Never a cross word – 9

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

Let’s begin with the solution to last week’s anagram.  The clue, if you recall, was:

Single out hot language (7)

I hope you correctly worked out that the answer, appropriately, is ENGLISH!

The reason is that the word ‘out’ (signalling ‘out of order’) hints at an anagram of ‘SINGLE’, which can be ENGLIS.  And (as I told you) ‘hot’ indicates an H (just as you see on a hot tap in an English-speaking country) which completes the answer.  Of course, ‘language’ is the word in the clue which tells you what the solution means.

I am now going to move on to an extremely difficult clue which will either intrigue you or put you off crossword puzzles for life!  But remember, the main point of this series is not so much to teach you how to solve cryptic clues but to discuss the words one comes across in solving them.  As you have already seen in past posts, one short cryptic clue can lead us down all sorts of unlikely avenues.

Some people say I am crazy to teach English to speakers of other languages in this way.  But this teaching methodology is intended only to be a supplement to more conventional studies – it is not the be all and end all.  I have great faith in my readers’ determination, willingness to take on a challenge, and desire to stretch their minds.  If, dear reader, you can appreciate – and even get a kick out of – what follows you have a very good grasp of the English language indeed. (If you do not understand the idioms in bold italic type I provide a glossary at the end.)

The clue, from the Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,635 of 31st October, 2014 is:

Girl in cold and desolate area to north where kids are kept in (9)

I am going to solve it for you now so hang on to your hats.

Just as we saw that ‘hot’ can signal an H, so too can ‘cold’ be represented by a C (again, think taps!).  That is just the start, though – still 8 letters to go.

A word for a ‘girl’ in English can be a ‘lass’.  This is not a common word, and you can get by perfectly well without knowing it, but students of the language may wish to know that it is still used in some parts of the country, particularly in the North of England, and the variant ‘lassie’ is very much associated with the Scots dialect.

We don’t yet know what to do with the C and the LASS but we should bear them in mind and try to make sense of the rest of the clue.

We now need a synonym for a ‘desolate area’, and this is ‘moor’.  Areas of the countryside which are wild and uncultivated can be referred to as ‘moors’, or ‘moorland’.  There are some very beautiful areas of England which fall into this category:  you may have heard of Dartmoor in Devon (famous for the location of a prison) or the Yorkshire Moors.

I now need to tell you that the clue we are trying to solve is a ‘down’ clue.  Clues in crossword puzzles are either ‘across’ or ‘down’ depending on their direction. They form a criss-cross pattern so that if you know the solution to, say, an across clue it will immediately reveal one of the letters in any down clue which intersects it – a great aid to the solver.

The distinction about the direction is important in this case as you can think of the solution to a down clue (or part of the clue) as heading towards the south (since it is written in to the grid from top to bottom).  Conversely, if the whole or part of the solution is heading ‘to north’ it will be the other way round – in other words written upwards, resulting in the letters in the word being written backwards!

I told you it was difficult but please bear with me: we are nearly there.

If desolate area is MOOR, then in a down clue ‘desolate area to north’ is, for the reasons above, ROOM (in other words moor spelt backwards).

We now have all the elements we need.

Cold (C) plus desolate area to north (ROOM) is C+ROOM and if we put a girl (LASS) in (inside) those letters we have CLASSROOM!

Classroom is the answer because it is precisely the place kids (a slang word for children) are kept in when they are at school!

That was a really tricky clue, but in the process of solving it we unearthed some interesting words:  lass, moor and, if you did not know it already, kids.  And had some good mental exercise into the bargain.  If any of this made sense to you please let me know!

More next week.

…………………………………………………

Glossary

Be all and end all = something so good that it will end the search for something better

Get a kick out of = to enjoy something very much

Hang on to your hats = get ready for what’s coming, especially something exciting or surprising

Bear with me = please be patient

Into the bargain = in addition to everything else

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Never a cross word – 8

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

This week we will discuss the following clue, taken from the Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,635 of 31st October, 2014:

Rule with rod of iron concerning journalists (7)

As usual, there is a word or words in the clue which the answer means, but what can it be?  Does the solution mean, for example, ‘rule’, or ‘rule with a rod of iron’ or ‘concerning journalists’?

