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Hello Doc,
Do you think “stress” could work as an imperative verbal anagrind? (As in “apply stress to/subject to strain or stress”)
Hi Anon
The area where the setter probably has the greatest latitude is in the selection of anagram indicators. Quite a few of those in common use carry no obvious suggestion of disturbance, and it’s the ones that can be used the most deceptively (eg ‘ground’, ‘cast’) which need to stand up to the closest scrutiny. Based on the Chambers definition, I think you could argue that while ‘stress’ surely doesn’t imply breakage, it could certainly result in a bending out of shape, and there are plenty of other anagrinds that are no more explicit than that; solvers are conditioned to mentally ‘scan’ a pretty wide range when it comes to identifying them.
I’m not sure that I’d want to use ‘stress’ or ‘stressed’ myself, but I doubt that solvers would be seriously discomfited by them.
Thank you! Very helpful as always
What are the crossword rules/conventions regarding pluralising Latin words ending in ‘-ium’, when the plural is not given in Chambers? . Such as ‘perichaetium’ or ‘suspensorium’. Should they require a note such as “in Collins” (if that’s the case) or is the ‘-ia’ ending assumed?
That’s a very good question, which probably can only be answered fully by a lexicographer who has worked on the Big Bed Book!
Chambers is decidedly coy when it comes to the regular formation of plurals which do not end in -s. In most instances, such plurals are shown as part of the main entry, so for singulars ending in -ium we have eg cranium (pl craniums or crania), effluvium (pl effluvia). Chambers does not show any plural form for eg ‘geranium’ and ‘marsupium’. The implication is that if no irregular plural is shown, the plural is formed by adding an -s, eg ‘geraniums’ and ‘marsupiums’.
On that basis, it would seem that only plurals formed by the addition of -s (or -es/-ies, as per the ‘Spelling rules’ in Chambers) are allowable unless specifically overridden in the main entry for the word. But ODE gives the plural of ‘marsupium’ as ‘marsupia’, so what’s going on? Chambers doesn’t say that ‘marsupia’ isn’t the plural, but on the basis that the sole plural form ‘effluvia’ is explicitly shown, if the ‘Chambers plural’ of ‘marsupium’ is ‘marsupia’, then the ‘Chambers plural’ of geranium must be ‘gerania’.
I’d have to say that if MARSUPIA were to be used in a puzzle for which the primary reference is Chambers there would need to be a note to the effect that ‘the plural form at (eg) 17a is in ODE’. But I may be missing something – if anyone can shed light on why Chambers seemingly lists some ‘irregularly formed’ (by their own rules) plurals and not others, it would be appreciated.
Incidentally, in the Chambers app, searching for mars*s returns ‘marsupiums’ and searching for ‘mars*a’ returns ‘marsupia’; I’m not sure that there is any significance in this, since neither is in the core word list, so both inflections have clearly been produced by the app itself, although it does suggest that the rules which have been programmed in may be similarly loose.
Thanks, that’s a good help. If no hint is given in the entry I had always tended to assume the -ia ending was better for long words, especially scientific ones. I’m surprised that Chambers isn’t clearer about some plural usage. Was Azed not a consultant? Another subject that confuses me concerns countable/uncountable nouns. A word like ‘cabbala’ with a subsidiary definition ‘any secret…doctrine’ would certainly suggest countability for that meaning whereas the primary definition is uncountable. but others are less clear. Could I have said ‘usages’ above? I believe some dictionaries specify (U) or (C) for nouns but not Chambers.
I think that Hart’s Rules sums the dilemma up nicely: “Plurals of foreign words used in English are formed according to the rules either of the original language or of English.” It seems to me that with many ‘New Latin’ words of a technical nature, including the ones which you mentioned, there is no well-established plural form and therefore neither the -s nor the -a version is clearly correct or incorrect. I suspect that where there is no compelling evidence either way, the editors of Chambers have opted for the ‘head below parapet’ approach. Although JC was a lexicographer, he worked for the Oxford University Press – I’m not aware of him having any direct involvement with the Big Red Book.
