Comments on: Guardian 24,638 / Chifonie

By: ilan

ilan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:41:30 +0000

Paul, you make (as per usual) a good point — seems like: “married man later rued arrangement” would have sufficed, no?

By: dagnabit

dagnabit — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:04:31 +0000

Hello, Stiofain,

I’m afraid you have me stumped over the Runyon reference. The only even remotely relevant explanation I could find was that in the second half of the 19th century, Chinese emigration to the United States was aided by something called the “credit-ticket system,” whereby Chinese merchants advanced money to emigrants to pay the cost of their passage. The emigrants would then have to pay the merchants back with money they earned from their labor in the US. But this is quite a far cry from free admission to the theater!

By: Paul B

Paul B — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:47:25 +0000

Hi Ilan – nice to see you back.

‘Married man who later rued arrangement’

is just not that great. Even &lits or semi-&lits conform to some kind of feasible structure, and this one may fall short. What is the ‘who’ doing, apart from aiding the surface? Obviously its effect on the cryptic grammar is far from helpful! Consider instead

‘The jungly mass one cleaves’

for example, where M+ACE goes around the anagrammed HET. Now that would be an &lit I wouldn’t have minded authoring.

By: ilan

ilan — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:27:03 +0000

Goodness you turn your back for a minute and this site becomes a veritable hotbed of cryptic chat.

Anyway, I loved 14D — but I wonder — is an &lit or semi-&lit? — I rather think the latter. Which is too bad.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:43:11 +0000

‘Shall I write it down, Mr. Westerby?’ says the barmaid to the Honourable Schoolboy on the occasion of George Smiley’s not entirely chance visit to a certain subterranean dining club. And on what should she write, one wonders.

Ah, the games of international subterfuge.

By: stiofain_x

stiofain_x — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:57:16 +0000

hmmm Eileen more 4 letter word controversy.
I bow to your superior reference sources and I cant find anything to support my rash definition, it was something I was brought up with, the Tickman being a regular fixture in Ireland, and always presumed that was the origin of it. There is a nice quote from Stevenson confirming your provenance in OED “This villainous habit of living upon ticket” (18 century credit crunch perhaps!!)
Dagnabit I remember a mention by Damon Runyon, in one of his excellent short stories based on New York street life, referring to free theatre tickets as Ducats (perhaps just some sort of rhyme or bastardisation of tickets) but also remember he referred to them as “chinamen” a word that has caused controversy in the past here but one which I can work out no reason why that would mean free theatre tickets, can you explain that colloquialism?.
Stiofain

By: dagnabit

dagnabit — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:12:54 +0000

Thank you so much for the warm welcome, Eileen! I’m curious now about the relationship between credit and tickets–would the ticket be something like an IOU?

Sorry to be so dense–but if you ever have any questions about American colloquialisms, I’d be happy to oblige.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:26:59 +0000

Welcome, Dagnabit – hope to hear from you again!

Stiofain: if pushed, I’d probably have guessed at your suggestion [I've never really thought about it before] but thought I’d better look it up! All three of my dictionaries [SOED, Collins and Chambers] give ‘tick = credit’ as an abbreviation of ‘ticket’. [It goes back to the 17th century.]

By: dagnabit

dagnabit — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:50:30 +0000

Thank you!

By: stiofain_x

stiofain_x — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:35:01 +0000

dagnabit
it is simply a colloquialism for credit probably from the debt collecter ticking each weekly payment off in his little black book.
Stiofain