Never a cross word – 28

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies, words within words

Although this post was first published on Friday, 24th April I have made a later amendment to the beginning of it, since by an unhappy coincidence the answer to the clue I left you with last week was NEPAL, a country that is now in all our thoughts following the dreadful earthquake that took place on 25th April.  In the circumstances it is clearly inappropriate to provide any explanation which could be regarded as trivial and I have deleted what I first wrote.  My deepest sympathies lie with everyone affected by this appalling disaster.

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Here are a couple of clues from Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,769 dated 7th April 2015 which provide some interesting words.

The first reads:

Difficult experience seeing cavalier heading off on horse (9)

We have come across clues in the past where one has to remove the first letter of a word to get at the answer.  The wording ‘heading off’ suggests that that is exactly what is going on here.  So what could be a cavalier with the heading off?  A word for a cavalier is a knight (a soldier of old who rode on horseback) so taking the heading off yields ‘night’.  We now need a four letter word for horse – and that could be (and is!) ‘mare’.  A mare is a female horse.  Putting NIGHT together with MARE gives the answer:

NIGHTMARE

which is indeed a difficult experience.  I would say it was a terrifying experience, since a nightmare is a very bad dream.

In fact, in present day, authentic English the meaning of nightmare has expanded considerably to refer to any situation which has the characteristics of a bad dream. The word is sometimes used in an exaggerated, even light-hearted way for something not all that serious.  For example, if you were late after driving to an appointment you could say: ‘I’m sorry I’m late: the traffic was an absolute nightmare.’  But it can also be used to describe potentially devastating situations. For example, you may hear someone describe as a nightmare scenario a very serious and possibly life-threatening event, or series of events, which might take place in certain circumstances.  For some examples, see here.

If you want to know more about the derivation of the word nightmare (which has nothing to do with horses) please click on the following link.

The next clue reads:

Is able to house large family (4)

The answer, which I will explain in a moment, is:

CLAN

A synonym for ‘is able’ is ‘can’. You will know from your studies of modal verbs that ‘he can speak English’ is the same as saying ‘he is able to speak English.’ You will also know from shopping for clothes that ‘large’ (as in large size) is usually abbreviated to L.  If you then ‘house’ the L (by putting it inside CAN) you arrive at the answer.

So what is a clan?

It is a set of closely related families, particularly those living in, or from, Scotland and Ireland.  It can also be applied to a large family or a group of people sharing a common interest. The full definition and example sentences may be found here.

There is just space to leave you with an anagram to solve over the weekend.  The clue (from the same crossword as above) reads:

Sometimes won hand with ten, after twisting (3,3,4)

This is not all that straightforward since the letters which have to be mixed up are not completely consecutive.  Good luck!

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Never a cross word – 27

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies, words within words

In the last blog I left you this clue to solve:

Awkwardly got bag on winter vehicle (8)

The hint that the answer involves an anagram is the word ‘awkwardly’, implying that some letters seem awkward unless they are rearranged.  Since we are looking for an 8 letter answer it seems highly likely that the solution is formed from the letters of ‘got bag on’ meaning ‘winter vehicle’.  The answer, of course, is:

TOBOGGAN

Toboggan (meaning a vehicle or sled for sliding over snow or ice) is an interesting example of an English word derived from other languages.  In this case the origin is the Micmac language of the native population living on the East Coast of Canada.  Their word topaĝan, was converted the French speakers to tabaganne, which then became adapted into English in the early 19th Century.  You can check the meaning and phonetics here.

Speaking of French, it is not uncommon to find clues in English cryptic crosswords which rely on a very elementary knowledge of other European languages.

Here is a lovely clue from the Daily Telegraph Prize Puzzle 27,767 dated 4th April 2015 which completely wrong-foots the solver by coming up with something unexpected:

State of the French pottery (8)

At first glance you might think, not unreasonably, that the answer had something to do with French pottery.  In fact, the answer is the US state:

DELAWARE

Why?, I hear you groan.  Why can’t cryptic crosswords be more straightforward?!

The first four letters of Delaware come from a translation of ‘of the’ in French, which (when relating to a feminine noun) is ‘de la’. I know the clue does not say ‘of the’ in French but you have to imagine that it reads ‘of the (French)’.

Another word for pottery (in English this time!) is ‘ware’.  One can speak of earthenware, ceramic ware and so on (see here).  Put together DE LA and WARE and a word relating to the remainder of the clue – ‘state’ – is suddenly revealed!

Here is an even more subtle clue along the same lines:

Emperor gives his refusal to hold a stake (8)

Again, I am going to give you the answer first and then explain it.

The solution (a particular ’emperor’) is:

NAPOLEON

To understand this clue you have to know that Napoleon was French.  And if he gave his refusal he might say ‘no’ – which of course in French is non!  A stake (meaning a strong wooden or metal post driven into the ground) can be ‘a pole’ (see here). And if NON ‘holds’ A POLE (by embracing it, with the letter N at the beginning and the letters ON at the end) one arrives at the answer.  This is particularly difficult because there is nothing in the wording of the clue itself which shows that ‘refusal’ should be written in French: only after making (somehow) a mental leap to the answer can the clue be fully appreciated.

