Comments on: Guardian 25,533 / Rufus

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:17:41 +0000

Not as close as all that. You can easily spring a trap which contains no spring.
I think that sense is allied more to the ‘jump up suddenly’ meaning ie if you spring it you allow it to spring.
I hope that is understandable?

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:44:58 +0000

That’s the way I took it initially, Richard: as I said, I thought the meanings were rather close.

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:10:05 +0000

On the trap, I took it as you can spring a trap, in which case it is sprung, and it can have a spring in it, therefore it is sprung!

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:26:01 +0000

I don’t think so, Sylvia; it’s ‘cruise missile’.

By: Sylvia

Sylvia — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:01:20 +0000

5a I thought the vessel was a Cruse misssile

By: FranTom Menace

FranTom Menace — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:00:04 +0000

A few mixed ones today! Strange, I didn’t think that ‘paperweight’ was a great clue as I just looked at it and wrote it in, whereas Fran and others here didn’t see it. ‘Gannet’ was very clever and we loved the eBay clue! Great to see some more modern (as in the last 20 years) references among the slightly less contemporary ‘Jack tar’, ‘Ur’ and ‘larboard’ which crop up every other week.

Thanks Eileen and Rufus.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:25:54 +0000

I declare tupu the winner…….on a tiebreak (of course).

By: Eileen

Eileen — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:49:42 +0000

Wow, tupu – I am impressed! Many thanks.

By: tupu

tupu — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:57:46 +0000

As the following from OED shows both terms were used at much the same time at least till the 1982 and mostly hyphenated. The quotes for tiebreak lend some support to RCW’s view of this as specially UK English in the 1970s.
“tie-break n. = tie-breaker n.

1970 Times 5 Mar. 13 In principle, the tie-break is an undesirable expedient, but there is a case for it in indoor tournaments confined to one court.

1974 Observer 1 Sept. 18/6 In the tie break Miss Mappin led 4–1.

1979 Daily Tel. 10 Dec. 19/1 Nigel?failed in a tie-break to win the British Chess championship in August.

tie-breaker n. a means of deciding a winner out of two or more contestants who have tied; also fig.

1961 Webster’s 3rd New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang., Tie-breaker.

1970 New Yorker 10 Oct. 179/1 There are several species of tie-breakers, but the one that Bill Talbert, the tournament director, selected?was the ninepoint sudden-death variety.

1971 Computers & Humanities 6 68 The identifiers will be indexed and will serve as ultimate tie-breakers in all sorting operations.

1979 G. Hammond Dead Game xiv. 188 At the end of the quiz, honours were even?and the chairman asked for a tie-breaker from the audience.

1982 Daily Tel. 21 Sept. 16/4 [Rifle-shooting.] Belither?beat Paul Kent?by a single point on a tiebreaker.

By: Bamberger

Bamberger — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:23:10 +0000

I had to look up cruse, hie and furlough -I can safely say that I had never come across them before.

Anyone baffled by prosit/prost http://www.oktoberfest-songs.com/ein-prosit-lyrics.html

or http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2008/10/ein_prosit_to_oktoberfest.html