The countable/uncountable noun concept is certainly useful when it comes to English grammar, but many ‘uncountable’ nouns teeter on the brink of countability. A potential minefield is avoided when it comes to crosswords: excluding proper nouns (eg ‘Lerna’), nouns which are themselves plurals (eg ‘data’), and words with an irregular plural explicitly given by dictionaries (eg ‘exedra’), any regularly-formed plural noun is allowable. I think this is the only sensible approach – ‘integrity’, for instance, might seem like a noun without a plural, but the OED has an example (albeit from 1620) – “They be privatives of Originall integrities.” Personally, I steer clear of plurals of nouns that seem unlikely to ever appear in such a form, but there are other ‘valid’ inflections of adjectives and verbs which are perhaps equally questionable, such as ‘uniquer’ or ‘bewared’.
Last weekend’s Inquisitor (which I really enjoyed) left me with one query.
What helps one to se[t] each remedy when suffering (8, 2 words) E
ARMED EYE [EA(ch) REMEDY]*
(The “[T]” is a deliberate misprint that requires correction to E.)
I thought this use of a two letter abbreviation (EAch) was considered unfair in anagrams… not hard to solve of course, but I wondered what you’d make of it. (I’ve seen it argued that it’s fairer if the string EA remains intact in the answer, but I haven’t really formed an opinion of my own on this.)
I received a question on similar lines a few weeks ago – this link should (I hope) take you to the discussion.
A clue like that would almost certainly not be allowed in a ‘back-pager’, or in a Ximenean puzzle like the Listener. I’m not keen on multi-letter abbreviations being used as part of fodder, and whether they remain intact in the answer seems irrelevant in the absence of a containment/insertion indicator (I don’t think an anagram indicator can be expected to convey the instruction “shuffle the rest around and stick any two-letter indicators somewhere in the middle”). But of course an ‘unfair’ clue can be very straightforward to solve and a ‘fair’ clue fiendishly hard…
Thanks! Would you consider the Inquisitor on the libertarian side in general? I’d sort of assumed all barred cryptics were Ximenean…
The editor of the Inquisitor is John Henderson (Elgar, Enigmatist, Io etc), and he tends to take a more libertarian view when it comes to clueing, although solvability remains a prerequisite; and the IQ has a test-solving team who can be relied on to highlight any clues which appear to be unfair to the solver. You are, though, likely to find clues in the Inquisitor which for reasons of grammatical precision wouldn’t have made it past the editors of the Listener, the Enigmatic Variations, or the Magpie;
I want to clue the removal of two letters (say x and y) from a fodder word (Word A) by indicating “x and y” by means of “case of” and the first and last letter from a different fodder word (Word 2). Only quandary I have is that x and y are in a different order in Word 1 to that in Word 2. So for example….
Word 1 = ***xy*****
Word 2 = y********x
“***xy***** without case of y********x”
Is there a fairness concern about the unindicated reversal which I was avoiding because it’s the reversal of two separate letters regardless of order.
Grateful for advice please
Yes, a subtraction of letters which are consecutive but in the wrong order needs an additional indicator in order to be fair.
So ‘pub employee losing case of Madeira’ is fine for BARN (BARMAN – MA), but ‘acquire missing case of champagne’ is not valid for SURE (SECURE – CE).
Where the letters to be removed are in reverse order, a reversal indicator can be used; otherwise an anagram indicator is required.
As a wordplay for SURE, something like ‘get missing case of champagne back’ (SECURE – CE reversed) would be fine. While ‘braggart losing set’ would be no good for BOAR (BOASTER – SET), ‘braggart losing odd set’ (BOASTER – SET*) is ok.
I hope that answers the question.
While one might, I suppose, argue that ‘case of champagne’ could be EC, custom and practice dictates that selection indicators must return the letters in the same order in which they occur within the fodder, so ‘Heart of Midlothian’ is OT, and cannot be TO. This is an inviolable rule that ensures a level of fairness.
Understood, thanks
Hi. Could I use “sparingly” to indicate that a word is given in its Collins dictionary-supported “short form”. Its use is common in the short form anyway but it fits my surface so well.
Hi Codjuma
I’ve taken the liberty of taking your ‘user submitted post’ and adding it to this thread.
I’m guessing that you are thinking along the lines of either ‘information sparingly’ or ‘intelligence sparingly’ for INFO. I think one could certainly argue that ‘information’ expressed sparingly or economically could be INFO, in the same way that ‘short time’ can indicate T. In effect, the solver is being asked to shorten a word in plain view, which seems fair enough.
