Never a cross word – 42

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, English for speakers of other languages, learning methodologies, words within words

Last week I left you to think about this clue:

Instructions: put boiled rice on edges of plate (6)

Most people would find this incomprehensible (impossible to understand) but if you have been following this series of posts you will by now know a bit about the strange world of cryptic crossword clues – a world where everything is not quite what it seems.  The aim of this blog is not really to teach the ESL learner how to solve such clues, although if it does so that is a bonus.  Rather, the objective is to use cryptic clues as a catalyst to explore the richness of the English language.  Because this approach is, to say the least, unusual I hope it makes learning new vocabulary interesting and memorable.  You may wish to make a note of words or expressions in bold italics.

In this case the answer means ‘instructions’.  It is obtained in two steps from the remainder of the clue as follows:

(a) The phrase ‘boiled’ rice indicates an anagram of the word RICE.  The idea is that ‘boiling’ the letters jumbles them up and puts them in a different order.  One possible way of doing so generates RECI.  This is not in itself a word in English, but just wait until we have completed the second step:  you have to add the boiled rice to two other letters meaning ‘edges of plate’.

(b) Since we are looking for only two letters for ‘edges of plate’ you can immediately guess that there is some sort of trick going on.  There are many two letter words in English but most are prepositions which could not possibly have that meaning.  The trick is to take letters from the edges – the two ends – of the word PlatE.  In other words, the letters P and E.

Now you can see where the answer is coming from.  It is formed from:

RECI added to PE, or:

RECIPE

A recipe is a set of instructions, normally used in cooking.  You can see a definition, and hear the correct pronunciation, here.  If you want to cook something new you may decide to follow a recipe – perhaps published online or in a recipe book.  You can search for a recipe on the BBC website here.

Note that there are some interesting ways of using the word recipe that do not involve cooking.  For example doing something unwise, like staying up all night before driving a long distance the next day, could be called a recipe for disaster.  Conversely, taking positive steps towards a particular goal could be a recipe for success.  An example is shown here.

The subject of cooking, and indeed food in general, often appears in crossword clues.  Here are two from Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,851 dated 11th July 2015.

The first reads:

Not a square meal for Italians (5)

The interesting point of English in this clue is the idiom square meal.  When people speak of a having a square meal they are not referring to a meal that is literally a square shape. What is meant is a substantial and well-balanced meal, see here.  However, for a joke, the crossword setter has applied the literal meaning and the solution is:

PIZZA

The reason this is correct is that pizza, a classic Italian dish, is usually (but admittedly not always) cooked in a circular shape – for a photo of a mouth-watering (delicious looking) pizza see here.

The second clue refers to food but the answer comes as quite a surprise:

School sandwiches used to be cut in half in station (6)

Everyone reading this will have eaten a sandwich – two pieces of bread containing some kind of filling.  Sandwich is actually the name of a town in the county of Kent in England.  It is said that the snack (light meal) of the same name many of us enjoy for lunch was invented by the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, enabling him to eat without interrupting his gambling!  However, in the clue, sandwich is used as a verb, not a noun.  To sandwich (or to be sandwiched between) vividly conveys the meaning of something being squeezed into a small space.  You could say: ‘I was sandwiched between two commuters on the train this morning’.  For the definition and pronunciation of sandwich please see here.

Now let’s deal with the rest of the clue. A well known school in England is Eton, attended by many Prime Ministers, including the present one.  And ‘used’ cut in half provides the letters US (the other half is ED but that does not lead to a sensible answer).  Now sandwich US between the letters of ETON and with a blinding flash the answer appears:

EUSTON

Euston is an important main line railway station in London – and station is the remaining word in the clue!  Once again the crossword setter has tried to mislead us: the solution has nothing to do with the unappetising sandwiches you might have had at school, often cut from rather thickly sliced bread.

Speaking of bread, try this one from Daily Telegraph Crossword No. 27,864 dated 27th July 2015:

Break bread, even in Scotland (8)

The answer will appear next week.

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Never a cross word – 41

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, English for speakers of other languages, learning methodologies, words within words

Last week I left you with this clue:

Making fun of giant, sir, is silly (10)

The hint that we are dealing with an anagram is the word ‘silly’.  If you can find 10 letters to become silly – dance about and regroup into a different order – you will get the answer.

