Independent on Sunday 1,515

33 comments on “Independent on Sunday 1,515”

1. It’s Poins.

2. I was pleased to see this on a Sunday.Didnt Poins do last Sunday too?

   Thanks all.

3. I know it has been mentioned before, but you can see the setter’s name by looking at the print version (after the date). Don’t have to actually print it if you don’t want to.

   Aver can mean “prove to be true” in law. Actually, this was one of several unusual meanings (for me) that I had to check.

   My favourites were the fantastic anagrams in 28a and 8d. Thanks to S&B.

4. As so often with me, I forgot to mention I parsed 14d differently. I had “and” for “as a consequence” (he fell down and hurt himself) and “nowt” for “nothing” and “hen” for “for women” as in hen party.

5. Hovis – I prefer your way of parsing 14dn and I expect that is the parsing Poins had in mind.  But I think they both work, just about.

6. Enjoyable Sunday morning solve. I parsed 14D as Hovis @4.

   I particularly enjoyed MATINEE IDOLS and TANTRUM.

   Upset in 20A seems more usually used in down clues, I think, and it appears as the answer in 24A.

   Thanks Poins and PeeDee.

7. Thanks to PeeDee and Poins

   Mostly enjoyable but I can’t make 14d or 18a work.

   14d I’m sure the parsing is (as a consequence) = AND in (nothing) = NOWT +(for women only) = HEN with OCCASIONALLY as the def, but I can’t make AS A CONSEQUENCE = AND

   18a If I arrive 1 minute or 1 day after a scheduled time I’m late. Whether that’s “near the end” of the event I’m late for seems to me irrelevant – it might even be after it’s over.

    

8. Dansar @ 7

   How about

   They ate some bad shellfish, as a consequence they were ill.

   They ate some bad shellfish, and they were ill.

9. Dansar – I got drunk and now I have a headache. I got drunk, as a consequence now I have a headache.

   The best character doesn’t appear until late in the book. The best…until near the end in the book.

   Hope this helps

10. @8 &9

    I take your points but I had considered those constructions and I regard them as false. I can only see them as either a) replacing AND with a comma, or b) simply eliding the AND, and, as a consequence, leaving it to the recipient to infer it.

    E.g They ate some bad shellfish and they were ill.

    They ate some bad shellfish, soon they were ill.

    Does AND now = SOON?

    I got drunk and now I have a headache

    I got drunk, therefore now I have a headache

    AND = THEREFORE?

    My point is that the listener is left to insert the AND in all the constructions I can think of, but it is still there.

11. 11A I think parsing is <AN (article “about) + <DAVE (Cameron “withdrawn”) + N (“by” new).

    Alternatively <DAVE in AN + N.

    Either way, there’s an “N” missing in the blogged answer.

    Thanks to Poins and PeeDee.

12. Dansar @10 – I think writing things like AND = SOON or AND = THEREFORE is misleading.  It suggests AND is defined to be SOON or AND “is the same” as SOON.  Dictionaries in English record usages of words, not definitions.  In the example sentences AND is used in a way where it carries the meaning of “as a consequence”.  This meaning isn’t inherent in the word AND: it becomes attached to the word AND when the word is used in this way.  The dictionary entry includes “as a consequence or aim” not because that is the definition of the word, but because that is one of the circumstances in which the word is used in English.

    Meaning being inferred from context is normal, and being able to omit a word and still get the meaning is normal too.  If I use the word “angle” you can’t tell what it means until you read it in context.  Am I talking about fish or rectangles or something else? I say “Go away!” but I could also say just “Go!”.  That doesn’t imply that “away” didn’t carry the meaning of “another place” because it didn’t need to be there.

13. gwep @11 – yes, thanks for spotting that, fixed now.

14. PeeDee@12

    I suggest no definitions, ( by the way, I take it from your reply that AS A CONSEQUENCE is listed as a dictionary entry for AND, in which case the setter is, of course entitled to use it), my examples are cases of ellipsis, whereby words which a user may expect the hearer to infer are omitted. If this process were to routinely lead  to a dictionary entry then the list for AND would result in a lot of dead trees.

    I seem to remember us being in a similar discussion once before regarding whether dictionaries are descriptive or prescriptive.

    My take is that they may set out with good intentions but eventually can’t resist playing mother.

    E.g.

    I visit the North East of England frequently and when I’m there I hear HAWAY more often than I hear THE, but I can’t find it in Collins or the S.O.E.D (if it’s in Chambers my point is void).

    Most language is spoken, if dictionaries rely on scanning the printed word they are not describing the real language.

