Guardian Cryptic 28,283 by Boatman

71 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,283 by Boatman”

1. THEATRE – ‘thee’ is indeed singular but I read it as ‘reader’s’ to mean ‘reader has’.

   Nice puzzle, though I didn’t recognise all the films.

   Thanks to Boatman and manehi.

2. [Good morning all.  This is arguably a comment for General Discussion but I did want it to get maximum viewing for what will be obvious reasons so I hope there are no major objections to it appearing here on the day we in the UK enter a second lockdown.

   If some of the community here end up with more time than they had previously, can I encourage exploration of and support for some of the other pages on this site.  I’ve spent time over recent weeks on the Independent and FT crosswords – and, of course, there are some more esoteric/specialist offerings as well as several Sunday puzzles.  I’ve encountered new setters and alternative versions of those I know in the Guardian; I’ve read and enjoyed different bloggers;  I’ve noticed how few comments these generate.  The Guardian page continues to feature 70+ most days; the Indy and FT often scrape to get into double figures.  Not only is the work of bloggers unappreciated and the experience of posting comments a relatively lonely one, setters get little in the way of acknowledgement, praise and/or constructive criticism or feedback.  Which must be dispiriting.  I believe fifteensquared is the only forum for discussion of either Indy or FT which means setters are publishing their work into a relative void.  I’m certainly not encouraging anyone to abandon the Guardian but I felt the alternatives deserve a plug.]

3. Thanks Boatman and manehi

   The Keaton film titles in the clues alerted my to look for where he would go in, so that was easy. Most of the rest wasn’t! I finished, but didn’t parse ROTAVATOR, AMALGAM (should have), or PAIN.

   I was also held up by the classic “bung in from definition” error – when I had some letters in 1d, MORAINES fitted, and the definition is perfect, as they are made from glacial till.

4. Today is a red-letter day theme-wise for me – I got it at initial reading of the clues!   Well, that has improved my lockdown mood…

   This was a toughy though and there were a couple of hmmms along the way.

   3d also has a connection to “troll” meaning to walk about (most recently used in Polari but pre-dates that).

   Hard work but good work.  Thanks Boatman and manehi!

5. [PostMark @2

   I used to try the Indy occasionally, but then it stopped me accessing it unless I disabled my adblocker, which I had no intention of doing. Is this still the case?]

6. Cleanest solve of the week for me, although I too bridled at “Thee” for “readers”. Very enjoyable.  Thanks Boatman and manehi.

7. Turning to today’s offering by Boatman, this is one of those where the blog casts an entirely different light and raises my estimation of the puzzle.  I enjoy Boatman and confess I found this one harder going – and I was mystified by the frequent majusculation (thanks essexboy for that little beauty!).  They didn’t leap out as film titles – but sounded like invented titles which is a trick some setters do use.  It would have helped had I had any familiarity whatsoever with Buster Keaton.  Now it all seems rather clever – though some of the surfaces were a bit forced in order to accommodate the film titles.

   I particularly liked both ROTAVATE and RHETORIC which use not dissimilar mechanisms, along with DAYS, WIDE AWAKE, ENTERPRISE, ALLOWS IN and PACKET.

   Anna @1: I’m not the linguist but was surprised to learn that ‘thee’ is singular.  I thought it would be like the modern ‘you’ which can be both singular and plural.  What would be the plural form of ‘thee’ ?

   Thanks Boatman and manehi

8. muffin@2 the indy puzzle site has had a makeover.  I used to avoid the ads by just looking at the clues which were available without opening the interactive grid.  Now you have to watch one short (20ish seconds) ad before accessing the clues.  Once you’re into the grid there’s no interference.  It’s a massive improvement, particularly on my antiquated laptop.

9. Aagh – I spotted the subtraction on CROP in ROTAVATE, but failed to carry it to its full extent.  Thanks for sorting out that one and ADJACENT, where I couldn’t quite work out where the subtraction was…  Enjoyed JIM MORIARTY, PARTICULAR, LIE IN STATE and ERA.

   Thanks Boatman for a very congenial theme.  I think I might personally have enjoyed it in the solution rather than the clues, but that would probably cross the line between General Knowledge (ha ha) and esoteric knowledge.