I would say that ‘intelligence sparingly’ for INFO is a no-no, as the word ‘sparingly’ is an unfair addition which can only confuse the solver.
Thanks for the helpful guidance. I was thinking of saying “spread sparingly” to clue the short form MARG(arine) but i see now why that would be unfair.
I’m not sure that it’s any less sound than certain other constructions that I have seen in published puzzles, but it falls outside the boundaries of what solvers would expect. The only example of anything similar that I could find using ‘sparing’ or ‘sparingly’ was ‘sparing father’ for FR, which is akin to the ‘short time’ example.
Many thanks 😊
Can “uses” be used as a D->W link?
Hi Codjuma
Yes, I think ‘uses’ and ‘using’ are perfectly acceptable to indicate that the answer results from the wordplay. They are similar to ‘involves’, which is in the list, and several others suggestive of ingredients which are not, eg ‘comprises’, ‘consists of’ and ’embodies’. I like these more than those which imply a requirement, eg ‘needs’, requires’ and ‘demands’, because the answer could be produced in other ways, but I would say that all of the foregoing were likely to be understood and accepted by solvers.
The key with all these verbal links is to ensure that the grammar of the clue as a whole when interpreted cryptically is valid. It’s essential as a setter to be able to ‘park’ the surface reading of a clue and read it as an instruction to the solver; if this doesn’t legitimately lead to the answer, the clue is unsound. There are some examples of unsound constructions on the ‘Links Between Definition and Wordplay’ page, but one including ‘uses’ would be “Fool uses child’s bed nurses left” for CLOT (COT around L). Ignoring the surface reading (which is grammatically valid) and treating the clue as the solver needs to do in order to derive the answer reveals that there are two main verbs, ‘uses’ and ‘nurses’, which is no good; if you change ‘nurses’ to ‘nursing’, it’s sound, but the surface reading doesn’t work. Something like “Fool uses Latin in bed” would be fine.
Hi. I’ve read with interest your comments about indirect anagrams and abbreviations etc. You used the term “outlawed” for some cases. I am new to setting and would be grateful if you could comment on whether or not the following clue would be acceptable in those terms please?
“Parochial Old English about island group (11)”
= Anagram of “Parochial OE” to give ARCHIPELAGO
Many thanks
Hi Neil
When I talk about the unacceptable face of indirect anagrams, what I am referring to is the sort of thing that was rife in the 1960s and 1970s. A real example would be “Sort that Cupid might produce? (7)”, where the solver has to translate ‘Cupid’ into EROS, rearrange the letters to make ROSE, and then use that as the definition of the answer, RAMBLER.
You are very unlikely to see a clue like this in a modern puzzle, and that is because this sort of clue was deemed unfair in the 1970s and consequently outlawed. You may still see an anagram with a degree of indirectness, as in clues where a single-letter abbreviation forms part of the fodder, eg “Changing current seen in French river” for SEINE, where the fodder is (I + SEEN). Technically, this clue involves an indirect anagram, because ‘current’ has to be turned into ‘I’ prior to the rearrangement, but it would be accepted by most, if not all, publications. There is no consensus among setters and solvers as to exactly where the line is drawn – two single-letter abbreviations, as in your example, would typically be allowed. Abbreviations of two letters or more are less desirable, particularly if they are themselves indirect, as in eg “Loves bust artist does” for ADORES, where ‘artist’ needs to be turned into ‘Royal Academician’, then ‘RA’, before RA DOES is rearranged.
In my opinion, your example is fine; the artist clue is borderline, but solvers are programmed to translate ‘artist’ into RA, so it probably wouldn’t discomfit too many of them. As a setter, you have to ask yourself whether any clue that you write is fair to the solver, the objective being that when they see how it works they will think ‘Aha!’ rather than ‘Hmm!’. If in doubt, leave it out.
Thanks for the reassurance. Just to clarify something though, Collins and Chambers both give OE as an abbreviation for Old English, so not two separate letters. Does that improve the acceptability?
