Guardian 28,146 – Tramp

93 comments on “Guardian 28,146 – Tramp”

1. Thanks, Andrew, and Tramp.

    

   I though there might be a golf theme developing (HOLE OUT and BACKSWING, FORM?), but it faded out.

   GIGGLES was the only one I couldn’t fathom.

2. I coud not work out how to parse the S in O/S/T/RICH.

   New for me were PELICAN CROSSING, EPIGEAL, HOLE OUT.

   My favourite was GIGGLES.

   Thanks B+S.

3. Forgot about pound as enclosure and about Iggy Pop, and epigeal was a do and lookup (since the recent ‘epicentre’ discusion I keep noticing its incorrect use in the media). So, a couple of ?s in an otherwise smooth solve. Loved ‘word for scrabble’, and it’s a while since last seeing lum the Scottish chimney, which was neat. Eye-drop was a bit quirky, as was minute for second, but all fine. Thanks to Tramp and Andrew.

4. Another excellent puzzle from Tramp, but I spoiled the day by having ‘roots’ at 2d. I worked on the basis that if you ‘root’ for your team at a match you ‘hoot’ for them, and the clue parses as first letters of ‘rivers’, ‘one’, ‘owl’ + ‘t(ree)s’. I concede that the correct solution is better.

   Thanks to setter and blogger.

5. A masterpiece of misleading with great surfaces.Terrific Friday puzzle.

6. Clever clueing and an enjoyable challenge, not sure about second for minute.
   Thanks to Tramp and Andrew (P.s. you’ve missed the single in 1a).

7. Yes, chewy stuff as Andrew says above. Favourites were BACKSWING, GIGGLES and OSTRICH (cleverly constructed). Many thanks to T & A.

8. Thank you for this, which I completed but with a good many left unpatsed. In 1a is single word then I? (Missing from the blog.) I also had ROOTS to begin with for the reason GC gives but the check button forced me to think again. My quibble was that buxom in my book means well-endowed but my chubby; however, I expect someone will tell it’s in Chambers… Floor needs underlined in the clue for MOPPER. The one I really went duh for was NIMBI. Many thanks to Tramp for the puzzles and to Andrew for resolving them.

9. *unparsed*

10. *not chubby* … *tell me* (Sorry, typing on my phone.. )

11. Superb stuff – just the right balance between humour and complexity.

    Joint first in a classy field were GIGGLES for referencing Les & Iggy and OSTRICH for its clever construction. Held up by 18d for a while as put in MORTGAGERS being too idle to go through the fodder properly. Never really heard of RIOTS in that sense used in the plural tho – a mere bagatelle.

    Thanks to both for a good start to the day and good weekend one and all.

12. Beobachterin @8 I think it breaks down as I for single then CLAW is a “word for Scrabble”, word being unnecessary but completely fair and a good bit of misdirection.

    I really enjoyed this. Didn’t know NIHIL so a little latin learned this morning too. Thanks all.

13. A couple of slightly different parsings …

    PERIOD (spell) + I (single) + CLAW (word for Scrabble)

    I used G(IGG)S for the pop star because I’m down with the kids 🙂

14. What copmus said @5 – super anagrams, too, @ MORTGAGEES [brilliant spot], PELICAN CROSSING and WEATHER FORECAST.

    Great stuff from setter and blogger – many thanks to both.

15. Very enjoyable.  Andrew described this puzle perfectly in his preamble.

    We have had several clever long anagrams this week, and there were two more today.  The Rees-Mogg anagram (MORTGAGEES) was remarkable too, reminding me incidentally that the holder of that name is still around – but being kept well in the background.

    I needed help parsing GIGGLES but managed to get the other tricky parsings.

    A good puzzle to end a good week, in which, unusually, I found time for all four since Tuesday (I keep Mondays for weekend crosswords).

    Thanks to Tramp and Andrew.

16. There have been some Guardian thought-provokers this week, but this was outright fun. Tramp has a delicious way with words that makes me smile after about 50% of solves.

    WEATHER FORECAST was a favourite.

17. Agree with all the positive comments, but find myself viscerally troubled by “minute” being clued as “second”. Obviously the two words are often used interchangeably to mean a short time, so it ought to be fine, but I feel it is fundamentally wrong to define one measurement as another. Would one accept “inches” for “millimetres”, each of which could easily be used in “It missed me by………”? I think it is because a unit of measurement is so intrinsically identified by being itself and nothing else; one should not be woolly with its meaning. But many thanks to Tramp and Andrew.