10. PostMark at 7: Surely the plural of thee is ye – as in “Come All Ye Faithful”.

11. [muffin @ 5: I don’t disable an adblocker – but not sure if I have one on!  I get relatively few ads except on YouTube.  There is an ad – generally 30 seconds – after which the ‘Play’ instruction appears for the crossword.  Pretty unobtrusive and easy to ignore.  No ads on the FT site but a need to print out the puzzle – which, I confess, has sometimes stopped me in the past, shameful though that is to admit.]

12. [James @8 Thanks, but it still wants me to disable the adblocker.]

13. [@muffin

    I might get sacked for saying this, but no; at least not in my experience (Firefox/Windows10/uBlockOrigin).

    The Indy tool has just been updated and seems quite robust, which wasn’t the case at the beginning. The puzzles can be printed as a pdf, and the grey-scale reduction is standard. I solve the puzzles online on a laptop, but the Android app seems to work quite well whenever I use it (invariably in a doctor’s waiting-room). Since I set puzzles for the Indy (Knut) and the FT (Julius) and have been spurned by The Guardian, I naturally adopt the Mandy Rice-Davies-inspired approach to the comment from PostMark.]

14. PostMark @ 7

    The plural form was YOU !!  (Not usually spelt that way, though)

    Actually I think THEE (þe) was the accusative case.  It would have been THOU (þu) in the nominative, I think.  Sorry I’m a bit vague, I am trying to remember the page layout in my Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader from donkeys years ago.

    What helped to cause confusion was the mix-up between the old letter þ and y.   (which is why, in ‘olde worlde’ script, people write the definite article as ‘ye’).

     

15. I thought this was fabulous and being a BK fan, the theme was spotted early. Many lovely clues but ROTOVATE, MORIARTY and ADJACENT stood out for me. Ta Boatman and manehi

16. Many thanks for excellent blog-and all the films BK was in.

    A few comments on the G thread re THEE

    But is there a plural of THEE?. If not, I reckon it stands.

    A thorn in the side maybe

17. I finished this quite quickly without fully parsing everything as several went in from the crossers and definition e.g. JIM MORIARTY, BUSTER KEATON (knowing it needed a K from Funny rebuke).

    I didn’t settle on the parsing of 4D LYME BAY as “amid” suggests “in the middle of” so “shifting blame” should be an envelope for the two Y’s which of course it isn’t. There is no indication that one of the Y’s should appear at the end.

    PAIN was a stretch as the pronominal reference to Boatman grammatically, should be “me” and not “I”. Alternatively, I read “Boatman” as a third person and that would be “him”.

     

18. Anna @14: thanks.  Was Grim and Dim right then with ‘ye’?  From the dictionaries it looks as if ‘ye’ did just what the modern ‘you’ does and applied to either singular or plural.  (I’ve encountered one on-line site suggesting a plural – ‘thees’ – but I have no idea if that might be spurious.  (You are rapidly becoming our Go To person for all things language as well as linguistic related.  I don’t know how many languages you are familiar with but I know who I’m coming to next time I need to parse Swahili or Aztec!)

19. PostMark @2: Good point about blogs. When I do the FT puzzle, which isn’t all that often, I shall make a point of visiting the relevant blog. I quite like the Indy puzzles but life really is too short for their website – thank you to muffin @5 for the explanation. I, too, am not tinkering with settings just for the pleasure of visiting the Indy.

    PostMark@7: As I understand it “thee/thou/thy” is the second person singular, presumably derived from the French tu. It appears to have slipped out of use as English has adopted “you/yours” indifferently between singular and plural, avoiding the issue of etiquette which arises in French and German (and, I suspect, in other languages as well) as to when you use the familiar tu/du and when you use the more formal/respectful/distant vous/sie. Totally off topic, but it’s pity in some ways because it means that we don’t immediately appreciate how revolutionary the Lord’s Prayer is, addressing God by the familiar “thou” – we’d perhaps appreciate the point more if the prayer began “Our Daddy…”

    (And even more totally off topic, but I do like the story of the Quaker long ago, on a ship which pirates were attempting to board, bringing a marlinspike down hard on the knuckles of one buccaneer at the ship’s rail with the explanation Friend, thou art not welcome here!)

    The plural of “thee/thou” would be “ye” – thus the Book of Common Prayer includes “Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins…”

    Tough puzzle, Mr Boatman, but all is made clear by the knowledgeable manehi. Thanks to setter and blogger.

