Comments on: Azed 2047 – “Cherchez la Femme”

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 18:18:19 +0000

Thanks Richard (congratulations on your runaway victory in the annual honours, by the way) for pointing out my error in the wordplay of 8dn - I think I parsed it correctly when I solved it (it was one of the first answers I got) but didn't check properly when I wrote up the blog. Thanks also for pointing out the "not more than six away" rule, which I somehow totally missed when reading the preamble. As you say, noticing this this would have made finding the lady a lot easier. On the pronunciation of TUBAE, there are (at least) three ways of pronouncing Latin: ecclesiastical, as used in church music, and basically Italianate, in which it would be TOO-BAY; "Traditional English", giving TEW-BEE or even CHEW-BEE; and the supposedly historically-accurate version, giving TOO-BUY. As I meant, but forgot, to mention in the blog, I think TO BE is a slightly dodgy hybrid of two of these.

By: David Mansell

David Mansell — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 16:47:30 +0000

Chambers gives both pronunciations, but Azed’s choice strikes me as very old-fashioned, Church Latin basically. As I was taught it in the 60s “tubae” would be pronounced “too buy” and “to be” would be spelled “tubi” in Latin, if such a word as “tubus” existed in Classical Latin. (I have no idea despite an A at A-level Latin!).

By: sidey

sidey — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:05:02 +0000

bridgesong, I think it depends how you were taught Latin. It works the way I was, too-bah sing. too-bee pl. The old ‘Caesar adsum jam forte, Pompey aderat’ doesn’t work the way I was taught, ‘Kaisar adsum yarm fortay…’.

By: bridgesong

bridgesong — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:23:50 +0000

Andrew, thanks for the very comprehensive blog. Like you, I found this difficult and only managed to finish it on Friday evening, just in time for the Saturday deadline. Unlike you I was able to guess Antoinette fairly early on, and in fact was able to use that to work out where the last few crossing letters must be. Does anyone else think that TUBAE isn’t a very good homophone for TO BE..?

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 10:22:47 +0000

nusquam@4 re 10dn:

The wording of the clue steers us to regard “got” as a paasive participle. The sentences “A book is borrowed” and “A book is lent” cover exactly the same set of possibilities, and this would also be true about a specific book. So as long as we stay in the passive, I have no problems with borrowed = lent. I would be less happy with “borrow” = “lend” as active verbs.

There are of course other ways in which books can be got from library other than borrowed/lent, such as bought/sold (also equivalents only in the passive) or stolen, but the definition by example is clearly marked by the word “say”.

By: Bob Sharkey

Bob Sharkey — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 08:26:07 +0000

Sidey, the clue for 17D must have been an inclusion from a previous version that had to be completely rejigged. Obviously the puzzle was then published on-line without the original clue being replaced. I was about 2 thirds solved on-line before spotting the note in the .pdf version. I had already solved the on-line clue so had to rejig it all from my end too.

The solution was PUCELAGE – (gale (rev.) in puce)

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 05:52:04 +0000

This took me about double my usual solving time for a plain Azed, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks Azed, and Andrew for the blog.

Fickle memory tells me that Azed originally had a restriction of up to three letters distant from the letter entered to the letters in clues. Changing this to six allowed the mismatching letters to be any pair from the appropriate partition (odd or even numbered letters of the alphabet), while keeping the letter to be entered unambiguous, as noted by Richard @2.

By: nusquam

nusquam — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:09:00 +0000

Thank you for the blog, which explained some mysteries.

Does the setter make no difference between borrowing and lending (10d)?

By: Richard Heald

Richard Heald — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 23:49:00 +0000

Oh and Azed has set quite a number of Cherchez la Femmes over the past 20 years, including one competition puzzle for CASSANDRA (Azed No. 1220).

By: Richard Heald

Richard Heald — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 23:42:56 +0000

Very nice blog, Andrew, though the wordplay for 8dn should be I.E. in (BUS TRAIN)*.

Re your preamble comment about an A/M clash leading to either G or T, Azed was careful to state in his preamble that letters entered could be no more than six letters away from the non-matching letters, so A/M couldn’t possibly lead to T. This knowledge proved very useful to me on a couple of occasions.