18. What Eileen said. Fairly straightforward but superb. Nobody does anagrams like Tramp.

19. In the minority as usual. Too many obtuse definitions for me to enjoy this. Clearly I did not read the clues in the right way.

    Did chuckle at RAMPANT though.

     

20. Like BlueCanary @11, I also had MORTGAGERS, and also neglected to check the fodder. When I realised, I thought ‘but the mortgagee is the borrower, isn’t it?’. I found out I was wrong. Loved the teacher software anagram. Yes, this was meaty, but gave way slowly – the East slower than the West. Very enjoyable. Thanks to Tramp and Andrew for some enlightenment. ‘A pound for eggs’ indeed.

21. Sagittarius @17

    I too was startled by the clueing of ‘minute’ as ‘second’, and it was bold of the setter to try this on, but I think the answer is in the phrase you used: “the two words are often used interchangeably to mean a short time”.  (And ‘moment’ is another.)  These are all in such common use to mean the same thing that I had no problem with the clue on reflection.

22. Some wonderful misdirection here. I too thought that martgagees were the borrowers,so was held up for a while. For 3d, I took OS as being ‘over’ then t(ime) and rich lead do the definition. Enjoyed the challenge today.

23. It took me a while to get on Tramp’s wavelength, with only two entered on first pass, but WEATHER FORECAST gave me some useful crossers and then it became a steady solve. Like several others I carelessly wrote in MORTGAGERS, which held me up on 18d, and the rest of the SE was also tricky. A singular GREEN BEAN took a lot more getting than the (eventually obvious) clue deserved. I only got MINUTE = second after getting the T from RAMPANT; but does that really mean wild? I was thinking of the heraldic use (standing on hind leg) but Chambers has high-sprited and fierce, so I guess it’s ok.

    Thanks to Tramp and Andrew.

24. Great crossword; I loved the ‘word for Scrabble’ and Rees-Mogg. I forgot my Iggy Pop and Les Paul, so that one went in unparsed.

    MORTGAGEES was correct but, like others, this seemed to me to be the wrong way round. From Oxford: ‘The mortgagee is the lender in a mortgage, who is offered a property as security for the money they are lending to the mortgagor, the person who is mortgaging it.’

    Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

25. sh @23; does rampant sex mean ‘while standing on hind leg?’

26. Sagittarius @17 et al I was also bothered initially by MINUTE/SECOND but they share an alternative meaning defined in Chambers as a short indeterminate length of time. So on balance, I’d give this one the nod. As other have said, an absolute misdirection masterclass. Cheers Andrew for removing the PER/A stone from my mental shoe!

27. Very strange that in our language MINUTE can mean the same as a moment or a second in time, as well as meaning 60 seconds. Found this a bit of a mixture, with 17d GIGGLES rather ponderously constructed, whereas LUMBAGO provided a smile.

28. A quicker solve than most Tramp puzzles for me, helped by seeing PELICAN CROSSING and GREASE PAINT very early, which opened up most of the bottom half. Still required some thought to complete – another fine puzzle.

    Thanks to Tramp and Andrew

29. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Any classicists’ (or cosmologists’) comment on the difference ‘o’ makes?

30. I’m with Eileen and Copmus on this splendid bit of brain stretching

    Thanks to Tramp and Andrew

31. Great stuff. What copmus@5 and Eileen@14 said. Interesting how so many of us thought mortgagees were the borrowers, I being also in that camp. Thanks for the explanation Robi@24, that makes sense of it.

    Thanks for the blog Andrew, needed help to parse a couple, and for the explanation of Pelican Crossing – they’re all just pedestrian crossings here in NZ.

    Thanks to Tramp for the fun

32. Hi grantinfreo @29

    Ex nihilo nihil fit: from nothing, nothing comes – or nothing comes from nothing. Nihilo is in the ablative case, after ‘in’. Nihil is the subject, in the nominative case.

33. Well, it’s been a long time, a couple of years at least since I’ve posted. The general busyness of my life has started to ease so after a bit of lurking I’ve decided to make a contribution again from time to time. And Tramp today is a good place to start.

    I felt rather proud finishing this, for it was close to my solving limit. Indeed, first pass yielded absolutely nothing. It’s been a while since that happened. Go away, come back, start again and the innocuous YANK put me in. Then directly PELICAN CROSSING falls into place without even having to jumble up the letters.