20. Thou was nominative and thee accusative. As well as being singular it was also familiar (like French tu) I remember puzzling over a line in Twelfth Night (I think) “if thou thou’st him twice” (or maybe thrice), encouraging someone to be rude to maybe Andrew Aguecheek. So there are two examples in this puzzle of where the case in the surface doesn’t match the case in the word play. Boatman would read as “me” in 5 down [going back to a discussion about Paul’s solecism using “I” last week and wherther substituting Paul for I would have solved the problem. Graeat crossword though.

21. I found this on Wiki:  ‘the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural.’

    Good use of material for the crossword. I must confess I BIFD a lot and parsed after the event. I liked ROTAVATE and RHETORIC.

    Thanks Boatman and manehi.

22. NeilH @ 19

    No, thou etc is NOT ‘derived from’ French ‘tu’.  They are cognates.  In other words, they both developed from a common (Indo-European) root.

23. Although I managed to complete this, with a rather hit and hope approach, with last one in LYME BAY, I didn’t enjoy the experience. Just about all the clues read clumsily, very few smooth surfaces. Not my cup of tea at all today, and of course was oblivious to the Buster Keaton references. Sorry…

24. I think you was the accusative form of “ye”.

25. Completely missed the theme, but plenty to keep me engaged in trying to solve this. Challenging enough without being as difficult as Boatman can be. I enjoyed the ‘Appear lately’ def for LIE IN STATE and the ‘Material United’ def and the misdirection of ‘missing’ in the wordplay for AMALGAM.

    I agree with PostMark @2’s comments. The ads on the Indy site are a bit of a pain when you open the web page, but I find they don’t interfere once you start solving. Printing out the FT puzzle? Well, makes for a more tactile solving experience. My excuse anyway.

    Thanks to Boatman and manehi

26. [@NeilH, 19. The first paragraph of your post mentions muffin’s comment @5 as containing an “explanation”. I can’t see one, myself. If you don’t want to solve Indy or indeed any other puzzles then that’s your choice, but the website needn’t be an obstacle.]

27. I was a bit unhappy about 22D PACKET.  Is “ending up” a legitimate indicator for P?  “..after end of trip..” or the like, would have be fairer, I think.

28. “Tha thous those that thous thee” emphasises the distinction between us and them. Not heard it for years!

29. Missed the theme, but enjoyed the puzzle.
    I liked the Sherlock Holmes clue, though I’m not sure the erstwhile professor would have appreciated being called ‘Jim’.
    I won’t get involved in the ye/thee discussion as I have no idea what anyone is talking about. Just happy to solve the clue.
    Thanks both.

30. Well, the theme was completely lost on me (although I had no problem solving BUSTER KEATON), but I didn’t think it was as tricky as all that. I like Boatman’s general approach of putting most of the feedstock letters right there in the clue.

    JIM MORIARTY made me smile, as did LIE IN STATE. I thought it was a Trump-themed puzzle for a while, what with HAWK and TROLLS also in the grid.

31. [Postmark, baerchen, muffin – Try “Private Browsing” mode in Firefox…]

32. HoofitYouDonkey @29 – the JIM MORIARTY reference is probably for the Benedict Cumberbatch TV programme, not the Conan Doyle books.

33. This went well. I thought it was just an ‘early movies’ theme until BUSTER KEATON himself dropped in. Nothing perturbed me unduly – THEATRE was my LOI and I should probably have raised an eyebrow at the ‘thee’ but I just assumed it’s the sort of usage that’s OK in dialect. Anna @1 is my preferred compromise.

34. Anna @22 – I stand corrected. Thanks.

     

35. Isn’t Jim Moriarty from the Goon Show or is my ancient memory playing tricks?

36. drhhmb @35; Sapristi nabolas! Indeed he is.  That is Count Jim Moriarty, I’ll have you know…

37. Van Winkle @36 – Ah yes, did not realise that. From memory he was played by the brilliant Andrew Scott.

38. I loved this, though I also gulped at both thee and I in their contexts.  Thank you for the explanation of [PIL]LAGERS; I could see I needed to subtract P and IL but from what.  I don’t know why I didn’t just think of adding them on to LAGERS, which I had.  D’uh.  I ifound “ending up” fine: “P is ending (=ends) up.”  Buster Keaton went in fairly easily, but I didn’t know (or think to google) the films.  My fvourite was RHETORIC: what a clever spot!  Many thanks to Boatman and manehi.

    [On PostMark’s comment: much as i sympathise, I am working full-time and can only do one cryptic crossword each day, especially if I want to fit in some exercise as well.]