My immediate thought when I saw your clue was that it relied on ‘Old English’ = OE, at which point I was mildly doubtful about it because of the two-letter abbreviation, but ‘old’ and ‘English’ are super-familiar to solvers, in the ‘learner’ = L and ‘parking’ = P class. For the sake of argument, if the clue used ‘Early English’ for EE, that would be borderline in a back-page puzzle; because ‘Early English’ leads directly to EE, though, it would be preferable to ‘person that is confused’ for PIONEERS, which requires ‘that is’ to be pre-processed into IE and thus probably crosses the threshold into unacceptable indirectness.
Incidentally, if the anagram fodder uses selections of letters from words that appear in the clue, that is acceptable. So ‘case for revised clue being trashed’ would be a valid wordplay for CURLED.
👍
I came across a few charade clues in the below formats recently. Do you think indicators like primarily, eventually etc suggest a positional shift?
Assume A and B are two different words in a charade. These were the formats I found but not yet convinced
B eventually A or eventually B A= AB
B A primarily = AB
B A at first = AB
I know we have clinical data for “drag and drop indicators” (which suggest movement within a word). Similarly do we have such indicators for multiple words (movement of one word against another in a charade)?
Hi
These sort of indicators are gathered together as Juxtaposition indicators. The list is far from exhaustive, although most of the likely alternatives are variations on those found in the list. I think that it is particularly important that the grammar of constructions including these indicators is sound in the cryptic reading, since they appear only for the benefit of the surface reading and thus of the setter – ‘A before B’ could simply be AB, and ‘A after B’ could be expressed as BA.
For that reason, I could only see ‘eventually’ working in ‘A, B eventually’ (with the comma), which strikes me as very laboured. Similarly, one would need to use ‘B, A primarily’, to which a similar observation applies. Again, ‘B, A at first’ or ‘B with A at first’ would be required in fairness to the solver; I like it slightly more than the other two.
I couldn’t accept any of the constructions that you mention, eg ‘eventually B A’, as I think they are examples of words being added to a clue which unfairly mislead the solver.
Hi Doc
In have two points for your views
1. If International Vehicle Registration Codes are valid abbreviations for countries , why not permit Internet domain ids as well (“es” for Spain , “mo” for Macao etc.)? As they are not listed in Chambers, I have sometimes used them with an additional indicator like Germany virtually for “de”.
2. Would you accept “forward” as a valid initial letter indicator (Arsenal’s forward, for example)?
Hi Avtaar, and thanks for the questions
1. As far as cryptics in UK newspapers are concerned, the reality is that (i) for barred puzzles, the IVR codes in the latest edition of Chambers (not all of them current!) are allowed, and Internet ccTLDs (which are not listed in Chambers) are not, while (ii) for blocked puzzles, each series will typically have a list of permitted single-letter abbreviations available to setters, which may include some of the better known IVR codes (eg D, F, I) or may include none at all, with ccTLDs never being allowed. In the words of Bruce Hornsby, “that’s just the way it is” – I wouldn’t argue that in today’s world ccTLDs are more relevant than IVR codes, but a significant change to the palette of ‘bits and pieces’ indicators would not go down well with solvers. When setting for an ‘un-curated’ platform, as so often it’s all about what the solving community for that puzzle will find acceptable – if they can resolve ‘Germany virtually’ to DE, then all is well.
2. In a word, no. Collins gives two senses for the noun, the relevant one being “one of the players in a sports team who is generally positioned further upfield that other members of the team.” The sporting context here seems much too specific for me, and on top of that I don’t like the “one of the players” bit, which suggests (like the Chambers definition of the adjective – “near or at the front”) being towards the front, borne out by the fact that one would talk about ‘the leader’ but ‘a forward’. I can’t find any examples in published crosswords of ‘forward’ being used in this way.
How come ‘with’ is allowed as a positional indicator/linkword for a DOWN clue but ‘by’ isn’t? One of the definitions of ‘with’ is ‘by’. Could ‘by’ be used in the sense of ‘via’ in a DOWN clue?