    But there was a bit of hit and hope. Not so much the likes of EPIGEAL, a new word to me but fairly clued; more like A = PER in MOPPER. Bit close to the wind that as a device if you ask me, not that I haven’t seen it before. Four parsings in total needed from fifteensquared. Thank you Andrew!

34. Welcome back, Trailman! 😉

35. Thanks Eileen, thought it might be you. (As a neuroscience student, to me ablate means ‘remove surgically’!)

36. grantinfreo @29

    My apologies – I meant to say ‘in the ablative case after ex’. [The ablative case is also used after ‘in’.]

37. grantinfreo [again]

    We crossed. The Latin verb that ablative comes from means to carry away – QED. 😉

38. Yes, after ex (removal), both occurrences make sense.

39. That was fun. Very happy to have almost completed a Tramp. Lumbago defeated me. I should have waited for Scottish husband to get home. Thank you Andrew and Tramp.

40. Bravo Tramp. Thank you. Thanks too to Andrew for the blog and a nice, er, weekend to everyone

41. Please would somebody enlighten me as to what “&littish” means? Google is no help. Thanks!

42. I had a strange transfiguration experience with this where I went from hating quite a few of the clues to loving them – basically most of the ones where I was totally misdirected by very innocent sounding phrases that had to be split a particular way or meant something totally different than they appeared to. I would say that is the pinnacle of the setter’s art, beautifully demonstrated here.

    I would pick nits with “pound for eggs” – my chicken run is definitely not to keep the eggs in (they have a nest box for that, which is part of the coop) so rather than mislead I found this annoyingly inaccurate, a bit like the private eye “loom” for “spinner” the other week. And then “minute” for “second” – we’ve had this before, but English is not transitive so if word A = word B and word B = word C, word A does not equal word C. e.g. “damned” = “bloody” (as curses). “bloody” = “red” (as colours). therefore “damned” = “red”?

    However, there is the Italian riddle (hoping I get this right given the native speakers out there):
    “Biancaneve in mezzo ai nani. Indovina questo indovinello, cervellone, nel tempo che ti dà la soluzione” 7 minuti!

    It relies on a pun between “minuti” being both minutes and dwarfs (small things). In the English it’s rendered as something about how quickly Snow White brings the 7 dwarfs their pudding – 7 seconds. So in this case minutes had to equal seconds, sort of!

    Anyway, I digress (never!). Brilliant stuff – thanks Tramp and Andrew.

43. Jim @41 An &lit clue is one in which the wordplay and the definition are actually one and the same. So use the whole clue to do the wordplay & literally the clue is also the definition. &littish means a near-miss, so part of the clue is also the definition (as well as wordplay). real &lits are rare beasts

44. Fine puzzle in general, but not quite sure of the need/accuracy of “after” in the wordplay for NIMBI.  I don’t know from personal experience, but would assume the comment could be made by someone both before and during, as well.  Wouldn’t “when” do better?

45. grantinfreo @29  It’s true that “ablative” sort of translates as “away-taking,” but in fact it’s used for all sorts of prepositional relationships when they refer to position, but not to motion.  So the Latin preposition takes the ablative when it means “inside,” but not “into.”

46. Thanks Andrew for the super blog and the kind words. Thanks to others for posting. I wrote this puzzle in May 2019. I was quite pleased with it. For me, “hang on a minute/second” are interchangeable and that will do me; others can disagree. I can’t think of a sentence In which “damned” and “red” are interchangeable, and that’s the difference.

    Neil

47. Should have remembered Iggy and Les, instead was thinking Lady Gaga and Macca – but couldn’t make gaggles fit the definition. Thanks Tramp and Andrew for a pleasant finish to the week.

48. I understand the defence of MINUTE/SECOND, and if they share a meaning in Chambers well, ok then I supppose… But I’m with those who felt it was a little unsatisfactory. Could have embraced the homophone and been clued as “Very small home acquired by mum”, which feels neater and fairer to me.

    Otherwise, this was one of those puzzles where I balked slightly at some of its tricks until I fully understood the parsing, whereupon I had to grudgingly admit being impressed by the craft (and therefore felt very pleased with myself for the ones I got unassisted!).

49. Valentine @45

    I muddied the water @ 32 by stupidly writing the irrelevant ‘in’ instead of ‘ex’ @32 – I apologise again.