39. Drhhmb @35 Moriarty was Grytpype-Thynne’s villainous sidekick in the goons, voiced by Spike Milligan.

40. I’m glad everyone else seems to have enjoyed it. I found all the subtractive anagrams annoying – they were necessary for the inclusion of the film titles. I enjoy Keaton films, but I didn’t enjoy the tortuousness of the clues.

    From Sweet – Anglo-Saxon Reader:

    thee (spelt thorn-é) for you singular accusative and dative

    you (spelt éow) for you plural accusative and dative.

41. [drhhmb @35 and HoofitYouDonkey @39; I have just discovered GoonShowRadio – 24/7 Goon show streaming on-line.  https://uk.radio.net/s/goonshowradio  This 4 week lockdown could fly by…]

42. copland smith @40 – Wonderful. Thank you for that information.

43. Well that was definitely a toughie! Good fun, though, and I’m chuffed to bits at having managed to complete it.
    I really enjoyed the few Buster Keaton films I’ve seen but since the titles were mostly in the clues they didn’t help me much with the answers. (And thank you drhhmb and MaidenBartok for reminding me about Milligan’s Jim Moriarty: a wonderful character!)
    Amongst a host of delights, my faves were ROTAVATE, LYME BAY and ADJACENT.
    Thanks to Boatman and Manehi

44. Thank you for setting out the Keaton references manehi and for explaining PACKET in particular.

    I thought this was great, the Keaton references (I like old silent comedy but have not seen any of his films for years and most titles long forgotten) were generally very smoothly worked in, and so many creative devices in the clues to offset the odd clunky surface and my inability, like Pentman@17, to get comfortable with parsing Loi LYME BAY.

    Favourites ROTAVATE, AMALGAM (misled as per Wordplodder@25), TROLLS, RHETORIC, BUSTER KEATON  and that’s far too many but indicates how much I enjoyed this, thanks Boatman.

    [PostMark good prompt and I will try something at the Indy subject to online experience/printability. I used to solve dead tree FT occasionally and would recommend the weekend prize crosswords there, they always seemed smooth with very little true obscurity.]

45. copland smith @ 40

    Sweet’s A-SR.  Ah good.  Glad to know I haven’t entirely forgotten stuff learnt in 1972 !

    I should have kept my copy.

46. I too thought THEE was wrong, but you know there is a way of looking at it to make it right, which is by strictly looking at the separate functions of clue words, and not be lulled into glomming them together.  Just as in 22d, it says King Edward but it does not mean King Edward.  If you say readers=you, then forget the origin  you just have “you”.  Now apply “old” to “you” and you can get “thee”.

    Of course, the question is, was this what Boatman was thinking?

47. Like copland@40, I found some of the the clues annoyingly awkward -clumsy even. Just about acceptable given the film inclusions though.

    However the worst clue (IMO) was 14a which did not include a film

48. Lots of inventive cluing devices here as noted above. I enjoyed most of it before bogging down on the last few, missing PACKET and ROTAVATE and slapping myself for missing the proper interpretation of ‘unlimited’ on the latter.

    As usual, thanks to setter and blogger. Thanks also to all those commenters who provide such fascinating tidbits of information about language and linguistics, especially Anna, whose breadth and depth of knowledge always amazes me.

49. [Re: doing crosswords on other sites where disabling your adblocker is required. I just use a different browser with no ad blocker. So, I use Firefox with ad blocker for general use, but switch to Microsoft Edge or Google Crome with no ad blocker for accessing sites that want to throw ads at you. It’s momentarily annoying but much simpler than disabling the ad blocker.]

50. BUSTER KEATON was one of my first ones in, without having seen all the film titles – most of which I didn’t recognise anyway! This was mostly an enjoyable solve, with the surfaces reading well, I thought, and the subtractions (‘missing the Italian’, ‘parts of bio absent, not hired at last’) clever and amusing. Stumbled over PAIN, my very much delayed last one in, having to mentally search for words that would fit before deciding to enter what turned out to be the correct answer; ‘from the West part of picture’ was misleading in a down light, I thought, but as long as the newspaper is held horizontally, P is the westernmost letter of ‘picture’ in the clue, so I reckon I was just misleading myself.

    Enjoyed also the discussion above about thee and I (Boatman may well have been wrong in both instances, but it didn’t affect my solve – and Dr WhatsOn @46 has a handy work-around), and about Professor James Moriarty and his near namesake in the Goon Show. Thanks all.

