High-sticking (Solution No. 3,274)

There are three parts to rule 621: High Sticks.  My game Sunday morning involved all three.  First I had a routine minor penalty for high-sticking (621b), when the stick of a white team player made contact with the helmet of a red team player.   No big deal: assess the penalty, answer the coach's "why'd you make that call" question, drop the puck.

Then with about three minutes left in the third, we saw the other two parts of the rule.  Part 621d prohibits slap shots in the lower age categories (10 year olds and under).  So when a 10-year-old defenseman gets the puck at the point, he usually wings it up in the air at the goal, since he can't take a slapper and he's just learned how to lift the puck.  The white team player did just that, and one of his teammates, standing right between the circles, did what comes reflexively, and tried to hit the puck.  He got it, but the problem was the puck was about eye-level when he did so, and part 621c says you can't hit the puck with a high stick.  You probably guessed what happened next: the puck went in the net, almost in slow motion.  I was right there on the line watching it all unfold, so the instant the puck crossed the line, my hands were up in a big, emphatic wash-out: "No goal!  No goal!  High stick!  No goal!" and then a point down to the far end of the ice.  The coach didn't argue, I skated to the scorer to officially disallow the goal, and the game ended up 3-1 for white.

After the game, the coach came to shake my hand, agreed I made the right call, and told me it would have been the kid's first goal of the year.  The game's funny that way...

On to this week's The Nation cryptic.

This one was crafty.  I fell for some of the misdirection which had be stuck for a while in the NE quadrant (3a didn’t misdirect me though).  To get unstuck, I had to erase the partial 7d I had penciled in, after which 16a went quickly, fixing the mistake I had in 7d.  

The other bit of crafting worth noting in this puzzle is the well-chosen indicators.  A good indicator will either tie in to one of the halves of the clue, or try and trick the solver into thinking it’s a different kind of clue.  Another piece of trickery, harder to pull off, is to make the indicator not look like an indicator, so the solver can’t figure out where the wordplay ends and the definition starts.

Picking indicators may be a case where two minds are better than one.  The indicator is a fairly small part of the clue, and you can change it around without tearing apart the rest of the clue.  I wonder how many of those devious indicators came courtesy of Hot and Trazom’s test solvers.

Political content: 27a

Musical content: 14a (one of my less favorite composers), 6d (what I listen to rehearsing while I type up annotations), 24d

Solution and annotation below the fold.

Legend: "*" anagram; "~" sounds like; "<" letters reversed; "( )" letters inserted; "_" or lower case: letters deleted; "†" explicit in the clue, “^” first letter or letters, “{“ relocated letter or letters, "¶" letter bank

Across 

1a	_LOCK	c_LOCK (“timepiece,” omission of first letter indicated by “starting late”)
3a	DEA | D(*LY S)INS	DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency: “narcs”) + DINS (“racket”) containing (“in”) *SLY (anagram indicated by “criminal”) Loads of misdirection makes this a particularly good clue.
10a	MADE | IRA	MADE (“created”) + IRA (“Gershwin”)
11a	CLUB | CA | R	CLUB (“iron, perhaps”) + CA (circa, “about”) + R (right) More misdirection: how many of you looked for an FE for iron and tried to put the R inside?  I did. Most people think the club car on a train is like first class on an airplane.  But that would be a parlor car, or "first class" on the Acela.  There are only two true club cars left: one on the NJ Transit North Jersey Coast Line, and one on the ex-North Western in Chicago, where commuters who have pay dues to the club have their own separate car to sit in.  Even if we don't have a private car, most of us commuters have the same routine each morning and evening, and see the same people on the train. We might not know them by name, but recognize each other when we cross paths somewhere else.  Our own club.
12a	*SHEIKHDOM	*HID SMOKE (anagram indicated by “deviously”)
13a	HO(RD)E	HOE (“garden tool”) containing (“entails”) RD (“R and D”)
14a	*MAH(LE)R	*HARM (anagram indicated by “grievous”) containing (“besets”) LE (“the French”)
16a	W(*EIRD)EST	*RIDE (anagram indicated by “wild”) contained in (“in”) WEST (“a certain direction”)
18a	*PORTHOLE	*n_ORTH POLE (omission of first letter indicated by “avoiding the opening”, anagram indicated by “smash”)
19a	~CHUTES	~SHOOTS (“photographs”, homonym indicated by “as part of a lecture”)
22a	_RADAR_	came_RA DAR_kroom (hidden word indicated by “contents”)
23a	B | *OATSWAIN	B (“bishop”, chess notation) + *WAS INTO A (anagram indicated by “dissolute”)
25a	*BAT(GI)R | L	GI (“soldier”) contained in (“interrupting”) *BRAT (anagram indicated by “spoiled”) + ^L^awbreaking (first letter indicated by “first hint of”) Some indicators just write themselves…
26a	H | ARMFUL	^H^emlock (first letter indicated by “a bit of”) + ARMFUL (“as much as you can carry”)
27a	*EAST GERMAN	*GREAT MEANS (anagram indicated by “engaged in the struggle”) Another well-chosen indicator.  The quotation just clamps the indicator to the anagram’s letters even more tightly.
28a	EXI_T	EXI_s_T (“be”, omission of S indicated by “without stamina initially”)

Down

1d	*LUMP SU | M	*PLUS UM (anagram indicated by “broken down”) + M (“1000”)
2d	CA | DRE_	CA (“California”) + DRE_ams (omission of half indicated by “half-forgotten”)
4d	ELANDS	E-LANDS (pun: countries beginning with E) This one had me stuck for a while: I wasn’t thinking creatively enough.
5d	DEC_ | EMBER	DEC_k (“pack”, omission of last letter indicated by “for the most part”) + EMBER (“coal”)
6d	YOU | TH OR(CHEST) | RA	YOU (†) + THOR RA (“two gods”) containing (“protect”) CHEST (“box”)
7d	INCORRECT
8d	*SERPENT	*PRESENT (anagram indicated by “lousy”)
9d	PICK | LED | HER | RING	PICK (“choice”) + LED (“directed”) + HER (“that woman”) + RING (“call”) I would have done this as an inverted clue: using “pickled” to indicate an anagram of “herring”)
15d	HERO | DOT | US	HERO (“sub” as in sandwich) + DOT (“point”) + US (“our gang”) I didn’t figure out where “hero” had come from until the second time I looked at the puzzle.
17d	G | *LOBULAR	G (“gravity”, physical constant) + *OUR BALL (anagram indicated by “reshaped”)
18d	P | ARABLE	^P^hillipians (first letter indicated by “beginning”) + ARABLE (“fertile”)
20d	SANDL | OT	S AND L (savings and loan: “financial institution”) + OT (“overtime”)
21d	N(AS)H | U_A	AS (“like”) contained in (“in”) NH (“New Hampshire”) + U_s_A (first and last letters indicated by “edges”). Exclamation point since the definition is “it’s, like, in New Hampshire” though Nashua is actually in the southern part of the state.
24d	A(FF)IX	FF (“very loudly”) contained in (“in”) AIX (“Provençal city”)