    For the record, when Latin ‘in’ means ‘into’ it’s followed by the accusative case: the ablative is used after ‘a’ or ‘ab’, meaning [motion] ‘away from’.

50. Just to check the meanings of claw, I entered CLAW SCRABBLE in google;  the first result: CLAW is a valid scrabble word. I wonder if this is what Tramp had in mind.

51. Really enjoyed this, and personally – because I’m always up for a bit of mischief – I appreciated minute equating to second. It’s pushing at the edges of what’s considered acceptable – which is almost always a good thing. Whilst I might use “give me a second” and then regret it I made someone wait a bit too long, I’d have no such qualms about interchanging “Hang on a minute…” and “hang on a second…” if I found something suspicious (in this case the actual length of time is absolutely immaterial – the phrases mean exactly the same thing).

52. Dave Ellison @ 50 No, it’s in the sense of scratching at something with your hands (imagine scrambling up a steep sand dune using your hands for extra purchase).

53. I remembered Les Paul, but couldn’t sort out the rest of that clue (if it’s Iggy Pop, where does the first G come from?) Giggs might be better if I’d heard of him…

    CHUBBY does not equal buxom in my book (don’t tell me Chambers says it does, please).

    Just for fun: when I typed Iggy Pop, the autocorrect decided he was “Piggy Poo”. Don’t tell him.

54. I was impressed that I finished this unaided, apart from bunging in ROOTS and I see I’m not alone. To come on here and not find it described it as a write-in was the icing on the cake. Having studied English Law briefly 45 years ago, I remembered the mortgagee is the lender. Loved the Iggy Pop and Les Paul references in GIGGLES. Thank you Tramp for an excellent puzzle and Andrew for sorting out a few parsings.

55. Gladys @53 The G comes from good

56. MarkN @52 I think you’ve hit on my problem with second for minute (no problem with 20d itself as it is clearly a valid clue, my issue is with the looseness of Chambers), the phrases mean the same thing but the words within them have specific and different meanings – even if the actual time is undetermined an element of precision is still implied in the phrasing.

57. @grantinfreo 29

    Of course, this isn’t really Classical Latin, in which ‘nihil’ is indeclinable. At a push, ‘e nullo nihil fit’ might work.

58. TitusCarus @57.I’m sorry to go on about this but the ablative nihilo occurs not only in Grant’s ‘ex nihilo nihil fit’ [from Book I of Lucretius’  ‘De rerum natura’] but also in Livy, Caesar and Cicero, all Classical writers. [There’s also the adverb ‘nihilominus’ [nevertheless] – ‘nihilo minus’, literally ‘less by nothing’. I’ll stop now.

59. Yep, a classy puzzle, but quite tough.  I had one entry only (FORM) after first pass of the acrosses!  I’m usually terrible at long anagrams, but fortunately saw PELICAN CROSSING quickly and that gave me the in.  Lots of clever clues.  GIGGLES was my favourite for the clever surface and the Pop PDM.  I completely misparsed GREASE PAINT, thinking GREASE was the coat and PAINT the musical.  Also fooled yet again by putting meaning the golf stroke (even after solving the clue!).  I liked the Second/inute debate and agree it works because of common usage.  I thought of Anselmo’s point that Tramp could have gone with very small or tiny as first word, but that’s the setter’s prerogative.  Thanks to Tramp for weighing in on that one and for the puzzle as a whole.  Thanks also to Andrew for the blog, particularly my last D’oh moment on reading the parse for 9!

60. Oh dear, I seem to have started a lepus running. And a quick wiki-peruse, earlier, revealed how immensely complex a category ‘case’ is, all the way back to proto-indo, not to mention other indigenous tongues. Too late now, post too many shirazes, to even attempt further analysis. But meanwhile, enjoy!

61. Like many others I enjoyed this but it didn’t cede easily. I am afraid I think second for minute a mite loose, but got it without too much heartache.
    Chicken run made me smile. I had to look up epigeal as I hadn’t come across the term but the clueing was clear. I was unable to parse parts of mopper and the s in ostrich.
    Lots of lovely misdirection. Thanks to Tramp and Andrew for parsing the bits I didn’t get.