Hi Alex
I think that the meanings which Chambers ascribes to ‘by’ are the important factor, particularly because C gives the sense of ‘with’ to which you refer as ‘by, beside’, which sounds very horizontal. The sense of ‘near’ is interesting since, for instance, a balloon could be ‘near the ground’ (above) or ‘near the ceiling’ (below). But could ‘by’ be used in such a situation? I can’t think of a real-life example where ‘by’ would suggest, or even allow the possibility of, a vertical juxtaposition. I don’t know that ‘with’ ever explicitly indicates an above/below relationship either, but the context of ‘a bottle with a top’ and ‘a statue with a base’ leave the reader in no doubt. I would need more convincing!
That said, I have touched in the past on what seems to me an inconsistency in the way that indicators are assessed. Letter selection indicators such as ‘sides of’, ‘skirts of’ and ‘wings of’ are generally considered to be valid irrespective of whether the light runs horizontally or vertically. This implies that (reasonably enough, it seems to me) the clue is being evaluated in a horizontal plane prior to entry in the grid. I can see how, if it is a down clue, the result could then be further manipulated in a vertical plane ‘within the light itself’, as it were. So for the down clue “Stitch weak wings of eagles up”, we assemble W and E(agle)S in the horizontal direction (that of the clue), and then we mentally position it in the grid before reversing it to give SEW running downwards. But if that is legitimate, what is wrong with the down clues “Course run by expert” for RACE and “Intercept vessels from the east” for STOP?
Good point! I can’t think of a real life instance where ‘by’ indicates vertical juxtaposition, and that is probably the best determinant. However, I can’t really think of a good one for ‘with’ either. In the two examples you give, ‘top’ and ‘base’ are doing a lot of heavy lifting as they are positional indicators themselves and ‘with’ just means ‘having’. Next time I’m constrained in this way I’ll give the grid a quarter-turn before filling it in and see what happens!. (disqualification)
I don’t disagree about ‘with’ and the heavy lifting – I would suggest that when the prepositions are used in a positional sense, ‘near’ carries no implication of relative orientation, ‘with’ offers a suggestion of side-by-sideness (though I think ‘bread with jam’ is valid shorthand for ‘bread with jam on’), and ‘by’ very much suggests horizontal proximity.
Thanks for clarifying that. I went with ‘with’ with my clue.
Hello Doctor Clue
Thanks for a great reference site that helps resolve many of the different practices in setting cryptic clues. I have a question on what is commonly known as “root sharing” or “etymology crossover “ in cryptic crosswords. There are many who believe that the definition and wordplay must be based on different etymologies . Nowadays, in published grids in the UK, one finds this conversion is not strictly adhered to. The practice of overlooking common etymology is somewhat more common when parts of the word or phrase that is clued. are clued ignoring the need to break the word or phrase differently from their natural form.The argument in favour of not following the etymology convention is that if the clue has sufficient misdirection and words with similar roots are used in different senses that is sufficient to create the element of surprise the solver is looking for. Would like your views on this issue especially as to where one would draw the line
Hi Avtaar, and thanks for raising a very interesting subject.
To start with, let me say that ‘root sharing’ does not in itself make a clue unsound or unfair, but it can make it very weak, and is often a sign of poor cluemanship. I would also add that the etymologies given in dictionaries are not always definitive, and there are many situations where the senses of a word have ‘forked’ so long ago that they have effectively become separate words, and have subsequently evolved independently of each other, eg ‘bear’ = ‘to carry’ / ‘to give birth to’.
The first type of clue to consider is the ‘double definition’. It is usually considered a requirement for such clues that the definitions lead to different words (separate dictionary headwords), as in ‘Pole position’ for POST (headwords 1 and 2 in Chambers). This supports the concept of one part of such a clue being considered as the ‘wordplay’, because the two parts indicate the same sequence of letters in truly different ways. There is an argument for allowing polysemous words (which have distinct meanings under a single headword) to be the subject of double definitions as long as they lead clearly and unambiguously to the answer – so ‘Agreeable sort (4)’ would not be unreasonable for KIND, but ‘Fashion model (4)’ for FORM would be unfair – ‘fashion’ and ‘model’ are being used synonymously, and the clue could equally well lead to MAKE.