There is some ambiguity because ‘of’ and ‘is’ are the same number of letters.  The solution could be an anagram of OF GIANT SIR, meaning ‘making fun’; or it could be an anagram of GIANT SIR IS, meaning ‘making fun of’.  I am afraid there is no definite way of telling which is correct:  you just have to keep trying until you find a word that fits.

What is fairly certain is that the last three letters of the solution are – ING, because if the answer means making something it is highly likely that it will be a gerund.  The anagram is actually the second of the two possibilities above and the answer is:

SATIRISING

The noun satire is defined as the use of humour to expose other people’s stupidity.  A satirical book, play, film or TV programme may, for example, poke fun at the leading political figures of the day, an institution, or the futility of war.  (A well known film in this category is Catch 22, which itself has given rise to the expression a catch 22 situation – a situation from which it is logically impossible to escape.)

The verb corresponding to satire is satirise, often spelt (especially in American English) as satirize, see here.  The answer, satirising, means making fun of.

Now try these two clues from Daily Telegraph Crossword Puzzle No. 27,841 dated 30th June 2015.  The solutions are exact opposites of each other.

The first is:

Narrow lens distorted reflection of colour (7)

The word ‘distorted’ is the hint that an anagram is involved – but here the solution contains only a partial anagram.  To cut a long story short (that is get straight to the point – in American English one would say ‘to make a long story short’) the answer is formed from an anagram of LENS with another three letters added meaning ‘reflection of colour’.  The colour we are looking for is red and if this is reflected (sent backwards) one gets DER.  The solution, therefore, is:

SLEN DER

The word slender can mean narrow or thin – although it can be used in other ways, see here.

The second clue reads:

Orders we must lose weight if this? (5)

The key to the solution is to realise that ‘orders’ can be Orders of the British Empire or OBEs.  These are part of the UK honours system which is a long-standing tradition and an important part of British culture.  It is a way of recognising those who have made achievements in public life (like athletes and actors) or people who have committed themselves to serving and helping Britain (for example through charitable work).  The OBE – or, to give it its full name, Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire – does not have the prestige of a knighthood but it is still a great honour to receive.  By way of illustration, Eddie Redmayne, the actor, received an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2015 for ‘services to Drama’ and can now be referred to as Eddie Redmayne, OBE.

‘Orders we’ in the clue can therefore be written as ‘OBEs we’ or:

OBES WE

which makes no sense.  But if, as the clue tells us, it ‘must lose weight’ (weight being abbreviated to W), one gets:

OBES E

Obese means overweight, so the solution, cleverly, is something that fits the wording of the whole clue.  I need hardly tell you that obesity is associated with increased risk of illness and death and is one of the most serious health problems of the 21st century.

On a happier note, let me leave you to consider this clue from Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,859 dated 21st July 2015:

Instructions: put boiled rice on edges of plate (6)

The answer will appear next week.

Never a cross word – 40

Tags

anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, English for speakers of other languages, learning methodologies, words within words

Last week I left you this clue to solve:

Ford perhaps needs parking by hotel guest (9)

It looks as though the answer should be something to do with cars.  However, you should know by now that cryptic crossword clues are rarely what they appear to be.

The solution is derived from P for parking (you often see signs saying P in towns and cities indicating parking areas or car parks) to which is added an 8 letter word meaning a hotel guest.  That word is resident, so the answer is:

PRESIDENT

meaning ‘Ford perhaps’.  Gerald Ford was the 38th President of the United States, who served in the mid-1970s immediately following the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Here are two more clues which relate to residents and Presidents, both from Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,844 dated 3rd July 2015:

King Cole and Burl maybe as residents (7)

Angry boy grabbing one US President (7)

The first of these clues relies on having a knowledge of well-known people called King Cole and Burl.  Both hail from (come from) the world of music, or I should say ‘hailed’ from since both have now passed away (died).

Nat King Cole was an American singer and jazz pianist who was popular for many years before dying at a young age in 1965, see the Wikipedia entry here.

Burl Ives was also an American singer, as well as a writer and actor, see the Wikipedia entry here.

if you put NAT (King Cole) together with (Burl) IVES you get the answer:

NATIVES

A native is a resident of a particular place or country (a local inhabitant) although there are other meanings, see here.  It can also be used as an adjective – as in, for example: ‘he is a native New Yorker’.

The second clue above demonstrates how even a native English speaker can learn something new from a cryptic crossword puzzle.

