Never a cross word – 5

Tags

crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

Last week we saw how a cryptic crossword clue could contain definitions for two distinct words which, when put together, took on a whole new meaning.

This week’s theme is similar but slightly trickier, as you will see.  Again, solving it relies on a familiarity with authentic English.

The clue is taken from the Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,628 (23rd October, 2014) and reads:

Pay attention – stray bugs! (7,2)

As always, there is a word or words in the clue which tell you what the answer means, but here it is not easy to see what it might be.  The answer might mean ‘pay’ or ‘pay attention’ or ‘bugs’ or even ‘stray bugs’.

Often one is tricked into thinking that the meaning is the most obvious one.  In this case you might imagine the answer has something to do with bugs, a name commonly applied to unpleasant insects.  The crossword setter’s art is to lead you down the garden path (an idiom meaning ‘deliberately mislead you’) in this way!

I am going to solve the clue for you now so if you want to try on your own (I warn you that it is difficult) please look away now.

In fact the answer does mean ‘bugs’, but not in the sense of insects.  It means ‘bugs’ in the sense of illicitly gaining access to someone’s private conversation, usually by a secretly placed microphone or other bugging device. A famous incidence of this led to the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. Bugging a telephone conversation is referred to as ‘phone tapping’ (or wire tapping).

The way the clue is solved is to think of a synonym for ‘pay attention’.  A possibility is the command (in the imperative) LISTEN!, something a teacher might say to a class of noisy children. Although this is 6 letters whereas the first word in the answer is 7 letters there is good reason to believe (since bugging a conversation involves listening) that one is thinking along the right lines (getting close to the answer).

The next step is to consider how the word ‘stray’ might come into play, since every word in the clue is there for a reason.

A synonym (albeit not a common one) for ‘stray’ in SIN.  If you sin or commit a sin (there is a verb ‘to sin’ as well as the noun ‘sin’) you stray from the correct path – that is, from behaving properly and being a good person.

So we now have LISTEN and SIN.

What makes this clue tricky is that neither of these words has the required number of letters.  We are looking for an answer that is 7 letters followed by 2 letters and we have so far suggested words of 6 letters and 3 letters. However, by convention, it is allowable in a cryptic crossword to put the different parts of the solution together, one after the other, and then decide where to make an appropriate division.  In this case we can cut the letters up to reveal a phrasal verb with a whole new meaning:

LISTENS IN

which can mean ‘bugs’!  If someone is listening in to a conversation, he or she might be bugging it, as I described earlier.

So, again, just one cryptic clue has served as a catalyst (a word I will leave you to look up if you do not know the meaning), allowing us to explore several English expressions, from being led down the garden path to the shady (criminal) world of phone tapping. I hope you are beginning to see the value in this approach to expanding your knowledge of the English language.

More next week.

Never a cross word – 4

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

If you are new to this series, I am afraid you will have to read all three previous posts in this category to make sense of it.  In summary, I am using clues from cryptic crosswords as a basis for teaching English to (reasonably advanced) Speakers of Other Languages.  That may seem a little crazy – it certainly challenges the reader – but I am convinced that it is a powerful way of exploring the subtleties and structure of the language.  And, like all slightly ‘off the wall’ (slang for unusual, unexpected, and even weird) activities, it may help to forge new connections in the brain.

Please let me know if you agree.

Last week we looked at the anagram, which is a relatively common way of constructing cryptic clues.  I challenged you to find a seven letter word meaning ‘nuns’ which is an anagram of the words I STRESS.  The answer, of course, is SISTERS.

We will come back to anagrams in future posts but this week I am going to introduce you to another kind of clue.  It is a little difficult to categorise but it does draw on a close familiarity with authentic English – that is English as it is really spoken today.

The clue is from The Daily Telegraph Prize Crossword Puzzle No. 27,390 (18th January, 2014).  It reads:

Humanitarian outfit embarrassed and annoyed (3,5)

As you know, the numbers in brackets refer to the number of letters in the answer, so here we are looking for two words, the first of which is 3 letters and the second of which is 5 letters.

Remember also that there is a word or words in the clue which tell you what the answer means.

The way of tackling a clue of this sort is to think of synonyms (words that mean the same) of some of the words you are presented with.

I am going to solve it for you now, so if you wish to do it yourself please look away.

In this case, a word that is commonly used for ’embarrassed’ is ‘red’, presumably because when one gets embarrassed one can get quite hot and uncomfortable.  You can say, for example, that ‘he became very red-faced when he realised his mistake’.

