Clinical Data – Link Words and Phrases
It’s no secret that in my own barred puzzles I try where possible to avoid including words and phrases whose sole purpose is to link the wordplay to the definition (‘fors’ and ‘froms’ among many others), but they are very much a part of the cruciverbal landscape. As long as they are used in a way that is fair to the solver there is absolutely nothing wrong with them, and they can be particularly valuable when (i) the only way to make a clue ‘work’ is to include such a link, or (ii) when one is trying to give the solver a helping hand by pointing them towards the definition .
I have therefore created a new list which attempts to bring together the various words and phrases used for this purpose, showing the direction (wordplay->definition, definition<-wordplay, or either) for which I believe that each is suitable.
I hope that this list will prove useful, but please leave a comment on this post if you have any observations or spot any errors. The initial list was very much a ‘top of the head’ thing, and I would appreciate suggestions from readers for additional entries, particularly ones which they have seen used in a published crossword.
Causes/causing? Recently seen in an Azed clue!
GLEE Eagle-eyed in part, causing mirth (4)
Thank you. I think it was one of those clues that I solved and moved swiftly on from!
While ‘causing’ (or ’causes’) doesn’t feel particularly convincing (maybe partly because of the comma in that specific clue), it’s just as good as eg ‘evoking’, so I shall add it to the waiting list for the next update.
Some solid additions there following the first version. Thank you for this Dr Clue.
I’m a little perplexed by “has/having”. I haven’t come across it in puzzles myself and suspect I’d find such a clue hard to solve. Could you offer one of your (always brilliant) examples, perhaps?
I have occasional seen “being” / “to be” which strikes me as perfectly fine, although perhaps redundant given that you have “is” already.
Re: “to” – I see this most often when the solution is a verb. E.g. the New Statesman puzzle recently had “Fruit brought up from the south to impress” for STUN. This seems fairly innocuous to me. (I realise it’s not a great clue, but for other reasons!)
Ah! Another I just remembered, found regularly in blocked puzzles.
Gets/getting/to get
E.g. (from yesterday’s Independent)
World’s richest man cycling by front of market, getting fruit (4,5)
MUSK MELON
Hi Anon. My thanks to you, and to everyone else who has made suggestions about how the list could be enhanced – I think we’re getting there!
I would see ‘has’ as potentially being valid in a clue such as ‘Fellow has tea ahead of papa” for CHAP (CHA + P), broadly along the lines of ‘September has thirty days’. I think it’s borderline, and would certainly need (as several of the links do) to be used with care.
While I feel confident that “Criminal is caught with piece” is fine for CROOK (C + ROOK), I’m not sure about ‘being’, ie “Criminal being caught with piece”, although it would work with a comma inserted, “Criminal, being caught with piece”. The more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I get about the present participle of an active verb being used as a link in a ‘neutral’ construction, eg ‘A B making C’ (as opposed to, say, ‘Add A to B making C’, where ‘making’ could be replaced by ‘to make’). Links such as ‘constituting’, ‘delivering’ etc need, I believe, to be used with caution; I will add ‘being’ on the basis that it is very similar to these.
The use of ‘to’ as in your example is a topic by itself! In barred puzzles it is perfectly acceptable to indicate or define, for instance, ASK by ‘to seek’. By convention all dictionaries show verbs as having meanings preceded by ‘to’, so under its entry for ‘ask’, Chambers gives ‘to seek’. This convention is used in the interests of clarity, and it is very hard to come up with an example where ‘ask’ and ‘to seek’ are interchangeable, but there we have it. When it comes to blocked puzzles, it depends on the editor and the puzzle series, but in general the ‘back page’ crosswords do not allow the ‘vanishing-to’ construction, while I would not be surprised to see it in other blocked puzzles. Similar considerations apply to countable nouns, so Chambers shows WORD as ‘a rumour’ and ‘a hint’.
I think ‘gets’ etc are fine, subject to the grammatical requirements of the clue as a whole. I thought perhaps there was a transcription error in the clue that you cite, but a check on fifteensquared confirmed its wording (sorry for doubting you!). Surely ‘by’ should be ’round’? As it stands, the ‘by front of market’ would need to be processed before the ‘cycling’ happens, which is inconsistent with the wording.
Thanks Dr Clue. Very good point re: the MUSK MELON clue – I wonder why it wasn’t spotted by the editor! Nevertheless, I am fond of gets/getting etc as link words, simply because “get” is such a versatile verb.
Thank you for the “has” example. Truthfully, I suspect I’d have read that many times over, thoroughly confused and have given up until I had the crossing letters to point me in the right direction. Perhaps now I’ve seen your example I’ll be better prepared should a similar construction come up!
Very interesting re: “to” when used with verbs. I’ve not yet felt drawn to barred puzzles so am unfamiliar with that practice. I had assumed the “to” was (at the cryptic level) acting as a link in the NS example I gave. The Guardian recently had this for BERNADETTE: “Little saint to destroy gas bill, did you say? (10)”, and the “to” annoyed me somehow.
In terms of “to” acting more unambiguously as a link word, what do you feel about this for LETTERS (by Alberich)? “Settler resorted to snail mail (7)”
I quite like it, because “resorted to” could plausibly be understood as “re(-)sorted into”, or something similar. Might the same apply to “French garments ripped to shreds”, for FRAGMENTS? (My own hasty construction…) Perhaps both are marginal, yet somehow they seem reasonable to me.
(I should add I know I’m unlikely to persuade you to add it to the list. I’m merely interested in your views!)
