Azed No. 2,648 Plain

18 comments on “Azed No. 2,648 Plain”

1. Thanks Azed and Bridgesong.
   21ac: I am sure you meant to underline as far as “reasoning”. I can’t help wondering if Azed has confused “annalist” with “analyst”.

2. Following my re-introduction to Azed the week before, I was keen to try the next one, having made the time again to do so. This one, not surprisingly, was a similar experience, but it took longer to complete. (More than 50% of the answer-words were unfamiliar to me, or had meanings that were unfamiliar, whereas the previous week it was less than 50%. This tallies with your own observation, bridgesong.)

   I liked the generous helping of long answers – five of them. I got only one of them (INTERSTATES) at the start, but when the grid was half-full I got three more, and they were of particular help in solving some of the meatier clues.

   Once again, I appreciated the clarity of the clueing, irrespective of the pitch of each clue.

   Thanks to Azed and bridgesong.

3. I assumed Azed was treating 21a as if it were a derived form of the previous entry logogram or logograph meaning ‘a single sign standing for a word, phrase or morpheme’ in which case the definition is ‘It’s describing e.g.’. I agree that Chambers suggests that this is wrong, but Collins gives it in the appropriate place.

4. Matthew@3: I like the idea that logographic(al) can be taken as relating to logogram or logograph, but the definition of logogram in Chambers relates to symbols like & and @, not abbreviations like “e.g.”.

5. I did not find UPDRAG in Chambers, but that seemed the obvious answer, given five crossers. DRAG UP is listed.

   For RATIO, it took me a while to realize that A DON is split up as ADO N in order for the clue to work, which is fine–I just did not see it at first.

   I am still not 100% convinced about the structure or the sense of the clue for LOGOGRAPHICAL. Mind you, I struggle mightily with writing clues, so I have no idea how I would approach it.

6. Thanks for the blog , a lot of unusual words but quite a few used before by Azed and the word play very friendly for most of them . CRIPPLEWARE not in my Chambers 93 , probably too modern . Not totally happy with SUMS , from the definition of SUM it is really more than one collection of chief points. VISTO is a bit loose, visit has the letter i twice.

7. At times like this I very much wish I still had access to the online OED. I am pretty sure it will support Matthew’s explanation @3 for LOGOGRAPHICAL, and this is supported by the fact that the ODE (which doesn’t give LOGOGRAPHER or LOGOGRAPHICAL) does have LOGOGRAPHIC as a derived form of LOGOGRAPH. And I’m not sure that I agree with Pelham Barton @4: the Chambers definition he cites refers (as Matthew says) to “a word, phrase or morpheme”, which could include “e.g.”. So my underlining should extend a little further, but not as far as “reasoning”. And Chambers has probably got this wrong, or else the word does in fact have two separate senses.

8. Cineraria @5: In my copy ofChambers 2014, updrag appears in a box headed “Some words formed with the prefixup-” at the foot of a page.

9. 21ac revisited: One of the things that an annalist does is to describe (the events of a year, etcetera). The “e.g.” indicates the definition by example. Does that work?

10. Having followed the interesting discussion (so far) on LOGOGRAPHICAL, I think it’s likely that the setter believed ‘e.g.’ was an example of a logograph, whereas it seems clear from both Chambers and Collins that a logograph has to be a sign or symbol (like %) and not a letter or an abbreviation. (My reported impression of clarity in the clues throughout this puzzle must now perhaps be qualified, citing this exception! Still a good puzzle.)

11. Alan B@10: You will see from comment 9 that I have somewhat changed my position on reflection. In any case, I should have noted that Chambers 2014 marks logograph as a term from shorthand, which makes it likely that there is a logograph standing for “e.g.”, but that does not take us far enough. Even if Azed were right to think of “e.g.” as an example of a logograph, I think the clue still would still need “e.g.” to do double duty, both as the example itself and as the indicator for a definition by example. That sort of double duty is the sort of thing that Azed has always argued strongly against.