And a word commonly used for ‘annoyed’ is ‘cross’ (slightly less forceful than ‘angry’). You can be cross with someone or with yourself (for example for doing something stupid).  And an annoying situation (for example a delay caused by a traffic jam) can make you cross.

So we have red for ’embarrassed’ and cross for ‘annoyed’- which happen to be 3 letters and 5 letters!

I imagine the ‘penny has now dropped’ (that is, you suddenly understand). The words ‘red’ and ‘cross’ put together have an entirely new meaning.  The Red Cross is indeed an outstanding humanitarian outfit (outfit being an informal or slang meaning of ‘organisation’).

The solution is, therefore, RED CROSS.

Strangely satisfying, isn’t it?  More next week.

Never a cross word – 3

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

Welcome to this week’s Friday Post.  As explained in articles 1 and 2 of this series, I am using cryptic crossword clues to introduce reasonably advanced ESL learners to authentic English vocabulary in a very different, and I hope mind-stretching, way. Words or phrases which readers may wish to make a particular note of are shown in bold italics.

There are many ways in which cryptic clues can be constructed.  One common way is to use an ‘anagram‘.  An anagram is a word or words the letters of which can be rearranged to form a new word or words.

To give a simple example, RAT is an anagram of ART (and vice versa).  In addition, RAT and ART are both anagrams of TAR.

So far, so good – but in a typical cryptic clue, it is not quite as simple as that.  For a start, it is only rarely stated clearly that one is dealing with an anagram.  Instead, there is a word or phrase that hints that the letters of one or more words in the clue are mixed up.  These ‘hints’ are usually words that can be interpreted to mean ‘changed’, ‘stirred’, ‘shaken’, ‘out of order’, ‘jumbled’, ‘rearranged’ etc.

As usual, there is a word or phrase in the clue which tells you what the answer actually means.

Thus a clue for RAT could be:

Rodent rearranges art (3)

The word ‘rearranges’ provides the hint that the letters in the word ‘art’ are put in a different order and the ‘rodent’ tells you the answer is RAT (and not TAR).

The clue for RAT could equally well be written as:

New form of art displays small creature (3)

In this case the anagram is hinted at by the phrase ‘new form of’ and the words which define rat (‘small creature’) come at the end.  The answer (RAT) is displayed (shown) when the letters in ‘art’ are rearranged.

The clue for RAT could also be written with another definition, for example:

Tar is shaken, revealing despicable person (3)

In this case, the hint that the answer is an anagram of ‘tar’ is ‘shaken’ (i.e. the letters have been shaken about) and a despicable person (someone deserving hatred and contempt) is a slang meaning of the word ‘rat’, made famous by James Cagney in the film ‘Taxi’ (1932), often misquoted as:

“You dirty rat, you killed my brother!”

The point I am making is that the clue could be written in many different ways.

Now, here is another clue – from the Daily Telegraph Prize Crossword No. 27,612 (4th October, 2014):

I stress out nuns (7)

Again. there is nothing that tells you categorically (explicitly, absolutely) that this cryptic clue is an anagram.  Part of the skill in solving the clue is spotting that it is.  In this case the word ‘out’ (implying ‘out of the normal order’) is the hint.

The words ‘I stress’ have a total of 7 letters so it seems highly likely that they are used to make the anagram.  It follows that the meaning of the answer (one word) must be ‘nuns’.

I will pause there and invite you to come up with the solution yourself.  You can contact me through the Patently English website.

This post has provided a short introduction to a big subject – the cryptic anagram; we will encounter more (and more complex) examples as the series progresses.  For now, I hope you do not meet too many people who could be described as despicable (for the phonetics and definition see here) and I hope you never have the occasion (never need) to call someone a dirty rat.  However the words are there if required!

More next Friday.

Never a cross word – 2

Tags

crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

Those who read last week’s article (Never a cross word – 1) will know by now that I am using cryptic crossword clues in this series as a basis for discussing authentic English.  This may seem counter-intuitive for ESL learners, given that only a minority of native English speakers themselves understand cryptic crosswords.  But I defended my rationale in the last post and I am sticking to it!  I hope, as time goes on, you will agree that this unorthodox teaching method (which is possibly original) has advantages.  It cannot fail to improve the reader’s vocabulary – and in addition helps to generate interesting, and I hope memorable, talking points.