I am going to solve it for you now and, as with all other posts in this series, will point out some authentic English in the process.

When you see ‘concerning’ in a cryptic crossword clue it is often a hint that the answer contains the letters RE.  Why?  Because ‘re’, derived from the Latin res, means ‘relating to or concerning’  You may have seen it in the subject line of e-mails or memos although it is not really necessary.  Indeed, many native English speakers will not know why it is there.  In re (in the matter of) will be well known to the lawyers among you as it is frequently found in legal writing.

If there is RE present, one needs another 5 letters to make up the 7 letters in the answer. So is there a word for ‘journalists’ of that length? There certainly is and you will know it well – it is PRESS. This particular meaning of ‘press’ (there are several other meanings) is defined in the Cambridge Dictionaries Online as:

newspapers and magazines and those parts of television and radio that broadcast news, or reporters and photographers who work for them.

One can speak of giving a press conference, speaking to the press, the power of the press, preserving the freedom of the press and so on.  It is a word you will frequently encounter.

So – putting the two together – we have:

RE + PRESS which together make a new word: REPRESS.

And that is the answer.  How do we know it is correct?  Because all the other words in the clue define the solution.  ‘Rule with a rod of iron’ is an idiom meaning ‘control or govern very strictly’, which can amount to the same thing as ‘repress’.  There are several ways in which the verb ‘to repress’ can be used (see the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, here) and one is ‘to control (someone or something) by force’.

Note also that ‘repress’ can refer to self-control, as in: ‘she repressed her true feelings’.  In this sense (assuming you will have little need to rule with a rod of iron!), it is a word advanced speakers of English should certainly learn.

As this has been a relatively short post I will leave you with an anagram to tackle.

The clue, which I have adapted from Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27, 632 (28th October, 2014) is:

Single out hot language (7)

I will tell you that the word ‘hot’ refers simply to the letter H (as you might see on a hot tap) but will give you no other hints.

Good luck!  The solution will appear next week.

 

Never a cross word – 7

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

First things first (a common expression in English meaning ‘let’s start by dealing with the most important or urgent matters’): I must give you the solution to last week’s anagram.

If you recall, the clue was:

Are suet crumbles luxurious?  No, the opposite! (7)

I had already told you that the word hinting at an anagram is ‘crumbles’ (the verb to crumble means to break into small fragments), so I hope you guessed that the 7 letters in ‘are suet’ are crumbled and then put back together in a different order.

However, you may have struggled to find the answer, which is the word:

AUSTERE

Austere is an adjective often applied to living in conditions which are tough and rather unpleasant – in other words the opposite of luxurious!

You may have found this difficult because until quite recently the word ‘austere’ was heard, or seen in writing, only infrequently.  You could quite happily have spoken English fluently without knowing the word at all.

All that has changed since the recession and (in most countries in the world) the poor state of the economy.  In the UK, certainly, people are much more careful with their money than in more prosperous times.  They are behaving in a more austere manner by cutting back (spending less) on luxuries.  A metaphorical expression you may hear, meaning the same thing, is that people are tightening their belts (presumably as a result of eating less and becoming slimmer!).

To go with the word ‘austere’ there is a corresponding noun ‘austerity’ which, I understand, was made ‘word of the year’ by the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2010, based on the number of times it was looked up online – a clear sign that even native English speakers did not understand it! Newspapers will sometimes state that we live in an age of austerity, referring to David Cameron’s policy of reducing UK government spending.

I am now going to turn to this week’s cryptic clue, which is a nice example of the ‘pun’ variety we first encountered last week: a little joke based on a double meaning.  Like the anagram we have just looked at, it shows how valuable cryptic clues are as a basis for teaching authentic, modern English.

The clue, from the Daily Telegraph puzzle No. 27,640 of 6th November, 2014, is:

Source of trouble – or likely help to an angler? (3,2,5)

Unless you are really familiar with English or American idioms you will find this tough, so I am going to solve it for you now.  Once you understand the answer I hope you will have formed new connections in the brain which will help you to remember it.