There are several meanings of pole and one relates to the two ends of the earth’s axis of rotation (the North Pole and the South Pole), which reminds me to tell you that points of the compass (North, South, East and West) frequently appear in cryptic clues since they conveniently supply the letters N, S, E and W.

To take a very easy example, from the same crossword as DELAWARE came from (see above), the solution to:

Urban area to west and north (4)

is TOWN

Town of course means an urban area (an area with a large number of people living in it) and it is formed from TO+W+N.

Armed with that knowledge you might like to try this less obvious clue (from Daily Telegraph Crossword Puzzle No. 27,770 dated 8th April 2015):

Friend from north-east state (5)

The answer means a state but not a US one this time.  Think mountains!

Never a cross word – 26

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, learning methodologies, words within words

Six months into this blog is perhaps a good moment to remind readers what it is all about. In short, the goal is to improve the vocabulary of speakers of other languages through the medium of cryptic crossword clues.

Why choose this method of teaching ESL when 99% of native English speakers cannot themselves solve cryptic crossword clues?  That is a good question and I should confess there is no hard scientific evidence that this novel but counter-intuitive methodology works.  However, I instinctively feel that learners will enjoy an unusual challenge and simply understanding the answers may help to open untapped neuronal pathways in their minds.  Seeing how so many words in English fit within other words, how letters can be rearranged to form anagrams, getting the joke (where the clue relies on a pun), or coming across strange English idioms all help, I believe, to make new vocabulary more memorable and learning it more fun.

I should emphasise that the main object of the blog is to teach English: creating a primer on how to solve cryptic clues is a secondary feature.  Nevertheless, if advanced ESL learners can ultimately learn to solve some (or all!) of the clues they see in a newspaper like the Daily Telegraph or the Times they will gain immense satisfaction from it.  Readers who are native English speakers but new to cryptic crossword puzzles may also find the explanations in these posts useful.

Anyway, let’s continue.  You will recall that before Easter I left you this clue to solve:

Clear penalty (4)

This is an example of a clue where each word is a synonym for the answer, which is:

FINE

Let’s deal with clear first. Speaking of the weather, a clear day (without rain or many clouds) can be called a fine day (fine here being used as an adjective). And a penalty or punishment (for example for speeding or parking in a restricted area) can be financial, in which case it is also called a fine (here used as a noun).  In the UK you can be fined (here fine is used as a verb) £80 for dropping litter (paper, cigarette butts or other rubbish) in the street.

A more idiomatic clue, but of fundamentally the same type, appeared in Daily Telegraph Puzzle No 27,747 dated 12th March 2015:

Bowler, say, getting past it (3,3)

Solving this clue relies on a knowledge of what a ‘bowler’ is.  You might think it has something to do with cricket or even baseball, but a bowler (defined here) is also a type of man’s hat (named after the designer, William Bowler). Bowler hats were commonly worn in the city of London and elsewhere in the first half of the 20th century but it is rare to see a man wearing a bowler hat to work today.  So a bowler could be described as an old hat.

And indeed, OLD HAT is the answer.

Old hat is an idiom meaning old-fashioned or out of date (see here), or in other words getting past it – an idiom meaning too old for something, an expression which can be applied to people or things (‘my car is very unreliable these days – it’s really getting past it’).

‘Past it’ is one of several colourful idioms for saying someone is too old for a particular activity.  You could also say that someone is over the hill, no spring chicken, a bit long in the tooth, or (a modern expression based on dates put on perishable food containers) past his or her sell by date!

On now to another type of clue from the same crossword puzzle:

Critical of vintage spy agency making contact with student (7)

This is a ‘compound’ clue made up of several elements.  The way to break it down is to find another word (or abbreviation) for ‘vintage’, another word (or abbreviation) for ‘spy agency’ and another word (or abbreviation) for ‘student’ – and then run them all together to form a single word meaning ‘critical’.

If you know anything about wine you will have heard of a cru, a French word meaning a vineyard or group of vineyards in which wine is produced, especially one of good quality (one can speak of premier cru or grand cru wines).  Cru may not mean vintage literally (which is a wine made in a particular year) so there is a slight weakness in the clue, but it can clearly pertain to vintage wine so CRU is the first three letters of the solution.

The rest of the clue is easier: a well known spy agency is the CIA, short for Central Intelligence Agency, the foreign intelligence service of the US Government; and an abbreviation for student is L, standing for Learner (trainee drivers in the UK have to display ‘L plates’ on their cars).

Put all that together (the first two elements, CRU and CIA, ‘make contact’ with the final L) and one has the answer:

CRUCIAL

The word crucial (pronounced and defined here) means critical in the sense of vitally important.  You might hear someone say: ‘It is crucial that we sign the contract today’, for example.

It seems, fingers crossed (meaning let’s hope I am right), that winter has finally turned into spring in the UK but before we leave winter behind completely I will leave you with this anagram to solve, also from the same crossword puzzle:

Awkwardly got bag on winter vehicle (8)

Good luck. The answer will appear next week.