62. Thanks Andrew for parsing — while I nearly completed this crossword there was a lot unfamiliar to me — “claw” being scrabble, “lum” being stack, the history of PELICAN CROSSING, and the meanings of CHICKEN RUN and HOLE OFF. POSER and NIMBI were solved by the definition alone. Lots of favorites here, NIHIL, POLLEN, and MINUTE among them. Thanks Tramp for the workout.

63. What a great puzzle – like copmus said and many have echoed a masterclass in misdirection. The clues were also concise which I see as the mark of setters at the top of their game. Minute and second are fine as synonyms in crosswordland in my book.
    As an aside this glorious weather has meant I’ve changed my habits by getting up early to do the garden projects in the relative cool and save the crossword for later in the day.
    Thanks to Tramp for a perfect end to the week, to Andrew for the blog and everyone for their contributions – especially Eileen for the Latin lesson :-).

64. I don’t think sentence substitutability works as a defence.  Compare “I was spitting feathers” with “I was spitting tacks”.  Both sentences mean the same, but feathers and tacks could not be more different. “Second” and “minute” only have equivalence when given a context, which was absent from 20d and therefore (for me) the clue was imperfect.

65. VW @64 if you look up feathers and tacks in the dictionary you won’t find anything that suggests they are in any way synonymous. However, if you look up minute & second you’ll find both have an alternative meaning of a short indeterminate period of time. So you don’t need a context, just a dictionary 🙂

66. Can we please have no more references to cabinet members. That’s the second one in two days. I don’t want to think about them anymore than is absolutely necessary

67. That was great. Thanks to Tramp and Andrew.
    Some may cavil at certain offerings, but do I descry a certain consensus which might, in the spirit of the blog, be rendered: “De MORTGAGEES nil nisi bonum”?
    No. I didn’t think so. Waiter! Coat!

68. robi @25. Thanks for the suggestion. Now to find an opportunity…

69. Another splendid crossword from Tramp, precise as ever (important to me) and having that now-feeling that is sometimes missing in other setters’ output [to each their own, though].

    But first a warm welcome to an ‘old friend’, Trailman @33.
    So good to hear from you again after quite a few years.

    As I said, a splendid crossword but WEATHER FORECAST (6d) was just stunning.
    Also rosettes for 16ac (but not for JRM), 3d and 17d (especially after the penny dropped).
    But the rest wasn’t far behind.

    Many thanks to Andrew for the blog & Tramp for today’s super entertainment.

70. I was a bit loose. Interchangeability is not a sufficient requirement for a synonym. However, minute and second are interchangeable in the example I gave and they share a dictionary entry of denoting a short moment of time: feathers and tacks don’t.

71. With you all the way,Tramp. I didn’t hesitate for a minute, second, moment, trice, tick or instant in filling in the answer – they’re all the same in Crosswordland – great clue!

72. Tramp @ 70 Eileen @ 71 I totally agree let that be an end to it.  Great crossword great blog, many thanks to all.  Now to await the (not) Prize!!

73. Thanks Tramp and Andrew

    I wasn’t intending to comment, but I have to agree about the doubt about second=minute. There were (as has been already said) lots of less perverse definitions that Tramp might have used.

    I didn’t parse NIHIL, but the rest I enjoyed very much indeed. I really liked the misleading definitions. POLLEN was next to LOI, and favourite.

74. As others have said a lot of fun, but also a lot of head scratching until the word play emerged from the mist. Couldn’t see the a/per parsing (now to self for next time) but the answer was clear. Thanks Tramp and Andrew

75. Excellent puzzle, tightly-clued with consistently meaningful surfaces.

76. I enjoyed this puzzle a great deal, particularly for cleverly-hidden and misleading definitions such as “finish putting”.

    I know the word “nihil” from my long-ago study of Latin, but I’m surprised to see it clued without any indication of its foreignness. Is there any context in which one would consider it an English word (as, for example, when posh people stereotypically refer to their mothers as “mater”)?

    I failed to figure out which pop singer was being referred to in 17dn, mostly because I mistakenly thought “good” was supplying the final G rather than the initial G, so I was trying to make the pop singer give GIG instead of IGG.

     

77. Many thanks to both for the fun and some needed explanations. Just to muddy waters a little – in a meeting if you second something, that is minuted.

78. Eileen, passim  “Ex nihil nihil fit” is how the sentence sounds in my memory, so it must be that it’s mostly quoted by non-Classical Latin types.  I didn’t know it came with an o.  What is that “fit” verb anyway?