We have already learnt that another word for ‘angry’ can be mad (see Never a cross word – 35). A boy can be a son.  And if mad and son ‘grab’ (hold on to) ‘one’ (I) you form the word:

MAD I SON

Until I worked that out, and then checked the answer on Wikipedia, I did not know that James Madison was the fourth President of the USA in the early 1800s. Madison Avenue and Madison Square Garden in New York City are (I now realise) named after him. Not knowing the names of all the US Presidents may seem very ignorant of me, but I was taught to learn, parrot-fashion (see last week’s blog), the names of all the Kings and Queens of England instead!

Finally, it is some time since we have had a good anagram.  See if you can solve this, from the same puzzle:

Making fun of giant, sir, is silly (10)

The answer will appear next week.

I hope, 40 posts on, that you are finding this unusual way of improving your English interesting and that you have come across new words to expand your vocabulary.  If you have only just discovered this blog you may wish to check the About Patently English section.  It explains why I believe ESL learners should find studying cryptic crossword clues helpful.

Never a cross word – 39

Tags

crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, English for speakers of other languages, learning methodologies, words within words

Last week I challenged you to explain why the solution to this clue:

Half score before point is added in game (6)

is:  TENNIS

Since Wimbledon is drawing rapidly to a thrilling conclusion, you could describe this clue as topical, meaning of particular interest in the light of current events (see the definition here).

As explained in earlier posts, there is always a word (or words) in the clue defining the answer.  In this case it is the word ‘game’ since tennis is a game.  But can you arrive at ‘tennis’ from the other words in the clue?  You can – but how is far from obvious.

The key is that the word score can have a rather obscure meaning.  As defined here it can mean the number twenty.  In the Bible (Psalms 90) threescore years and ten (3×20+10=70) was said to be the ‘days of our years’ (today we would call it life expectancy).  In the same way, ‘half score’ is ten – the first three letters of the answer.

The word ‘point’ can refer to a point of a compass (North, South, East or West).  If it is North this can be abbreviated to N – the fourth letter in the answer.

Finally, if ‘is’ (IS) is ‘added’ to TEN N … I don’t think I need say more.  You get the idea!

In the last couple of weeks we have covered a number of games – tennis, cricket, football, not to mention the gambling games roulette and poker.  Now for something completely different.  The next two clues contain references, in one way or another, to our feathered friends (birds).

Try this from Daily Telegraph Puzzle No. 27,841 dated 30th June 2015:

Chickenfeed with vegetable? Crazy! (7)

It seems fairly clear that the solution means either ‘chickenfeed’ or ‘crazy’ but this clue had me puzzled for a long time until I discovered that the first letter was P.  The beauty of crossword puzzles is that one can find some of the letters of the answer to a tricky ‘across’ clue by solving easier intersecting ‘down’ clues and vice versa (the other way round).

Armed with that knowledge, I went through every vegetable I could think of beginning with P.  Immediately ‘pea’ sprang to mind (a self-explanatory and commonly used idiom). Probably most people these days use frozen peas, an innovation made possible by the pioneering work of Clarence Birdseye on food preservation.

There is an informal word for ‘crazy’ which is nuts.  In retrospect (looking back on it) I should have included this in Never a Cross Word- 22.  Instead of ‘he is driving me bananas’ (he is making me go crazy) one could perfectly well say ‘he is driving me nuts’.

If you add pea to nuts you get:

PEANUTS

which, in a certain sense, means ‘chickenfeed’ – the first word in the clue.

Chicken feed (normally written as two words) is defined here as ‘a ridiculously small sum of money’ – as in ‘we worked all day but only got paid chicken feed’. The reason peanuts is the solution is that, used informally, it can mean exactly the same: ‘we worked all day but only got paid peanuts’ – see here.

The next clue, taken from the same puzzle, similarly teaches the ESL learner an unusual meaning.  It reads:

Parrot – one pal holds it (7)

Rather surprisingly, the solution (meaning ‘parrot’) is:

IMITATE

Wait – I hear you say: a parrot is a colourful bird. It is indeed, but there is also a verb ‘to parrot’ meaning to imitate (copy) in a mechanical way what one is taught or has learnt. No doubt this comes from the ability of some parrots to repeat parrot-fashion (exactly) what their owners teach them.  There is evidence to suggest that the brains of parrots are structured differently to the brains of other birds, giving them this remarkable ability to mimic (reproduce) what they hear.  This of course does not apply to a dead parrot, as in the famous Monty Python sketch!