51. An enjoyable puzzle.  I particularly liked the nice clue-as-definition DAYS at 25d, and the clever 6d PARTICULAR with its misleading use of “The General”.

    A bit disappointed not to see the usual dual use of “Boatman”.  There’s one appearance at 5d where it means “I”, but there should be another where it means an actual boatman.  23a for example could have been “Boatman about bank? Hardly!”.  But never mind.

    Many thanks to Boatman and manehi.

52. Hanks both,
    I enjoyed this without getting the theme. After two DNFs I was worried that my mental faculties were slipping so it was good to finish. Sometimes a clue feels wrong without one necessarily being able to put one’s finger on why. 20d was a case in point.

53. Damn you autocorrect, ”thanks’.

54. Many thanks to Manehi and Boatman. I thought Manehi’s take on this was spot on. Missed the theme, so really pleased to have it pointed out. Favourite today was RHETORIC.

    [PostMark – I thought your post@2 raised a really good point. I would love to try other papers but barely get time to do the Guardian Cryptic daily – maybe will be able to some day …]

55. Though I missed the theme and failed at ROTAVATE and MORIARTY I enjoyed this crossword quite a bit. I ticked too many clues as favourites to list all of them — that doesn’t happen very often.
    [The FT was my 1st foray into British crosswords — a while ago I was serving on a DC jury and a fellow juror had a copy of the FT — I noticed a cryptic in it and he gave me the paper when he was finished and here I am years later. I try to complete both the Guardian and FT daily. Between retirement and COVID restrictions I have the time.]
    Thanks to both.

56. Ye gods!

57. Just to say I’m staying in Lyme Bay this week and it’s gorgeous.

58. I generally have trouble getting onto Boatman’s wavelength, so I was pleased to make it through this one relatively easily. I did have to come here for help with several parsings, though.

    I’m sorry to say that I’m ignorant of Buster Keaton’s body of work (although of course I’ve heard of him), but that didn’t affect the solving.

    I noticed the singular-plural problem with “thee” as well. It’s no big deal, but it could have been so easily fixed. Incidentally, while both “ye” and “you” are perfectly correct answers to those who asked about the plural of “thou/thee”. I suspect that many solvers have encountered “thou/thee” most often in Shakespeare, and he generally uses “you”.  And as NeilH @19 says, the singular-plural distinction is coupled with a formal-informal distinction as in several European languages: the “plural” you is used even when talking to one person when formality is desired.

    I stumbled at first over the use of “rotation” to indicate swapping two adjacent letters in 23ac, but in fact it’s perfectly fine. And I couldn’t decide whether calling Professor Moriarty Jim was whimsical or unfair, but Van Winkle @32 is quite right that the character is so called in the recent TV series, so there’s no doubt that this is OK.

    I particularly enjoyed the nicely misleading definition in 18ac: I had trouble getting my mind to sever “United” from “Artists” and place it with the definition. The &lit / cad at 25dn was also quite satisfying.

     

     

     

59. Thanks, Manehi and all, and sorry not to join you earlier – it’s been an uncharacteristically busy day.

    THEE is, I agree, conventionally singular, so the clue should have started “Old reader …” – a bit annoyed with myself to miss that, as it’s the sort of distinction that I usually feel quite smug about remembering.

    Van Winkle @32 – Yes, the master criminal in the original books was James Moriarty, shortened to Jim by the BBC. I tried out a few ways to clue either, but the shorter version amused me more, and it gave me a wider choice of grids.

60. Ok, Lord Jim @51 – that’s pretty good!

61. An appropriate illustration of ye and you is from the King James Bible

    “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”

    Bear this in mind while TRUMP tweets away

62. But there is a second boatman in the clues – Stemaboat Bill in 22d.

63. Manehi, slight tweek for 19d blog: shouldn’t it be =”every wrongdoing” (not just =”wrongdoing”), to account for “every”?

    Mostly enjoyed this, despite missing the theme and being DNF; stared at 18a for ages, trying all manner of first/last games, yet not stumbling upon AMALGAM… instantly obvious once revealed 🙁

    Agree, LYME BAY was dicey; “amid” implies both Y’s go *within* the rearranged fodder? Perhaps “with blame shifting” instead?

    Found discussion of THEE interesting, though I was unimpeded when solving (and we’ve had a couple fairly reasonable explications here).

