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I noticed “drunk” is listed as a Standard insertion Ind. I can’t think of a logic where A drunk B suggests A in B. Also, Extra is shown as a container Ind (though Advanced). Extra can be outside the scope when used as a prefix but does that suggest containment ?
Similar question on “chaps” too. To chap means to cause to crack rather than to crack. Is that enough to suggest insertion?
It’s one that has been in the list for as long as I can remember, though I’ve never used it myself. The Chambers def of ‘to cause to crack or divide’ suggests that it might be allowable, but based on the examples in OED I think it’s decidedly marginal – the one that offers most support is “The extremely cold winds…chap the timber, and kill the cattle”, which perhaps does suggest the winds actually getting into the timber. That list will be getting a thorough review soon, and ‘chaps’ will certainly be subject to further scrutiny!
Thank you. This is helpful
Thanks for that. The appearance of the past participle ‘drunk’ without a preposition is inconsistent. For the sake of both consistency and clarity it should (and now does!) read ‘drunk by’. So ‘A drunk by B’ would be the typical construction; while “B A’s drunk” (or ‘B A has drunk’) would also be valid (just as would ‘B A drinks’), that is equally true of all the past participle indicators, since they form their perfect tense with ‘has’. I will add a note to that effect in the introductory text.
Incidentally, the Deletion list contains a number of indicators (mainly for ‘departure’) which similarly lack prepositions. I am already in the process of improving that list.
Regarding ‘extra’, it is as you say shown as an Advanced indicator, and that is based on the Chambers entry for extra[2], meaning ‘outside’. This would not be allowed, say, in UK ‘back page’ crosswords, but would be acceptable in barred puzzles such as The Listener (where I have used it myself).
A question on adjectival anagrinds – Is it generally ok to use adjectival anagrinds after the fodder? I have seen setters using them after the fodder but we normally use adjectives before the noun in English so thought there could be some grammatical explanation.
Hi
That’s a very fair question. By convention, adjectival anagrinds can be placed either before or after the fodder on which they act. As you say, this is contrary to typical English usage, but it is not unknown, as in (for instance) ‘attorney general’ or ‘amphibians proper’, or instances of anastrophe (‘in the forest dark and deep’). It’s important to make the distinction between what is commonly encountered in ‘real world’ English and what could legitimately arise, so I think the foregoing is sufficient justification, but since adverbial anagrinds are generally accepted although they cannot legitimately act on a noun expression, there is in any event a requirement for solvers on occasion to make certain inferences. Thus in ‘lean badly’ for LANE the solver must infer something like ‘arranged badly’, and therefore with ‘spoilt rotten’ for PISTOL they could similarly be expected to interpret this as ‘in rotten state‘.
The same applies to letter selection indicators, eg ‘sunny hollow’ for SY.
New homonym (to me anyway) in today’s Times Quick Cryptic No 3126.
9a: Podcaster’s way of running portal (4)
GATE, a homonym of gait.
Hope this helps and thanks for a great site.
Hi Matthew
Thanks for this, and for your kind words.
Seems pretty sound to me, and I like people to think that I’m moving with the times (no pun intended). It will be added at the next update.
Each Azed/Gemelo crossword is accompanied by the tagline “The Chambers Dictionary (yyyy) is recommended”.
In the last century I won a copy of Chambers from The Independent and have been using it ever since for all my dictionary needs, as they say. I often wonder how much I’m missing by not using the latest printed edition.
So I just downloaded the Chambers app and think it’s not something I’ll be using too often, unless it’s got stuff I really need. You see I like the serendipity of opening the wrong page and finding something new, or opening at the word I think I need but finding I’m wrong and the word i actually need is several entries away from it.
All that is a long-winded (I’m Irish, we use English like it’s going out of style) way of asking if you prefer the printed edition or the app?
I actually won twice and for the second chose the thumbnail-index version, which I’m saving as a gift for me new grandchild.
I would suggest that you are missing very little – there are a few new words (and meanings) in each edition, but not many. The 12th edition included a number of ‘enriching’ words, which were highlighted as being of special interest; when the editors said that they wanted to omit these asterisked words from the 13th edition (2014), somebody obviously took them at their word and left them out altogether (whoops!) – they were reinstated in the 2016 printing, which might yet end up being the last new edition of the dictionary. I would say that all barred puzzle setters should have access to the latest (2016) version in either paper or electronic form.
I must admit that while in years gone by my well-thumbed copy of the big red book was one of the first things to be packed when we went on holiday, I now use almost exclusively the electronic versions, for three main reasons. One is that certain words can be hard to find in the paper version due to cross-referencing failures – an example would be BLADDER SENNA in the recent Azed, which appears only under the entry for SENNA. The second is that, as a setter, I am able to take advantage of the search facilities that exist in the electronic versions. And the third is that I can travel a little lighter when going on my hols 😉.
