No 12978, Friday 03 Jul 2020, Hypatia

RULES FOR POSTING COMMENTS ON FRIDAYS ONLY

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ACROSS
1   Reversing taxi inside centrally paid counters? (5) ABACI {pA{CAB<=}Id}
4   The French acquired portion from East Island (5) ATOLL {L{LOT}A}<=
11 Dictator neglecting India entertains American opportunist, perhaps (7) HUSTLER H(-i+us)USTLER
12 Sign paper enclosing most of the balance (7) PRESAGE {P{RESt}AGE}
13 More than one spoke by wireless, say calling India for nothing (5) RADII RADI(-0+i)I
14 Corruption in new Church after 10 years (9) DECADENCE {DECADE}{N}{CE}
15 Nervous wreck at the bottom of Spooner’s chest (6,4) BASKET CASE (~casket base)
17 Left after bride’s wedding vow to hero (4) IDOL {L} after {I DO}
19 Exercise after solvers cried (4) WEPT {PT} after {WE}
21 Hot grub was given priority (7,3) BROUGHT OUT {HOT+GRUB}* [RA]
25 Above “self” or “ego”, in generosity displayed (9) FOREGOING [T]
27 Announcement: “Watch (one’s) step” (5) STAIR (~stare)
28 Start hacking slow network (7) LATTICE {LAT{TIC}E}
29 Blood group of universal donors without oxygen’s threatening (7) OMINOUS {O MIN{O}US}
30 Less demand for egg, in Delhi (5) UNDER (~anda)
31 Grow old..around 51, turning active (5) AGILE {AG{LI<=}E}

DOWN
2   Boy stays right outside as well (7) BESIDES {B}{rESIDES}
3   To some extent, recall I personalized calculator (8) CALLIPER [T]
5   Complete attempt without getting in (6) TRENDY {TR{END}Y}
6   Academic inclined to keep reading (7) LEARNED {LEA{R}NED}
7   Little animal cuddling the girl — a sweet kid (6) CHERUB {C{HER}UB}
8   Prompt consumer reports for manufacturer (8) PRODUCER {PROD}{UCER}(~user)
9   Ramayana, say from the beginning, essentially pioneered Indian cinema (4) EPIC Acrostic
10 Part of breakfast TV show was broadcast (6) CEREAL(~serial)
16 Start to stick tongue out eating river fish (8) STURGEON {St..k}{TU{R}GEON*}

18 High points distributed to this scamming activity (8) PHISHING {HIGH+PoINtS}* [CA]
19 Food like pancake to go on and on (6) WAFFLE [DD]
20 Zealot from revolutionary state crashed train (7) PURITAN {UP<=}{TRAIN*}
22 Running fully, bagging gold, returning amidst a winning streak (2,1,4) ON A ROLL {ON}{A{OR<=}LL}
23 Drive husband placed in custody (6) THRUST {T{H}RUST}
24 Novel I get in Kindle (6) IGNITE*
26 Newspaper article for dating couple (4) ITEM [DD] Second definition is new to me.

Reference List
India = I, New = N, Church = CE, Left = L, Exercise = PT, Universal donor Blood group = O MINUS(Negative), Oxygen = O, Egg in Hindi = ANDA, Boy = B, Right = R, Reading = R, River = R, Gold = OR, Husband = H

Dr RKE's TalePiece

Inspector Shanmukanathan (SN) was THRUST with the responsibility of investigating and  recovering the stolen the Chola bronze IDOL of Nataraja from a village temple near Thanjavur. He started his investigations with the pujari in the temple, who WEPT unconsolably that the lord to whom he had done daily pooja for 2 decades had disappeared and that this PRESAGEd an OMINOUS portent. “How could He walk out when I had locked the sanctum after the last pooja of the night?”- the pujari kept saying. Careful examination showed that the LATTICE window in the back wall of the sanctum sanctorum had been recently taken off and replaced. ‘The perpetrators must have BROUGHT OUT the idol through this’, he thought at first.   ‘Don’t trust the obvious’ is a dictum he had LEARNED at the police academy. He asked for photos of the missing idol and making careful measurements with CALLIPERS and doing some quick math, he estimated that there was no way for that size of an idol to be taken out through this small  window.  BESIDES, the window was only big enough to admit a small boy and he could not have carried away the heavy idol all by himself.

SN then questioned the trustee of the temple with whom the priest deposited the keys every night. The trustee, a rich man of the village, outwardly a PURITAN,  became IGNITED when SN wanted to search his effects, but in the end had to agree. SN took possession of the trustee’s phone, a TRENDY model, and turned it over to his AGILE assistant, Sub-inspector Prakash. Prakash had previously successfully investigated cybercrimes such as PHISHING. Prakash discovered 3 different Singapore numbers from whom about 10 calls had been received only on the day before the theft. The trustee said the numbers belonged to his relatives but inexplicably, calling the 3 numbers received the reply “this number does not exist”.

In the end SN managed to get the trustee to confess the complicity of himself and a HUSTLER. It turned out that the DECADENT woman had introduced him to the contacts at Sri Lanka and Singapore.   It took six months for him to trace the journey of the dancing lord through a fishing boat to Sri Lanka and from there through Singapore to Melbourne. He landed in Melbourne on the day ITEM 42 was to come UNDER the hammer of an auctioneer. The auctioneers were taken aback when they heard the FOREGOING story.  They cancelled the auction but would not turn over the idol to SN, as they had a valid receipt for it from a collector of Indian artefacts. To cut the long story short, there was an EPIC diplomatic negotiation that dragged on for a few years and finally the Nataraja made it back to the temple. The fame of the little temple spread as the crowds swelled to see the “foreign- returned God”! Needless to say the pujari, who was a BASKET CASE these few years, was now ON A ROLL. The benign Nataraja still takes only the sparse offering of cooked rice CEREAL.