    BTW I concede on LATE = NEAR THE END

15. Hi Dansar – for “and” Chambers gives Used to introduce a consequence or aim.  For me that pretty much sums up how “and” is being used in the examples above.

    Chambers doesn’t list “haway”, but I had always assumed that it is a NE way of saying “away”, often used in its original meaning of “onward”.  “Away the Lads!” is “”Onward the Lads!”.  I have no evidence for this though, just a personal assumption. You wouldn’t expect a dictionary to list otel as a separate word because that’s how hotel is pronounced in the SE.

    In general, I think there is a difference between English as it is recorded in dictionaries and English as it is understood by individual people.  If there 1 million English speakers then you have 1 million slightly different understandings of what the words mean.  The dictionaries record forms that are used by a significant subset of the speakers.  For me the question isn’t whether you (Dansar) believe the word AND indicates “as a consequence” or not.  You are your own person and can understand words in any damn way you like.  The question is whether so few people believe this usage of “and” exists that it shouldn’t be included in the dictionary.

    The same applies to crosswords: if a crossword is written for you personally then you have a reasonable expectation that it should only use words in the sense that you (Dansar) understand them.  Puzzles such as this are for a wide and varied readership and use a wide and varied set of definitions, some of which you (or some other solver) will not use personally.  One has to look beyond ones own personal understanding of the language.

16. Re HAWAY: I just looked it up in the OED and that has it listed (under HOWAY).  Apparently it comes from old HOW + WAY: HOW being a nautical cry by sailors (eg heave-ho, hey-ho) and WAY being an old spelling of “away”.  The spelling Howay is associated with Geordie English form Newcastle and the spelling Howay is associated with Mackem usage from Sunderland.

17. I too was a little thrown by the definition of AND as “as a consequence” in 14 down and actually looked AND up in the dictionary (something I never thought I would have to do!). I think the issue here is whether “used to introduce a consequence” means the same thing as “as a consequence”. In a sentence like “I fell over and hurt myself” we infer that I hurt myself as a consequence of falling down from the context of the sentence; the causal link between the two events is so obvious that we don’t need to include “as a result of which” or similar. But what about a sentence like “the sun was shining and I was very happy” (the sort of thing that pops up in bad fiction all the time?). We have no way of knowing whether I was happy because the sun was shining, or whether I just happened to be happy on a sunny day.

    All of which waffle is to make the point that I’m not convinced that as a stand-alone word AND can mean “as a consequence”, rather that it can be a link between two clauses which suggest from context that Y happened as a consequence of X.

    All that said, the clue didn’t bother me too much; it’s quite easy to see what Poins was getting and (as a consequence) the clue was solvable. That’s the main thing, right?

18. cruciverbophie @17 – for the phrase “as a stand-alone word can mean…” gets right to the nub of the issue.  In English words are not like blocks of lego that come with a list of pre-defined sizes and meanings.  Words are malleable,  their meaning morphs depending on the other words that appear with them and the background context of the sentence.  It isn’t even a question of choosing one meaning over another, a word can convey several meanings at once and play more than one role in a sentence.

    In a particular sentence the meaning is attributed to the word by the listener/reader.  This is as a result of their life experience and everything they know about the situation.  In the above is “X was caused by Y” the reader determines X to be the causing event, Y to be the effect, the bit in the middle carries the burden of indicating that of there is a causal relationship.  In the examples above this “causal relationship” bit gets attached to the word AND.  This is an example of how AND can play the role of indicating a causal relationship.  “And” does not imply the causal relationship simply by some pre-defined stand-alone meaning, the reader infers that “and” is playing this role in this sentence.  It is one of the ways we see “and” being used in English.

    As a stand-alone word AND doesn’t really mean anything.  Take away the background context and the surrounding words and you are left with almost nothing.  Working with usages gets around this by avoiding the need to try and give stand-alone meanings to every word in the language: a fruitless task.

19. What you say about language is quite true, PeeDee, but in a crossword a definition and the word being defined should be interchangeable without reliance on the context it appears in. For example, most of us would complain if a setter defined “music” as “awkward situation” even though it means exactly that in the phrase “face the music”. Poins’s clue is not as extreme as that and I’ve already said that I don’t have a problem with it, but I can easily see why Dansar brought the issue up.

20. surely “face the music” is a metaphor- “awkward situation” doesn’t mean precisely “music” in that phrase.  That isn’t how metaphors work: they expressly avoid precise comparisons.

21. Is this a five-minute argument or the full half hour?

    We’re not going to agree on this so I will respectfully register my difference of opinion and leave it there.

