Introduction
I thought that some of today's clues were very strangely worded indeed. In several instances, the solution process involved finding a word that fit the space available and then reverse engineering the wordplay. Sometimes I reached a point where I had unused pieces in both the clue and the solution, and therefore had to conclude that the leftover part of the clue could only be, for example, the missing anagram indicator needed to produce the solution. Or, as talbinho says so much more elegantly, "the question mark here appears to mean 'this clue doesn't really make cryptic sense, but you should be able to work out the answer'".
Today's Glossary
Some possibly unfamiliar abbreviations, people, places, words and expressions used in today's puzzle
Appearing in Solutions
AB2 - abbreviation 1 British able seaman.
ethyne - noun chemistry acetylene.
goanna - noun Australian term for monitor (lizard), a large tropical Old World lizard with a long neck, narrow head, forked tongue, strong claws, and a short body. Monitors were formerly believed to give warning of crocodiles. Origin: mid 19th century, alteration of iguana.
optic - noun 3 British trademark a device fastened to the neck of an inverted bottle for measuring out spirits.
pass over - euphemistic die: by the time I reached the hospital she had passed over. [I am familiar with the similar euphemisms pass away and pass on (both of which are also listed by Oxford), but pass over is new to me.]
read - verb 5 chiefly British study (an academic subject) at a university: I'm reading English at Cambridge; [no object] he went to Manchester to read for a BA in Economics.
red grouse - a medium sized bird of the grouse family which is found in heather moorland in Great Britain and Ireland.
Links to Solutions
A review of today's puzzle by talbinho can be found at Times for the Times [ST 4390].
The title of talbinho's review is Abelia Bloomer. This is a play on words with bloomer being both a plant producing flowers as well as a British expression meaning "a serious or stupid mistake". The comments on Times for the Times regarding today's puzzle are scathing - and quite justifiably so.
Commentary on Today's Puzzle
5a Stand for party on returning from expedition (6)
The typo in talbinho's review should be self-evident, but for the sake of completeness his commentary should read "TRIPOD; rev. of DO (= 'party') after TRIP".
24a Showing ingenuity found centre in metropolis (6)
I would have thought that this clue should read:
- Showing ingenuity found centre in a metropolis (6)
25a Breaking of trust by three small boys (8)
The definition is "breaking of trust" with the solution being BETRAYAL. Apparently, the three young lads are BET, RAY and AL. I've certainly known people having the later two names but I've yet to meet a man named Bet - and that seems to be the case for the Brits, as well.
2d Sailors given essayist a honeysuckle (6)
Should not this clue have read:
- Sailor given essayist a honeysuckle (6)
- Sailor's given essayist a honeysuckle (6) [where the 's is a contraction for "has"]
By the way, the clue in the syndicated puzzle is totally different from what was originally published in The Sunday London Times (the first time that I can recall having seen this happen - we usually get the puzzles with all their errors, just as they appeared in the UK). The version published in Britain was:
- Honeysuckle I label incorrectly (6)
Signing off for this week - Falcon
I confess to a minor irritation with the cluing that yielded "abelia" (2D) in this week's SLT. By using "a" in the clue, the writer implies it appears in the answer IN ADDITION TO whatever you determine answers "essayist". To my mind, the answer should compile as SAILORS (AB) + ESSAYIST (???) + A to yield the answer (a word meaning "honeysuckle"). But when I finally worked it out, the essayist is "ELIA", making the "A" in the clue redundant. Am I reading it incorrectly?
ReplyDeleteHi Mike,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment - even though it sent me down a bit of a rathole. And I apologize for taking so long to respond.
My first inclination was to agree with your point. However, I became a bit concerned about the accuracy of my original comment when I looked up "honeysuckle" and did not find "Abelia" and vice versa. It seems that trying to sort out the relationships in the honeysuckle family is surely more challenging than sorting out the relationships between the characters on a TV soap opera. Some sources refer to Caprifoliaceae as the honeysuckle family. Other sources include only members of the Lonicera genus (one of several genera within the Caprifoliaceae family) as honeysuckles. Other sources also define members of the Abelia genus as honeysuckles. Some authorities say that the Abelia genus is part of the Caprifoliaceae family, while others put it in a separate family called Linnaeaceae.
Nevertheless, if we accept that members of both genera (Lonicera and Abelia) are honeysuckles, then I guess we could say that Abelia is "a honeysuckle" and that Lonicera is "another honeysuckle".
However, I somehow doubt that the crossword compiler put this much analysis into his/her choice of words - and your point is probably well-taken. Also note that this clue differs from the one in the Sunday London Times, being a replacement for a totally incorrect clue that appeared there.
Falcon
Thanks very much for the thoughtful follow-up. Given its depth, no need at all to apologize for "taking so long..."
ReplyDelete