Now to this week’s clue, which is considerably less difficult than last week’s.  It is from the Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,391 (20th January, 2014) and reads:

Certain to see 007 around university (5)

As mentioned last week, the number in brackets – in this case (5) – refers to the number of letters in the answer.

What is the first thing you think of when you read or hear ‘007’?  Yes, that is right: James Bond.  So, perhaps the letters BOND appear in the answer.

The next thing to consider is what the answer actually means.  As mentioned in the last post, there is always a word or words in the clue which indicate its meaning.  In this case it seems likely that the answer means either ‘certain’ or ‘university’.

The way to tackle this clue is to keep in mind the word BOND but look for one more letter which could in some way be added.

A common abbreviation for university is simply the letter U which looks promising – but obviously BONDU does not make any sense.  Also, since every word in the clue is there for a reason, we have to account for the word ‘around’.

Have you got it yet?  The answer, meaning ‘certain’, is one in which the word BOND is seen ‘around’ (in the sense of being wrapped around) the U (standing for university).

The solution, therefore, is BOUND.

The word ‘bound’ can take different parts of speech and have several different meanings (see here for the phonology, pronunciation and a comprehensive list of definitions).  The clue refers to only one of them.  However, the adjective ‘bound’ followed by an infinitive is a commonly encountered and very useful construct to know.  It is frequently heard in speech to convey that (in the speaker’s opinion) something is certain, or is sure to occur.  For example, one might say ‘He’s bound to be late’ or ‘It’s bound to rain soon’.

Thanks to that one short cryptic clue you now have another practical piece of authentic, everyday English to utilise.  To remember it, just think of James Bond chasing a spy around a university. That’s bound to work!

Never a cross word – 1

Tags

crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

OK, so here is the deal.  (Meaning, ‘here is what we are going to do’ – a ‘deal’ in the sense of a commercial transaction is not necessarily implied in this colloquial expression.) In the forthcoming series of posts I am going to use as a basis for discussing authentic English some clues from cryptic crossword puzzles!

In case readers are not aware, solving ‘cryptic’ crosswords is a pastime mainly (although not exclusively) found in the United Kingdom.  Most major British newspapers publish a cryptic crossword daily.  However, the country is divided sharply between a minority of those that love cryptic crosswords and a majority of those that consider them either to be a waste of time or impossible to comprehend.  For a cryptic crossword is not like a concise or ‘quick’ one in which the clues are straightforward definitions of the answers: a cryptic crossword has clues that appear to make no sense unless they are read in the right way.  The clues are cryptic in the sense of being mysterious – a puzzle in themselves. You will see what I mean shortly.

Why then use this method of teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages?  If the majority of native English speakers do not understand cryptic clues, why should a non-English speaker, with a more limited grasp of the language, do any better?  And what could he or she possibly expect to learn?

Well, let’s see.

Crossword puzzles have been a tool in ESL teaching for many years.  As long ago as 1986, James Little, writing in the TESL Canada Journal (Volume 4) observed that:

“Crossword puzzles offer many possibilities for language learning.”

And indeed, in a study published in 2013, The Use of Crossword Puzzles as a Vocabulary Learning Strategy: A Case of English as Second Language in Kenyan Secondary Schools, Martin Njoroge et. al. presented hard evidence to support the effectiveness of crossword puzzles in enhancing vocabulary.

However, overwhelmingly, the use of crossword puzzles in ESL teaching has involved the ‘concise’, rather than the ‘cryptic’ sort, although, as Little (loc. cit.) notes: ” … cryptic clues in the form of anagrams occasionally appear.”

[An anagram, as we shall see, is where the letters of a word (or words) can be rearranged to make a completely different word (or words), but this is only one of a number of ways in which a cryptic clue can be constructed.]

It is my belief that reasonably advanced learners of English should not be ‘wrapped in cotton wool’ (meaning ‘protected’, ‘shielded from something challenging’) and should be exposed to the intellectual stimulation of all types of cryptic clue.  While they might find such clues hard to grasp at first, the satisfaction experienced ‘when the penny drops’ (when something is suddenly understood) should help to stimulate new cognitive pathways and help the learner better understand the structure and shape of the language.

In any event, even if this thesis seems fanciful (it is admittedly unproven), cryptic clues provide endless possibilities for talking points, general education, and ideas which otherwise one would never think of juxtaposing (putting side by side).

All that said, it is high time we looked at a cryptic clue. The one I have chosen comes from the Daily Telegraph Puzzle No 27,510 (7 June, 2014).