The first thing you have to know is what an angler is.  An angler is a person who enjoys fishing – someone who might be seen sitting by the side of a river with a fishing rod in his or her hand.  To attract a fish, edible ‘bait’ on the end of the line is often required.  Live worms are frequently used for this purpose.

So what might be of help to an angler, which at the same time, means ‘source of trouble’ – and is 3 words of the length required?

The answer is:

CAN OF WORMS

To understand why this is the solution (and a joke) you need to know the phrase open a can of worms – which means to try to solve a problem but in the process make more problems than were there in the first place.  Variations (sometimes omitting the word ‘open’) are frequently heard in informal conversation in relation to creating trouble for oneself, especially in business.  So a ‘can of worms’ is both a source of trouble – and (by providing live bait for the hook) is likely to be of help to an angler!

Perhaps because the phrase originated in the USA, the word ‘can’ is used exclusively.  While a ‘tin of worms’ is essentially the same – and would be of equal value to an angler – it does not mean a source of trouble.

So popular has ‘can of worms’ become, that it is now regarded as overused and a cliché.  Accordingly, I would not particularly recommend that you say it yourself, but it is certainly an idiom you should be aware of.  Note that it is only used informally and would not appear in formal writing.

That is it for this week: two short cryptic clues have led us to a discussion of the state of the economy, fishing, and opening a can of worms!  I hope you are finding this approach to expanding your understanding of the English language instructive and enjoyable.

Please let me know.

Never a cross word – 6

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies

In this series so far (see the posts during the month of October) we have looked at two or three different sorts of cryptic clue.  We have discussed clues involving words (or abbreviations) surrounded by other words; seen how two words can be put together to make new words or phrases; and we have learnt something about anagrams.  In every case it has been necessary to draw on a fairly advanced understanding of the English language to come up with the answer.  That is why doing cryptic crossword clues is such great training for speakers of other languages who want to expand their use of English idioms and vocabulary.

This week I am going to consider a different type of clue, which involves a little joke, sometimes called in English a ‘pun’.  This is not something which is ‘laugh out loud’ (abbreviated in modern text messages to ‘lol’): it is a more subtle sort of humour.

The clue comes from The Times Crossword Puzzle 25,881 of 2nd September, 2014 and reads:

Having difficulty finding place for bird’s nest? (2,3,4)

The question mark at the end is often a sign that one is dealing with a clue that is a pun of some kind.

As always, there is a word or words that the answer means; and the solution is three words of the length indicated inside the brackets.

It seems a little unlikely that if the answer simply meant ‘bird’s nest’ it would be three words, so one is driven towards thinking the answer must mean ‘having difficulty’.  In that case, what do we know about ‘bird’s nests’ which might have some sort of relevance?

I am going to solve the clue for you now.

Bird’s nests are of course found in trees and bushes, but – as discussed last week – the crossword setter is probably trying to mislead us! We should be on the lookout for something that is a little less obvious – and one must account for (explain) the words ‘having difficulty’, which a simplistic answer such as ‘in the tree’ would not do.

A more unusual fact about bird’s nests is that they are an ingredient of ‘bird’s nest soup’.  Edible bird’s nests have been used in Chinese cooking for hundreds of years.  So where might you find a place for a bird’s nest?  In the soup of course!

And that is the answer:  IN THE SOUP.

Why?  Because there is an English idiom ‘in the soup’ meaning ‘having difficulty’ or ‘in trouble’.  For example you might say, if driving a car in a remote place: ‘If I run out of petrol now I’ll really be in the soup’.

As this has been quite a short post, I will leave you with an anagram to solve.  You may wish to consult Never a cross word – 3 for some basic information about anagrams.

The clue (from the same Times crossword) is:

Are suet crumbles luxurious?  No, the opposite! (7)

I will tell you that the word ‘crumbles’ is the hint that one is dealing with an anagram, so you need to find 7 letters to ‘crumble’ (break up), giving a new word which fits the clue.

The solution will appear next week.  If, in the meantime, you wish to contact me, or arrange for 1:1 coaching, please do so through my website, Patently English.

Bill Tyrrell