Comments on: Everyman No. 3359 (13th February)

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 13:50:48 +0000

BTW, you may be more familiar with questions beginning, “Have you ever…?”

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 13:46:54 +0000

Well, you’ve both passed for now

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 12:49:26 +0000

Thanks, Robi. That makes more sense, with a negative subject. When English is your mother tongue, no matter how careful a user you are, you just can’t see it sometimes. Which I guess is why you need an ESOL qualification to teach it!

By: Robi

Robi — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 12:35:33 +0000

KD @6; the example I found (which I hope leads to Stella’s approval ) is: nobody has ever climbed that mountain.

By: Robi

Robi — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 12:30:50 +0000

Thanks Stella @5; I did once teach EFL in Madrid, but that was many years ago! I suspect that the football fans will be more exercised by EVERTON will ‘not [be] expected to be promoted!’

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 12:11:32 +0000

Thank you, Lorraine.

Everyman on very good form, I thought. Particularly liked SCATTERBRAINED and EASY DOES IT. I too wondered about EVER, but Stella’s explained it for me (I think). Can you give an example, Stella? Is it something like ‘This is the best puzzle I’ve ever solved’ and ‘This is the best puzzle I’ve solved until now’?

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 11:43:34 +0000

Thanks Lorraine and Everyman. As you say, the usual precise cluing, with nothing too difficult.

Robi@2, the use of ‘ever’ in the present perfect tense means precisely that: ‘up to this moment’, and is one of the first “rules” we teach to foreigners, ie. that with ‘ever and never you always use the present perfect, not the simple past.

I put “rules” in quotation marks because the more aware I am of how we teach them, the more I realise how easily we native speakers flout them, so please don’t bring me to book if you can think of a instance when what I say above is not true You can’t teach without structure!

By: Davy

Davy — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:56:56 +0000

Thanks Lorraine,

Nothing too taxing as you say but there’s always a few clues that take me a lot longer to get than the others.
I was even stumped for a while by BETA and it’s so so obvious. I was trying to fit a currency into the first part of the answer. Now which country uses the zet ?.

Favourite clues were ENTREATY, SCATTERBRAINED, AIREDALE and ANATHEMA.

By: Robi

Robi — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:09:20 +0000

Bamberger @1; I think this is in the sense of: ‘the film was aired nationwide.’ Hope that helps.

By: Robi

Robi — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:04:35 +0000

Thanks Everyman for precise clueing as ever, and to Lorraine for a good blog.

I agree with your parsing of 2 & 3. The second meaning in 2 is, I think, in the sense of ‘cutting across the racial divide.’ Not sure that EVER=’until now’ is particularly apt, but I suppose it suffices.

Interesting in 24 that AIRDALE is also a brewing company that makes a porter.

Unusual anagram indicator (peppered) in 21, which together with ‘pound’ NOT meaning ‘l’ made for a nicely misleading clue. For 13, I first had STEPMOTHER (as mother superior for nun) until the crossing letters allowed me to change to STEPSISTER. Nice unusual use of say=STATE in 16.