    Struggled re hundred=TON; post consult w/Chambers/lexico shows it a Britishism, so an understandable hurdle for this USian.

    Re I/Boatman, don’t see the issue. Why does part of speech have to match btw surface/wordplay? Always thought that the point in cryptics… take out of context, break apart, and view differently. Here “Boatman” provides a word; removed fr/surface, could easily be I not ME… “Boatman set this puzzle”=”I set this puzzle”. Not so different (to me) from seeing “about” as “regarding” in the surface, but “surrounding” in wordplay.

    COTD: Not always a fan of homophone clues, but thought today’s ESSAY a HOOT 🙂

    Thx to our setter, blogger, and commenters!

64. [Thanks to PostMark for the Independent suggestion. I’ve done all four of this week’s puzzles there, and commented on each of the blogs – though obviously a bit after the event on at least the first two. A bit of a controversy on Monday’s puzzle, with a slight query from Sil van den Hoek being answered by the setter in what I consider to be a very rude manner. Those interested in the contretemps but not the crossword, here‘s a link. Anyone wanting to complete the puzzle first (it took me just over 20 minutes), it’s here.]

65. Too many subtractions today! One or two is fine, but geez…

66. What a splendidly entertaining blog (when I say blog I mean what manehi has given us but also the contributions from others – my vocabulary doesn’t stretch to a word for the entirety) for a swell puzzle.

    Thanks all.

    [Indeed where is Cookie these days?]

67. [Used to do the Independent semi-regularly, but stopped after a few cases of what I thought inappropriately off color clues… hope they’ve improved! Actually did one again last week (1st in ages)… was, ok, though with some editing issues. Re FT et al, for those on touchscreens, note that some PDF apps allow markup and you can fill in that way rather than having to print.]

68. Muffin et al: sorry to be a bit late into the conversation, but only just came here.

    I too had stoped doing the Indy because on my old Chromebook hte ads made the page so heavy it made the machine crawl and even crash. AdBlocker worked to stop the aads for a while; then the web site started the “you must turn off your ad blocker” tactic. For a while I used a multi-stage approach involving: (1) turn off adblocker (2) load crossword ((3) open new tab, load crossword again (4) turn on adblocker  (5) enjoy crossword without interruptions, but then the site got an update and started refreshing the entire page at frequent intervals, and blocking if it detected an ad blocker at that point too.

    I’ve now switched from AdBlocker to another ad blocker. I hesitate to disclose which one, for reasons I hope are evident. This one lets me do the Indy crossword again without crashing my computer.

     

69. I remember someone preaching once on John chapter 3 and making quite a big deal of vs 7 ‘Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again,’ with specific reference to the distinction between ‘thee’ and ‘ye’ and the impact on the sense of the passage. (When I say I remember, I mean I remember he did it, not what the point was, though thinking back to the particular flavour of the flock it was probably to demonstrate that only the KJV can be trusted as the true word of God)

70. To PostMark passim, NeilH@19, Robi@21 and whomever else I’ve missed.  The thee/ye singular-plural distinction in words for “you” exists or used to exist in all Indo-European languages, including English, where it existed for centuries before anybody translated the Bible.  In English it has disappeared everywhere except the North of England, where it is “tha” and “thee,” used informally like “tu” in French.  You shouldn’t use it to senior folks unless they do it first — “Tha tha’s them as tha’s thee.”  The singular form usually begins with t, d or th and used to go for one person of whatever rank — the gladiators said ritually to the Emperor “nos morituri te salutamus,” or “We who are about to die salute you.”  Later the plural form came to be a sign of respect, so that “vous” can be either plural or respectful in French.  English is not the only language where the singular pronoun has gone away.  I remember reading in my Spanish dictionary that in one Latin American country, I forget which, people say “Usted,” the formal address in Spanish, even to cats and dogs.  And I remember my Argentinean landlord, who was speaking Portuguese at the moment for some reason, addressing my dog as “você.”

    Hindi (and I suppose its sister languages in India) has two informal pronouns — “tu” for family members and “tum” for friends.  For strangers the first is less respectful than the second.

71. As we managed this in two days (good for us) thought I’d blog in case someone reads it! Steve spotted the link – all Buster Keaton Films – before the got the name at 23,7.  I’d been trying to fit Harold Lloyd to begin with. steve is surprised there were very few comments about the films themselves. Enjoyed the puzzle and I quite like the subtraction anagrams ( as long as I have all the letters – pillagers defeated me).

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