Comments on: Financial Times no.14,186 by Cinephile

By: fearsome

fearsome — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:08:10 +0000

thanks Ringo and Cinephile, I remembered “wait” from an old crossword possibly an Araucaria Xmas special but then could not parse the “fee’d” of feedback. Tom Waits references are always welcome in my house, he is currently singing about being it being colder than a well digger’s ass….

By: Ringo

Ringo — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 09:22:37 +0000

Thanks for the comments, all. I thought ‘wait’ might have tripped a few up; I had to double-check it myself.

Jolly Swagman @3: the inclusion of a Tom Waits mention is the only thing that could have improved this puzzle (not very Christmassy though!)

Alan @4: aha, yes, that makes sense – thanks for clearing it up.

Brian @5: if ‘Solstice Bells’ came to mind before ‘Jingle Bells’ you must really be a hardcore Tull fan!

By: Brian M

Brian M — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 02:08:53 +0000

I could never get to grips with Cinephile, to the extent that if his name appeared above the crossword I stopped even trying. But after I got 1 ac at first glance today I thought I’d persevere, and I did pretty well! I’d never come across ‘wait’ in that context either, and I didn’t think that ‘Earless’ was a real title, but nothing else fit!

For the first half of the ‘Bells’ answer, I was racking my brain to come up with the name of the old Jethro Tull Christmas song, but eventually remembered it was ‘Solstice Bells’, so that was no good. I should have thought of ‘Jingle’, even without having read Pickwick Papers!

Thanks Ringo

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:21:15 +0000

Thanks for the blog!

As regards “the gift”. I though it was a reference to the expression “I give you my word”, meaning “I promise”, and since one always gives a word, then it is a gift

By: JollySwagman

JollySwagman — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:55:17 +0000

@m #1 – I didn’t twig that until it was explained to me on the G thread. It does indeed mean a Christmas singer and can equally mean an instrumental musician. Various dictionaries have it and my old Collins Encyclopedia of Music has it, but I’d never come across the term myself despite having worked in that field.

Initially I thought it was an error for Tom Waits but that left Christmas as a spare word – googling didn’t help but googling “wait definition” takes you to some entries.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:51:52 +0000

Hi morphiamonet
From Chambers under ‘wait’:

6. (in pl) people who welcome in Christmas by playing or singing out of doors at night
7. A member of a Christmas band or town band of waits

By: morphiamonet

morphiamonet — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:20:17 +0000

Thanks Cinephile and Ringo.

At the easier end I thought, except, could someone explain “wait” christmas singer for me?