22. Sorry cruciverbophile, I didn’t intend to argue.  I just enjoy discussing sort of thing.

23. As do I, so I’ll go for the full half hour.

    I thought HAWAY would probably be in the full O.E.D. but I think it’s a little odd that we have to go there to find a word which is used by tens of thousands of people every day.

    In my experience it means “come on” in three main variants

    1 Encouragement – Haway the lads = Mackem equivalent of Come on you Spurs

    2 Hurry up – Haway or we’ll miss the bus

    3 Pull the other one – And means as a consequence? Haway!

    Sorry, couldn’t resist that, but that is a common meaning of the word.

    Going back to the “and” debate, it’s fairly clear that a simple “,” performs the same function as “and” in most, if not all, cases simply by introducing a break in the flow of a sentence. If we accept the use of “and” as used by the setter then we may see this as a clue:

    Pause for effect (11)

    If we do, I want royalties

     

24. Hi Dansar, glad you are not offended!

    I expect haway and away get used interchangeably.  They sound very similar.  I don’t expect people stop to consider how the utterance would be categorised by a lexicologist. For example the “pull the other one” might come from “get away!” rather than from “a word of encouragement”.

    They are definitely separate words though.  The online version of Collins doesn’t list it either.  I doubt they have just missed the word, there must be some reason they chose to leave it out.  Possibly it is too localised to for a general dictionary?  There are plenty of other words from the North East in general listed.  The people who do know are the dictionary editors and they don’t tell why.

    Re AND: what is the intended answer for “Pause and effect (11)” ?

25. It’s a double definition

    I hurt myself going to hospital

    I hurt myself – , – going to hospital

    I hurt myself – effect – going to hospital

    Hence

    Pause for effect (11)

    Ans. CONSEQUENCE

26. Sorry, I don’t follow that.  If it is a double definition then “pause” and “effect” have a meaning in common.  What is the common meaning?

27. Haway man it’s CONSEQUENCE

    Now consider this:

    Man in a pub well before closing

    “I’m off early shifts this week”

    “I’m off, early shifts this week”

    In this case the pause indicates a CAUSE

    Hence

    Cause for pause (6)

28. Ans. Reason

    And as the break in the flow of a sentence can indicate that the subsequent statement can be either a consequence or a reason we have:

    Cause and effect (5)

29. Hello Dansar, I’m not sure if you are still following this post but the clues you give have all the same flaw:  the meaning of words is not transitive.  Given that “A means B” and “B means C” that does not imply that “A means C”.  For example: “pause” means “a break” and “a break” means “cause” (sic) but that that does not imply that “pause” means “cause”.

    In crosswords you have to use the meanings directly.  People don’t write “I fell pause broke my leg”.  You don’t find dictionaries listing PAUSE with “used to introduce a consequence”.

    Poins gets it right: people do write “I fell and broke my leg”.  You do find that dictionaries list AND with “used to introduce a consequence”.

    You also need to fix the definitions as “and” or “,” are items “used to introduce a consequence” not actually causes or consequences themselves.

30. Still here!

    Thank you for indulging me this far. The answer @28 is, of course, PAUSE.

    I think we might be at slightly crossed purposes. The point I have been trying to make is not that PAUSE =CONSEQUENCE/EFFECT/REASON/CAUSE (although I enjoy the possibilities that that presents), but rather that, if we take USED TO INTRODUCE A CONSEQUENCE as synonymous with AS A CONSEQUENCE, then my examples become valid.

31. Poins’s clue works by “and” and “as a consequence” both having a usage in common: they are both words/phrases used to introduce a consequence.  There doesn’t need to be anything more to it than that.

    I’m at a loss to understand where you are going with these broken examples of clues.  What are you trying to illustrate?

32. I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “broken examples”, but I suspect that my notation might be at fault so I shall attempt a plainer example.

    I have not contended that a pause, commonly indicated by a comma, means “as a consequence”. I have, however, asserted that if ” as a consequence” can be regarded as synonymous with “and” simply because a dictionary definition of “and”describes it as “used to introduce a consequence”, then my examples become valid.

    I proffer an example;

    I hurt myself on the to hospital – NO INDICATION OF ONE BEING CONSEQUENTIAL ON THE OTHER, simply that they are contemporaneous

    I hurt myself, on the way to hospital – NOW THERE IS! INDICATED BY THE PAUSE (COMMA)

    I hurt myself and on the way to hospital – AND PERFORMS THE SAME FUNCTION AS THE PAUSE (COMMA)

    They both introduce a consequence.

    I reserve the right to introduce my finale:

    Pause for cause and effect (5)

     

33. I have inadvertently omitted WAY from my first example.

    BTW Thank you very much, I’ve enjoyed it 🙂

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