When it comes to ‘definition plus wordplay’ clues, in general those which simply break a compound answer into its component parts and indicate one or more of those parts with a ‘root share’ are considered weak. So ‘Plant might bloom’ for MAYFLOWER would be a very poor clue indeed. To break, say, BOOKSHOP into BOOK and SHOP seems unimaginative, but if both were indicated by different parts of speech with different senses, eg ‘reserve’ for BOOK and ‘betray’ for SHOP, and the whole were defined by something like ‘novel outlet’, the element of surprise that you mention can be created, and a perfectly respectable clue can result. When it comes to long answers in blocked puzzles, even more leeway can be allowed; without resorting to complex constructions, such entries can often only be clued in an accessible way through the use of anagrams or by ‘root sharing’ (which can even extend to ‘word sharing’). It would not be unreasonable for a clue to DUPLICATE BRIDGE to be something along the lines of ‘Game of double-crossing’, despite the fact that ‘double’ directly indicates ‘duplicate’.
I think that the line is drawn at the point where the setter demonstrates that they know what they are doing, and has clearly put effort into producing a clue which the solver of a puzzle in that particular series will find enjoyable, rather than thinking it is the result of sheer laziness. Clueing DUPLICATE BRIDGE using a combination of selections, reversals and containments is not going to go down well with solvers of a Monday ‘back page’ crossword in a UK daily newspaper, and therefore won’t even get past the editor.
I hope that makes at least a degree of sense!
Does internally mean only one letter at each end is to be deleted? Or can it also imply reduction of any number of letters either side of the centre?
Hi Rafi
I’d say that ‘internally’ and ‘externally’ are complementary – either something is internal to a structure/body or it’s external (internal organs/external organs). I don’t see that anything other than the first and last letters of a word can be ‘external’, so the rest must be ‘internal’. To me, ‘internal’ (like ‘inner’ but unlike ‘innermost’) doesn’t imply centrality, so if ‘internally vented’ were considered valid for NT, it would also have to be allowed for EN, ENT, NTE etc.
As always, this is just my personal view – I hope that it makes some sense.
Thank you, Doctor Clue. My idea was to use “tiring internally” for RI, but I was wondering if the solver would read it as a part-clue for IRIN. Your comment suggests it does mean IRIN, if I understood correctly.
Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear – to me ‘internally vented’ must be ENTE. I would allow ‘tiring internally’ only for IRIN, and ‘tiring essentially’ only for RI. But ultimately it’s all down to what you think your solvers will understand.
You made yourself very clear, Doctor Clue. Clearly, “tiring internally” for RI is open to debate, so I will not use it. Additionally, your comment about “essentially” has made me rethink; I will henceforth use that indicator only for the innermost letter(s).
Yes, that’s certainly what those two indicators would mean in the back page crosswords of UK newspapers – ‘internally’ = all but first/last, ‘essentially’ = innermost letter(s).
Have you an opinion regarding, or knowledge about, why IVR codes would be forbidden?
Hi Dr Daniel
One of the first things I learned (many years ago!) about cryptic clues was that ‘Germany’ meant D and ‘Spain’ meant E. Chambers, Collins and the Oxford Dictionary of English all give IVR codes, and UK puzzles – such as the Listener – which cite Chambers as their primary reference allow IVR codes, both single-letter and multi-letter, to be used without restriction.
When it comes to UK ‘back page’ puzzles, what is allowed in each series was typically determined by a particular editor during a key phase in the evolution of the puzzle; since solvers mentally adapt to these ‘rules’, subsequent editors are reluctant to change them, particularly by allowing something which a regular solver of the series may never have seen before. This means that most UK back pagers allow a selection of IVR codes, in particular the single-letter ones such as B, D, E, F, I etc. However, there is one notable exception – the best known back pager of all does not allow any IVR codes.
I would say that any solver who does not limit themselves to a single outlet would be entirely comfortable dealing with the ‘basic’ codes, and I have no concerns about using ‘Italy’ for I in a puzzle. One could argue that in this day and age it would make more sense to replace IVR codes with ISO 3166 two-letter country codes, but that would cause uproar among existing solvers, and surely isn’t going to happen for any established puzzle series.
Could “fretted” potentially be a fair anagram indicator?
Chambers gives a definition of “fret” as:
transitive verb
to ripple or disturb
to corrode
Hi Johannes, and thanks for the suggestion.
