Hello Dr Clue.<\/p>\n
My query relates to the established convention that ‘the general may define the specific, but not vice-versa’. So, eg, we might have ‘lake’ (a D) in a clue for ARTERIES but would need ‘Como, say’ (a DbyE) in a clue for CORNFLAKES. That’s all tickety-boo.<\/p>\n
Now let’s consider one possible breakdown {SIN in BAG} of BASING. By the above convention, this admits the possible WP “Lust, perhaps, in sack”. Again, all fine and dandy. However, what of the alternative breakdown {(A SIN) in BG}. If we were to use the WP “Lust in extremely big”, would that constitute foul play; and, if so, on what logical grounds? The query emerges since it seems reasonable to view ‘lust’ as ‘A SIN’ without violating the convention. To wit, what would be the argument against treating the article as a ‘de-generaliser’ in what I’d venture to call an ‘EbyD’.<\/p>\n
Thanks.<\/p>\n
Hello Monk<\/p>\n
A very good question, to which I’ll do my best to give a half-decent answer. Incidentally, when discussing definitions by example, I am reminded of Nuala Considine’s clue from a\u00a0 (cryptic) ‘Stinker’ crossword in a Weekend<\/em> magazine from the late 1960s, “Crown and sceptre (5)”, to which the answers was NOUNS.<\/p>\n I reckon your lakes are a good starting place. COMO is not itself a lake, it is the name of a particular lake, so I believe a ‘frinstance flag’, such as ‘eg’, ‘say’ or ‘?’, is essential when it is used to indicate LAKE, and this rule would typically apply wherever a common noun is indicated by the proper name of one such. I think that LUST is slightly different, in that we are dealing with two abstract nouns and a subjective judgment – not everyone would agree that lust is a sin, although few could deny that Como is the name of a lake. On the face of it, LUST for SIN is no different to (say) AMIABILITY for VIRTUE, and I don’t believe that ‘amiability, perhaps’ could legitimately define VIRTUE in a clue. However, the key here is that lust is not just any old sin, like failing to have a TV licence, it’s one of the seven deadly sins, and that association transcends any moral judgment. So ‘lust, perhaps’ is surely ok for SIN; similarly (in my view) the saying ‘patience is a virtue’ legitimizes ‘patience, perhaps’ for VIRTUE.<\/p>\n I’m not convinced that the ‘de-generaliser’ makes a material difference; when ‘dog’ on its own appears as a definition for COLLIE, we have to infer the indefinite article in the definition, and if the clue is “Hound (3)”, we enter DOG, but what we really mean is A DOG. I wouldn’t feel that ‘Como’ without a frinstance flag is any better for A LAKE than for LAKE, and because the indefinite article is usually ignored, it places a greater strain on the solver.<\/p>\n When it comes to SIN, the first question, I think, is whether a member of a small, bounded set (deadly sins, signs of the zodiac) whose constituents should be well known to solvers can be treated differently to a member of an effectively unbounded set (lakes, fish, cars etc). In my view, the answer is ‘possibly’, and you could perhaps make an argument for ‘lust’ on its own indicating SIN, or ‘Leo’ leading to HOUSE. The second question is whether a countable noun (eg SIN) that is indicated by an uncountable one (eg LUST in this context) should be prefixed in the result by A\/AN. The answer may technically be ‘yes’, but the situation is rare, and I feel it could be asking too much of the solver without any kind of signpost.<\/p>\n In summary: I think that ‘lust’ alone for SIN is decidedly questionable, and while I acknowledge that A HOUND is A DOG but LUST is A SIN, I don’t feel that it is any more appropriate for A SIN. However, I would be very sympathetic towards something that explicitly suggests the presence of an article, such as “Relaxing, say, having grasped what lust is?” for EASING [EG around (A SIN)]. But that’s just my personal view.<\/p>\n Dr C<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My query relates to the established convention that ‘the general may define the specific, but not vice-versa’. Read the thoughts of Dr Clue, and have your own say,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foul-play"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3982"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4003,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions\/4003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}