H and Pete B good luck in tomorrow’s contest – will you let us know how they do?

    Have a good weekend.

  7. Late on parade today … but a fairly enjoyable and relaxing puzzle.
    Some of the clues were imaginative esp. 1 across and 27 across.
    Also some unusual words as answers … 25 across (unknown to me), whilst 7 down appears to be a seldom used variation on the original.

    1. Welcome to the blog Fred

      8a Little work drawing in abstract style (2,3)
      Little work is a frequently used two-letter abbreviation for a musical work – drawing is one of the things you may have done in this class at school (and I don’t mean doodling while in the Maths class). Put them together and you have an abstract style.

      Time for me to grumble again – the wordplay for the three-letter word is more-or-less the same as its use in the answer.

  9. loved it, loved it, loved it needless to say finished it :) but now disappointed because for 3d i put –/—/team!!! grrrr

  10. Hi,

    Our first Saturday completed after a few months trying. Had to look up a few spellings and meanings, but very happy.

    Can someone confirm the working out of 20a?

    1. Hi Paul and welcome to the blog.
      20a. City grounds holding large number (5).
      The definition is city, and its name is constructed from grounds (the sediment that you might find at the bottom of a bottle of wine) with the Roman numeral for 500 (large number) inside.

  11. Hi Paul, for grounds refer to residue after fermentation of wine/beer, and insert the roman numeral for 500.

    1. Kram,
      Thanks for that. I would have replied sooner, but was watching Glasgow v. Biarritz on FR2.

  12. I suppose this was typical Saturday fare really. Yesterday’s would have been a far better prize crossword in my view. Some fair clues but overall rather easy which is nice because I found a couple of the crosswords this week very hard.

  14. G’day I live Down Under & my Pommie husband introduced me to DT crosswords 2 years ago as part of my Brain Training. I am getting better but in awe of you guys on the site. I can often get most of the crossword completed and usually with the help of hubby we get it out fully. We find Saturday is usually easier than the rest of the week. I play DT Clued-up on-line. So glad I found this blog site. How is the Indian Summer going? Regards,

    1. Hi Jindabyne and welcome to the blog.
      It’s great to have some more regulars from Down Under. Sorry for the delay in your first comment appearing, but all first comments have to be moderated, so that we can weed out the spammers. Any comments you make from now on should appear straight away.
      Most people find the Saturday puzzle easier than the rest of the week – some think it’s a deliberate ploy by the Telegraph.
      Do you have a go at the Toughies on Clued-Up as well as the regular Cryptics?
      We’ve had a lovely sunny day today (at least in South-West England which is where I live), but the nights are starting to get quite chilly.
      Hope to hear from you again.

      1. G’day Gazza, I live in the Snowy Mountains of the Australian High Country. I’ve just woken up to a beautiful crisp sunny Sunday. After years in Sydney we got fed up of city life and moved to the mountains where we take advantage of a short ski season which just finished last weekend. Now it’s spring but we had a foot of snow on Weds.

        No, Toughie is still a bit out of my league. I love GKs though. I have looked at Toughie it but it looks too hard. Just finished Saturday’s with the help of Chambers On-line. Is that cheating? I figure if it helps me learn the nuances and finer points of the x-word world it can’t be bad.

        I make my husband laugh because quite often I get the answers to clues he can’t get and I’ve no idea how I get them.

        Are there many others from Down Under taking part?

        Missing the pubs & Sunday Papers.

        Regards,

        1. Jindabyne
          It sounds as though you live in a lovely part of Australia.
          I personally don’t think that using on-line aids is cheating. Big Dave has today put up a very interesting article on the subject, written by the crossword editor of The Guardian which you can read here.
          I think we have at least two other regular contributors from Oz (and possibly more, who haven’t yet come out and left a comment!).

        1. I’ve been a subscriber to the DT crosswords for quite a while now – 10 years? But I still get totally stuck on some of them and don’t really seem to be improving. I think I’ve reached my mental limit!

  16. hmm didn’t do it yetserday as i was busy all day so thought i would print it out this monring and it would while away some time on Sunday, very disappointed with it I consider myslef fairly slow at doing the crossword compared to lots of peopel but wit the exception of 26 and 13 a i have finished it in less than 15 minutes .

      1. I will be doing the sunday one shortly I don’t normally bother on a sunday but might as well give it a go

  17. 26a reminds me of the day I got hooked on dt crosswords 20 years ago. Worked with 2 cambridge grads who just couldn’t get it and I told em the answer straight away – the snow leopard – they didnt believe me cos I am only a bear and didnt go to uni but the dictionary proved the point.

  18. I have just stumbled in here by accident. I didn’t think you could feed a cryptic clue into the browser and get an answer. What a great place. Well done you…

    1. Hi Geoff – welcome to the blog.
      Now that you’ve found us, I hope that you’ll become a regular contributor.

  19. Hello DT Bloggers. I am a new boy on this site, but have loved referring to it for a while. It’s wizard!

    I am stuck on 2d and 14d on 26056. Can anyone help please? Many thanks.

    1. Except that, having posted the above plea, I have now got it. By George.

      A “problem” shared is definitely the best way of unlocking the grey matter.

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