As someone fairly new to Azed clue writing competitions, I’d very much like some feedback on my submission for the last competition. The clue word was ECBLASTESIS and here is the clue…
Budding A-list celebs distraught when left abandoned by society (11)
(A list celebs -L)* + S (society)
On reflection I think the definition “budding” is a little weak, though I note that there are two clues in the VHC section of the slip which use this definition.
Appreciate any thoughts.
It was a very difficult word to define, and Azed clearly gave competitors a degree of latitude – ‘budding’ seems pretty sound to me, given that the Greek word ἐκβλάστησις means ‘shooting or budding forth’.
Your clue seems to me to flow nicely from beginning to end (in the surface reading, nothing is obviously ‘tacked on’). The problem that I see is the word ‘when’ connecting the initial anagram fodder with the element to be removed. The ‘abandoned’ in the cryptic reading is an adjective (a participial one), and therefore the clue requires something like ‘with’ between ‘distraught’ and ‘left abandoned’; a comma would also be valid, and would preserve the intended surface reading, albeit the flow would be broken somewhat.
With ‘when’ followed by the thing to be lost, a passive construction is needed, ie ‘when left is abandoned’ (or “when left’s abandoned”). If the verb has an intransitive form, that could also be used, eg ‘when left goes’.
I hope that is helpful.
That’s very helpful, thank you.
In the US (where I began setting cryptic crosswords), barred grids are exotic, often reserved for especially-challenging puzzles: much as you describe in your second paragraph. The same appears to be true in Canada, where I now reside. In my view, blocked grids are visually attractive before and after filling; barred puzzles less so. Even so, I would prefer to set barred puzzles, but my insistence that every puzzle have a theme constrains my options (as mentioned already).
I recall some discussion of blocked vs barred cryptics. Perhaps because I am accustomed to (North) American styles and structures, but more because the themes of my grids are seldom possible to achieve in a barred puzzle, the majority of my cryptics (>150 published to this point) are blocked. Some patrons have requested more barred grids because of the larger number of checked letters; while I would wish to accede to their request, a blocked grid allows me to include many more themed entries. [Quality is of course more important than quantity, yet having ten theme words rather than four makes for an easy choice.] Note, though, that more recent grids include some bars between words, resulting in hybridized structures that are quite satisfying.
My contribution (above) to the “Psychology Ward” was in response to something I dimly recall: perceived difficulty in setting blocked vs barred cryptics. Is my recollection inaccurate? Perhaps Doctor Clue was describing challenges associated with having blocked puzzles published; perhaps there was nothing there at all.
Going back to the mid-1930s, many blocked puzzles were already recognizable as ‘normal’ crosswords, where roughly half the letters in the entries were checked, the words used were the sort that would be familiar to most solvers, and there would be no theme of any kind. Barred puzzles were almost another world – created and developed by academics such as Torquemada and the early Listener setters, they were thematic, demanded a wide general knowledge (especially of the classics, although Listener no. 3 apparently required a familiarity with Hindustani), drew on a broad vocabulary, and bordered on the arcane. Their only concession to solvability was the higher proportion of unchecked letters in each entry. Afrit was something of an ‘outlier’, in that his puzzles were blocked but often included pairs of adjacent cells which produced two-letter entries that were simply ignored when it came to the filling of the grid; effectively his grids therefore combined blocks and bars.
By the middle of the last century, the division was very clear – blocked cryptics were light entertainment, ranging from the easy up to the Times crossword and the like, while their barred counterparts were battlegrounds, where the setter was as likely to come out on top as the solver, not always by fair means. Then in 1966 Ximenes set out the ‘rules’ for cryptic crosswords in his book ‘On the Art of the Crossword’, and it was not long before the majority of barred puzzles were being produced to Ximenean standards, while blocked puzzles continued to feature clues that Ximenes would have considered unsound.
More recently, though, the divisions have blurred. The clues in a typical Guardian Genius blocked crossword could equally well belong to a barred puzzle, and blocked puzzles regularly include explicit themes, ghost themes or hidden ‘extras’ such as Ninas or puns. At the same time, barred puzzles such as Azed are often plain, have no theme, and typically present less challenges than a high-end blocked cryptic.
In the UK, if you’re not a setter with one of the newspapers and you want to see a puzzle in print, then barred puzzles (Listener, Inquisitor, Enigmatic Variations) are potentially a good option since they offer a route for all comers, with no contracted setters. There are routes for blocked puzzle setters to reach the papers, but they are poorly defined.
From a setting point of view, the difference depends more on the series for which one is setting (and thus the expectations of the solvers) rather than the grid construction. I’d agree that the amount of specific thematic words that can be accommodated is typically higher in a blocked grid, at least without recourse to the dusty corners of Chambers, but the barred puzzle is better suited to creating more complex effects, including changes to the initially filled grid and the production of pictures.