I think that the validity of some of these link words depends on the degree to which one accepts that the surface reading can be carried through to the cryptic reading of a clue. The ‘unwritten rule’ is that the two should be entirely separate, but that would mean that something like “Man holding his head is hero” for CHAMP (CHAP around M(an)) would be unsound, since the cryptic reading requires ‘its’ rather than ‘his’, and even then ‘its head’ ought perhaps to be C rather than M. I think your example is a good one (it does perhaps needs eg ‘Fine’ to replace ‘French’), and I think most solvers would find a clue like that easier to solve because of the SR/CR ‘carry-over’. I’m becoming more sympathetic towards ‘to’ now that I start to appreciate the full extent to which the grammatical structure of the cryptic reading affects the validity of many link words/phrases in any given clue.
I don’t much like the Guardian clue, not least because it strikes me as sloppy. “Little saint set fire to gas bill, did you say?” would surely be better (and more devious, of course!)
Ah yes – “fine” rather than French would actually give the correct letter. (Constructed too hastily perhaps!)
Agreed re: the Guardian clue – your version is far better!
Late to the party with my comment, but I’m struggling to get my head around what’s wrong with “*by* front of market” for that musk melon clue. Isn’t it just a cyclical Elon Musk + m (first letter of melon), in which case “by” is fine? I’m probably missing something obvious.
Because the wording implies that the cycling happens *before* M is added at one end. If you do it that way you never get MUSK MELON because there’s never an M positioned between Musk and Elon.
It still seems to sort of make sense to me as it is anyway – “cycling” is just an instruction to read letters cyclically, and if you start with the E and end with the K, and have that finished sequence put by M at the end, it seems to work. (Perhaps I need stabilisers.) Are you saying “having cycled” instead would have been better?
I wonder why no one else brought it up in the Fifteensquared comments.
It doesn’t work – ELON MUSK can ‘cycle’ as LONMUSKE, ONMUSKEL, NMUSKELO, MUSKELON, USKELONM, SKELONMU or KELONMUS, but putting M on either end of any of those doesn’t produce MUSK MELON. As AC says, you simply can’t get the second M between the K and the E. The only way to produce MUSK MELON is to tack the M from ‘market’ on one end or the other, ie MELONMUSK or ELONMUSKM, before the ‘cycling’, but that would require the clue to read something like “World’s richest man by front of market cycling…” As previously noted, “Cycling round front of market…” would be fine.
If it were otherwise, something like “High priest reflected on spirit’ in Gemelo 25 (10a) could indicate reversal of both components, which in reality it cannot do.
Thanks, I think I get you now. I was working from the solution MUSK MELON where the M in melon appears (after a gap) by the end of Elon Musk cycling. The wrong way to look at what should be a closed circuit as in your fourth example.
How about “to” and “for”?
Thanks, Dr Daniel
The omission of ‘for’ was an oversight on my part, and will be corrected forthwith. I’m not keen on ‘to’ as a link in either direction, even though Chambers offers successive definitions of ‘for’ and ‘of’, which might seem to justify both. I suppose that “Tuchel leading England to World Cup win” could just about be represented as A + B = C, but this is a very specific example. An important reason for using link words/phrases is to help solvers to decipher the clues in which they appear, and I don’t think ‘to’ serves that purpose – more assistance is needed, as in eg ‘amounting to’, ‘equivalent to’ etc. If that World Cup win happens, I might revise my opinion – but we all know the US are going to lift the trophy.
Glad to see that in your list ‘with’ is not there. It always seems to me to be the sign of a poor setter. I was once arguing this with Peter Biddlecombe, probably online somewhere, and he was saying he thought it was OK and producing some sort of justification, but I notice that in The Sunday Times one never sees it.
That one was indeed a deliberate omission. Chambers gives various meanings of ‘with’ which (given their brevity and lack of context) could be adduced to support its use. The same is true of other conjunctions – Chambers has ‘for’ and ‘of’ as consecutive senses of ‘to’, which would suggest that it could (should?) be an ‘either direction’ indicator. Suffice to say, however, that it won’t be making the list. Leaving other considerations aside, one always has to think about the solver and how they would interpret such words.
or?
Thanks, Wil
I knew that I would have made at least one glaring omission, and the absence of ‘or’ represents a glaring omission! It will be added forthwith. More suggestions welcome.
Good evening Dr Clue.
I wonder if it might be worth adding/discussing clues of the form D=>W one occasionally comes across? I’ve used them very rarely, and only with editors (eg chez Times) who allow the device, usually under some sort of restriction that the WP is ‘simple’, or ‘one-step’ — perhaps a charade, reversal or anagram — eg as in “Money making bishop study”. When I first saw this device it jarred, but it is used/defended by some very experienced and respected setters.
Thanks, Monk. It’s not something I’m very comfortable with myself, particularly in puzzles where the link words/phrases are intended to help the solver to unravel the clue, but I was persuaded some time ago by RJHe that it was acceptable in intermediate/advanced crosswords in the kind of situations that you describe. I feel best disposed towards the device when it comes to simple charades and manipulations achieved without the use of verbs, eg ‘backwards’ or ‘in’. I will add a paragraph to the page.
Good afternoon Dr Clue
Another well-conceived addition to your ever-excellent site. I’d imagine that this new list will be a most welcome resource within the increasingly wide platform for introductory level and/or quick cryptics, within which (especially the direction-flagging ) LW&Ps very much help the solver. So it’s a big thank you from ‘The Monastery’.
Thank you most kindly. It’s very much a ‘work in progress’, and all suggestions for adds, changes and deletes will be gratefully received.