I believe that in the ‘ripple or disturb’ sense it relates specifically to liquids (“Not one gondola frets the lagoon”), but the terse Chambers def is sufficient to justify its use in ‘advanced’ crosswords. I can see that it could be quite useful in a construction like ‘X fretted about Y’ for (X* around Y). I’ll add it to my list of candidate indicators; the anagrind list is very long, and ‘worried’ is already in there, so I might decide not to include it.
Hello Dr Clue
If this topic has already been covered elsewhere — I did search, to no avail — apologies for repeating it. In some recent test-solve feedback, our mutual friend and top-notch tester Mr Heald suggested that I change an intended indication of the WP element ‘A-B’ from the original ‘B removed from A’ to ‘A having had B removed’, on the basis that the latter version more fairly SWIM (say what it means). Without giving anything away, this device structure also appears in a recent Listener clue.
I agreed with Richard’s point, despite both of us noting that “removed from” is in this site’s Departure list: but I wonder if it should be? When we say eg “splinter removed from finger” we implicitly refer to the extracted splinter (B) rather than the residual splinterless finger (A-B). That is, in plain English this device seems to leave us with the subject of the removing verb rather than the residual object we require, hence my tongue-in-cheek proposal of the term “obtraction”. To wit, should “removed from” be, ahem, removed from the list? Interested to hear other view on this.
[PS I note that in both this post and one made earlier, my avatar isn’t showing?]
Hello Monk, and thanks for raising a point which is often in my thoughts but which I have previously only touched on due to its potential ramifications.
A full response will follow, but regarding the avatar I have tried putting your email address into the Gravatar checker (https://gravatar.com/site/check), which suggests that there is no profile associated with the address. Is it working ok on other sites?
Hello Dr Clue
Thanks for the heads-up re the gravatar site, where avatar duly added tonight.
Ah, that looks better 🦴
Hi Dr C (and Monk).
Just to clarify, I have no issue with ‘B removed from A’ per se; the problem for me arises when it’s preceded by a charade element, i.e. ‘C B removed from A’ (with no preposition or anything else between C and B) being used to indicate ‘C + A – B’, as it often is (the latest Listener contains a clue structured exactly in this way). To me, ‘C B removed from A’ can legitimately indicate only ‘A – (C B)’. Is this an opportune moment to introduce your readers to the concept of ‘plonkers’ …? 😉
Thanks, RJHe
I completely agree with you about ‘C B removed from A’ (or ‘…leaving A’ etc) – this simply cannot legitimately indicate (C + A – B). As soon as you told me about the term ‘plonker’ I felt that it warranted inclusion in the Glossary, so I plonked it straight in there. For the uninitiated, a clue such as ‘Left prince removed from office confused’ for LOST is a ‘plonker’, since putting ‘Left’ next to ‘prince’ means that the wordplay can lead only to (POST – LP), not (L + (POST – P)) as intended.
However, Monk’s comment has drawn attention to one of those rather large elephants in the cruciverbal room, on which I will share my thoughts as and when I have gathered them all together!
Thank you 🐾 (and RJHe reminds me that ’twas apparently my owner who coined the term ‘plonker’!)
How nice to hear from a border collie – we mainly just get setters on here. I have updated the item in the Glossary to reflect the term’s origins.
🤣👏🏻 Very good! And thank you. In all fairness, my own recollection is that the term arose organically during one of many exchanges with Azed ClueMeister RJHe on clue grammar, so I’d be more than happy to share the (very generous) attribution with him 🤗.
Good evening Dr C and RJHe
FWIW, it seems that plonkerdom most commonly occurs when a verbal indicator in one part of the charade is in present-indicative form, as per your MORALE example in the Glossary. So perhaps the plonkerosity of RJHe’s above example also falls in to this category because we implicitly parse it as ‘C B *is* removed from A’, and I think this last point about “B [is] removed from A” is germane to the concerns re the “obtraction” mentioned above.
Good evening both
Yes, I agree. The only point with which I might take issue, having pondered at some length over the wider questions raised by your original post, is the implicit parsing. I think that the auxiliary verb construction which we infer from a bit of passive telegraphese/headlinese such as ‘Minister removed from office’ (or ‘Murray beaten at Wimbledon’, ‘Jonah eaten by whale’ etc) involves not ‘is’ but ‘has been’.
Ah yes, of course: “Monk corrected by Dr C” is already hitting the tabloids! 🙄