The rest of the words in the clue lead to the solution:  ‘one’ is I; ‘pal’ (meaning friend) is MATE and if those words ‘hold’ it (IT) you get:

I M IT ATE

Finally, I will leave you to think about this clue from the same puzzle:

Ford perhaps needs parking by hotel guest (9)

A Ford is a make of car, so the clue seems to make sense – but I will tell you that the solution has nothing to do with cars.  It has nothing to do with birds either, but if you don’t get it there is a good chance you will be as sick as a parrot!

Never a cross word – 38

Tags

crossword puzzles, cryptic clues, English for speakers of other languages, learning methodologies, words within words

Last week I left you this clue to solve:

Ashes could be reinvigorated with this game (5)

Say ‘the Ashes’ to anyone who knows anything about cricket and they will tell you that it is the name of a famous contest between England and Australia which began well over 100 years ago.  This year the Ashes series, consisting of 5 matches each potentially 5 days in length, is being played in the UK and starts on 8th July.

However, I am sorry to say that none of that information is of assistance. By making Ashes the first word in the clue, where it naturally has a capital letter, the crossword setter has deliberately led us astray.  The clue refers, not to a series of cricket matches, but to ashes which remain after something is burnt (the word ‘ashes’ is the plural of ash, see here).  While ashes in a fire are still hot it is usually possible to reinvigorate them (defined here as to give them new energy – in other words re-establish a flame) by stirring them a little.  To do that one pokes the smouldering (still burning) ashes using an implement called a poker.  And that is the answer to the clue:

POKER

since poker refers not only to something which could reinvigorate ashes but is also a well known game (a gambling game involving cards), as defined here.

Although cricket has nothing directly to do with the clue, there is a historical connection between cricket and ashes.  A trophy known as The Ashes (kept permanently at a famous cricket ground in London called Lords) is said to contain the ashes of a piece of cricket equipment burnt in 1882 following the English team’s heavy defeat by Australia in England.  It is this trophy (a very small urn or vase) that the English and Australian teams compete to win every couple of years (the current holder is Australia). If you are interested in learning more about this piece of cricketing history please see the Wikipedia article here.

The English summer has a busy sporting calendar.  As the Ashes gets under way we still have to get through the later stages of the tennis at Wimbledon, which began earlier this week.  This will be a nail-biting time (an anxious few days) for supporters of Andy Murray, the great British hope.  It seems only appropriate, therefore, to include a clue about tennis.  This is from The Daily Telegraph Prize Crossword Puzzle No. 27,767 dated 4th April 2015 and reads:

Front drive in SW19 (8)

If you have been to London you will have seen streets in the city labelled W1, WC2, EC4 etc.  These are postal districts:  W standing for West, E for East, C for Central.  The area known as SW19 (South West 19), on the outskirts of London (quite a long way from the centre), is Wimbledon where the tennis courts are situated.

A front drive is a path leading to a house and is typically where you might park your car.  However, in tennis, ‘drive’ has another meaning.  It refers to a strong stroke: the ball is driven hard by the player’s racquet.  Being a ‘front’ drive the answer is:

FOREHAND

rather than a similar type of shot played on the backhand.

For some of the vocabulary used in tennis please see the BBC Learning English website here.

It is really too early to start thinking about football which resumes again in the UK in early August, but for those who are more interested in ‘the beautiful game’ than cricket and tennis here is a clue you might like from Daily Telegraph Crossword Puzzle No. 27,834 dated 22nd June 2015:

False credit note accepted by football team (8)

A credit note (saying you owe someone money) is known as an IOU – because if you say IOU quickly you hear “I owe you”. One of many football teams in the English Premier Division is called Tottenham Hotspur or Spurs for short. The club is based in North London (N17) at White Hart Lane.

So if IOU is ‘accepted’ (taken inside) SPURS, the answer is:

SPURIOUS

The word spurious means false or fake and in certain contexts can mean invalid – see the definition here.

But back to Wimbledon, and (from the same crossword as the SW19 clue above) this is quite neat:

Half score before point is added in game (6)

I will tell you that the answer is:

TENNIS

Your challenge is to work out why.  All will be made clear next week!