    I didn’t want to muddy the waters by bringing accusative into the crowd, but the point I was (rather vaguely) making was that accusative is often but not always used for prepositions depicting motion toward, and ablative is used for prepositions not necessarily depicting motion away from, as in “cum” or “sub.”  As my father used to say, some people get their degrees cum laude and some get them cum grano salis.

79. loved “charge a pound for eggs”, PELICAN CROSSING (which I hadn’t realised was an acronym), CHUBBY and loads more

    Many thanks Tramp & Andrew

80. We will all have to agree to disagree. If I said I would be with you in a minute, I would expect you to have to wait a little longer for the great pleasure of my company than if I said I would be with you in a second, even though in both cases the wait would not be long. Promise not to waste another second/minute arguing any further.

81. Thanks to Andrew and Tramp

    Spot on from start to finish.

    Apart from 15d – I know the device is widespread but I can’t see how “endless” extends beyond “Viagra”, and 21d in  which it seems to me that “curtail” needs to be “curtailed”.

    Romani ite domum

     

82. Late again. Superb crossword with one misdirection after another. I had ROOTS at 2d for the same reason as George @4. GIGGLES was totally unparsed as I (correctly) assumed it involved names from the pop world. As said, brilliant anagrams. I remembered enough of my o-level Latin to get NIHIL but failed to parse NI, wondering whether the NI was ‘cool’ for paying my retirement pension! Many thanks to Tramp and Andrew.

83. I loved this one. Though it took me until today and many revisits to finish it.

    I was wondering about GIGGLES as I had Giggs as the “pop singer” even though he is nothing of the sort.

    How could I forget Iggy?! That explains the ‘good’ in the clue that I was studiously ignoring.

84. Ted@76
    It didn’t occur to me to question “nihil” with no indication of its origin. I just accepted it as common knowledge but faced with your challenge I agree that, unlike many French words it hasn’t been adopted into the language. I can only think of one example -“Nihil obstat” used to be found at the front of books, even when printed in English, to indicate that the Roman Catholic church held that “nothing stands in the way of” its publication. The church is then said to have given its “imprimatur” (Latin for “it may be printed”). Imprimatur has become part of the English language.

85. NIHIL is hardly abstruse, except for those who haven’t come across the, relatively common, word “nihilism”. (As a 7 year old I learnt that it’s dative for “to or for” and ablative for “by, with or from” and that’s worked for me ever since!)
    I’m savouring my pleasures currently. And so pleased (smug even) that I saved this to enjoy in today’s sun.
    I had absolutely no quibbles whatsoever!

    This was, to my mind, a wonderfully fine puzzle (GIGGLING and MORTGAGEES two favourites amongst many – primus et secundus inter pares?)

    Many thanks for the entertainment, O Trampe (vocative!?)

    And thanks to Andrew

86. New Britishism I learned today: “lum” = chimney!

    Very enjoyable puzzle – thanks Andrew and Tramp

87. Eileen — I learned from you that “nihilo” occurred in Classical Latin, but it doesn’t seem to have survived into modern usage, where “nihil” seems to be the only current form of the word in the “ex nihil” and other expressions.  Could we think of Lucretus and Livy’s “nihilo” as “ablative obsolete”?

88. Valentine @87
    I’m not sure if Eileen will see your late comment, but I happened to come across it after updating myself with the comments preceding yours.
    I know a fair amount of Latin from school, and I know a large number of classical Latin phrases that are used in modern English without ever having changed.  ‘Ex nihilo’ is one of them, and I must admit I have never seen ‘ex nihil’, which to me looks wrong, and I have never seen it.
    ‘Nihilo’ is indeed the ablative form, because it follows ‘ex’ as Eileen explained.  There are of course other ‘stock’ phrases beginning ‘ex nihilo’, and I think it’s because it’s such a compact way of expressing that meaning, especially when combined with what follows it.
    I hope this helps.

89. Sorry about my clumsy English (@88) – there was no need for me to repeat ‘I have never seen it’!

90. Alan B@87 and 88  — it is true that “ex nihil nihil fit” is  the way I’ve seen the phrase, but I was really just looking for an excuse to post a silly pun.

91. Valentine
    Ah, I see – nihil more to be said, then.

92. “Romanes eunt domus” – people called Romanes they go to the house etc. I learnt all of my Latin grammar from John Cleese.

93. I can never look at anything buxom in the same way after this.

Comments are closed.