    On the other hand, if you go back to logographer as annalist, the term literally means someone who writes words, in the same way that a cartographer is someone who draws maps. Describing is part of what a logographer does, which gives us a definition by example for the answer. Admittedly, it is a somewhat looser definition than I would normally expect from Azed, but there is no need for double duty in that explanation.

    Whichever way it is taken, I agree (contrary to my first comment) that the word “reasoning” should not be part of the definition.

    While I am back in, I should apologise for the missing spaces before going into italics and bold in comment 8.

12. Pelham

    Thanks for that detailed explanation of your position. Not for the first time, I wish that Azed was one of the small band of setters who read and contribute to the posts on this site.

    In the absence of access to the online OED, I have dusted off my two-volume Compact edition and find that LOGOGRAPHICAL appears only once, under LOGOGRAPHIC, the second definition of that word being: “Consisting of characters or signs, each of which singly represents a single word”. It is cited as appearing in Webster’s Dictionary in 1828. The first definition of LOGOGRAPHIC is “pertaining to logography “: there is no link to LOGOGRAPHER, I fear.

13. Pelham and bridgesong

    Thanks for your further comments.

    Possessing (as I do) the three-volume Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1986), I thought it might be useful to quote from it. It includes the words logograph, logographer, logographic and logographically (but not logographical!). The definition of logograph is LOGOGRAM [referring us to that entry]. A logogram is defined as
    “A letter or character or symbol or sign used to represent an entire word (as $ represents dollar)”
    (followed by a detailed definition of how it can also represent a morpheme).

    This definition also would seem to exclude an abbreviation of more than one letter from its scope.

14. I had no issue with LOGOGRAPHICAL it is in Chambers 93 as an adjective under the annalist definition . As Pelham Barton @9 says – It’s describing e.g. – is typical of the work of a logographer.

15. I’ll have to go with Pelham Barton for LOGOGRAPHICAL, on the correlation with Chambers’ entries at monogram and monograph. Unlike logographical, monographical is defined, and it relates to two separate headwords and has two separate meanings. Why not logographical then, even though Chambers is unclear? It does mean that we’ll have to wag a finger at Azed because the definition would have to be: “It’s describing e.g., for example, …” or “e.g.” would indeed be doing double duty. I would, just, allow Azed to stretch “single sign” to include the abbreviation “e.g.” — it might have two letters but it is a single idea or entity of some sort. And Chambers (my 2006 anyway) is wrong with its position of “(shorthand)”. If it’s before the definitions, it refers to them all, so logogriph too must be shorthand and it isn’t. All very unsatisfactory and I don’t think we should be too hard on Azed.

    Stefan

16. Thanks for the blog, Bridgesong – your comments on each clue pretty much mirror my own thoughts! Re 21ac, I don’t really think “It’s describing” is a reasonable description of the work of an annalist. An annalist is (according to Chambers) a person who writes annals and annals are historical records. So an annalist records, rather than describes. For instance, an annalist might write: “1815: Battle of Waterloo” – which is not descriptive at all. Possibly a professional speechwriter might describe (although, thinking of politicians, speeches seem to be more about prescribing and proscribing).

17. MM@16: The second definition of describe in Chambers 2014 is “to give an account of, recount the physical appearance or details of.” I think that covers at least some of the work of an annalist. One should not rely on etymology too much, but “describe” literally means “write down”.

18. Glad to see such animated discussion. Thanks, as always, to Azed & to bridgesong for the detailed blog. I , sadly, cannot read my compact OED but am glad it has been consulted. Would anyone like it?
    I did this “on the day”, helped by getting CHAFF CUTTER at the first pass- that has been the case thrice recently and it does raise my pulse!. My understanding of , particularly LOGOGRAPHIICAL seems to have been short of the mark. I simply took “e.g.” as a logograph which people seem agreed it isn’t.

Comments are closed.