It reads: Breaks for mad fellow on board (8)

The number 8 in brackets (in US English ‘parentheses’) refers to the number of letters in the answer. One thing you need to know right away is that there is always a word or words in the clue which the answer actually means, although that is not normally obvious.  In this case the answer is likely either to mean ‘breaks’ or ‘board’.

Actually (I am going to solve it for you now), it means ‘breaks’ and the answer is SHATTERS (it is conventional to fill in crossword grids in capital letters).

Why then does the clue refer to a mad fellow being on board?  What on earth (meaning ‘what’, but more emphatically) has that to do with the answer ‘shatters’ (meaning ‘breaks into many pieces’)?

Here, believe it or not, is the reason. There is a saying in English ‘as mad as a hatter’ (meaning ‘really crazy’).  Much has been written about the origin of this expression. According to Wikipedia, hatters (people who make hats) used, many years ago, material which was treated with mercury, a highly poisonous metal that frequently caused dementia.  Therefore, the ‘mad fellow’ (a ‘fellow’ being a man) in the clue could be a HATTER, which you will notice is the middle 6 letters of the answer.

But what of the S at the beginning and the S at the end?  Where do they come from?

Here is the reason.

Ships are frequently referred to as SS followed by the name of the vessel.  SS is one of many prefixes for ships (see Wikipedia for a full list) and stands for Screw Steamer (that is a ship driven by a propeller or screw, although SS is often understood to mean ‘steamship’).

So where, I hear you ask, do ships come into it? They are not mentioned in the clue.  Well, yes they are, indirectly, since if you are ‘on board’ you could well be on a ship!  And (you will have to take this from me) the fact that the SS is separated (one S appearing before HATTER and one at the end) is because the HATTER is literally ‘on board’ and carried by the letters S and S.

So that is why the answer is SHATTERS!  No-one said it was going to be easy – but that is the challenge and allure of the cryptic clue.  If you see people on a train in the UK, newspaper folded in front of them, earnestly chewing their pens and deep in thought, this is the sort of thing they will be wrestling with!

This post is already far too long (it will be shorter next week) but I must add that the verb ‘to shatter’ (you can hear it pronounced and read a definition here) is a good word to know.  It conveys more than ‘to break’, in the sense that it is more dramatic.  If something shatters it breaks into many pieces and cannot be mended (‘I dropped the wine glass and it shattered’).  The verb can also be used figuratively to great effect, as in the slogan: ‘Drinking and Driving Shatters Lives.‘  Finally, and this is a modern expression, ‘shattered’, as an adjective, can be used as an informal term to signify great fatigue, often after hard work, exercise, or a good night out!  For example: ‘I am going to bed.  I am (or I feel) completely shattered’.

So there you have it – the power of the cryptic clue in providing not only intellectual stimulation but also educational interest.  One short clue led us to a discussion of mercury poisoning in hat makers, steamships, and ways in which the word ‘shatter’ can be used.  I hope you found it beneficial.

If you have got this far thank you for reading – and if you are interested in 1:1 coaching, please visit my companion website, Patently English.

More next Friday.

Bill Tyrrell

Patently English launches today!

I am pleased to announce that the website Patently English was launched today.  This is the ‘face’ of my business, Patently English Ltd, which provides specialist coaching in legal, business, or technical English.  Please visit the site to see what is on offer.

This blog site is intended to accompany the website but is also a stand-alone resource which Speakers of Other Languages at a fairly advanced level may find valuable.  Stealing shamelessly from (but with a respectful hat tip to) my former boss, Dan, it will aim to feature each week a ‘Friday Post’, slowly building into a series. 

This, as I will explain on Friday (in English, when speaking, we might choose to say ‘this coming Friday’) is intended to look at the contemporary usage of English words but in a way that is somewhat different to the norm.  My method may be a ‘crackpot idea’ (something a little crazy) and ‘counter-intuitive’ (an expression used a lot in business to mean non-obvious), but I’ll give it a go (try it) and you can see what you think.

Please return on Friday and I’ll explain.

In the meantime, you might like to make a note of the phrases in bold.  Please note that this blog is not about English as you might find it in an old-fashioned textbook: it is about authentic English as it is spoken or written today.  Many other websites or blogs aim to do this and many do it outstandingly, for example the BBC Learning English website (recently updated).  In future posts I will refer you to them.  But another voice and another way of looking at things cannot, I hope, do any harm.  I am optimistic (always a good thing to be) that you will find these posts educational and helpful.

Bill Tyrrell