Why cryptic crosswords are civilisation
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Uncle Yap
Saturday, 15 January, 2005
Why cryptic crosswords are civilisation
By Hugh Schofield, Paris
The British are not the only people to have crosswords but nowhere
else in the world has the cryptic version - containing anagrams,
double-meanings and other forms of elaborate word-play - reached such
complexity. For Hugh Schofield these crosswords have become a symbol
of British civilisation.
It sometimes happens that I am travelling on a train out to the French
provinces.
The UK's first published crossword puzzle appeared in the Sunday
Express newspaper in 1924
I settle in my seat in a non-smoking compartment, then draw from my
jacket pocket a copy of the now-tabloid Times.
On the inside back page is the crossword. I arrange the fold and, with
gnarled biro in mouth, set about deciphering the conundrums of Fleet
Street's most fiendish.
At this point a person - it may be old, young, male, female, posh or
poor but a French person - occupies the seat next to mine.
He or she extracts from their bag a magazine. It is called Mots
Croises or perhaps Mots Fleches or Mots Meles.
The person knits his or her brow and then with a nod and a rustle
fills in a couple of blanks.
A start made, they raise their head and glance at their neighbour and
at his task.
Unspoken bond
A conspiratorial smile forms slowly across their lips. Our eyes meet.
Where to begin explaining the sheer fiendishness of the British
cryptic crossword?
"Aha, Monsieur" - the unspoken message beams between us - "I see we
have, how do you say, the same hobby. The love of the language is a
marvellous thing, no?"
I am polite and well-brought up so I smile a little conspiratorial
smile back, as if to say: "Absoluement, Francois."
But inside I'm thinking: "If only you had any idea."
Where to begin explaining to a French person the complexity, the
ironic multi-layered brilliance, the sheer fiendishness of the British
cryptic crossword?
It is a slightly unfair question, of course, because it is not just
the French who do not understand. If you don't get it, you don't get
it and that applies to most English speakers too.
Word games
I pick on the French because I live here and also because they do so
love their "mots croises".
Everybody does them - even quite sophisticated people - but let us be
brutally honest: what are French crosswords?
Every morning tens of thousands of people strain their grey matter
in the same completely useless exercise
They're not even word games.
They are just a series of clues along the lines of "type of tree" or
"another word for big". And that is it!
So, when they look across at me doing The Times or The Spectator and
think there is some kind of equivalence - well, you can see why I
bridle slightly.
They are like penny-whistlers - turning out their simple tunes,
blissfully unaware of the existence of Bach or Mozart.
Civilisation
The popular comedy character, Reggie Perrin, tried to finish The Times
crossword every morning
Lovers of the British cryptic crossword will know that I am not
exaggerating.
For me and - judging by the number of people from outside Britain who
win the weekly competitions - for many expatriates, they are a link
with civilisation.
I would go further: cryptic crosswords ARE civilisation.
Think about it.
Every morning tens of thousands of people, all in their separate homes
around the world and totally unknown to each other, strain their grey
matter in the same completely useless exercise: a cerebral labour
which requires three things - knowledge of an unwritten, evolving and
highly recondite book of rules, a grounding in the classics of English
literature and an abiding love of the language.
Eccentricity
No-one teaches you how to do crosswords.
It is passed on - often within families - from generation to
generation. I learned from my mother.
At their best they exemplify the three British Es: elegance, erudition
and eccentricity.
Constitution for EU amended (five letters)
Clue in the Spectator crossword
And, though I dread the appearance one day of a ghastly headline
"Crosswords dumbed down - not enough solvers", I have to say there is
no sign of that yet.
They continue to exemplify - as they always have done - the pursuit of
intellectual pleasure via a shared set of rules, and that is surely as
good a definition of civilisation as you will get.
I have a fantasy that one day I will turn to my French travelling
companion and offer an exchange.
"I'll tell you what," I will say, "I'll do a couple of yours and you
do a couple of mine."
Anagram
And then I'll translate for him, perhaps this gem from the latest
Spectator: "Constitution for EU amended (five letters)".
"This is something to do with our Monsieur Giscard?" he will ask.
"Not at all", I'll explain.
"Quite simple really. It's an anagram - signalled by the word
'amended' - of the two words that precede it: 'for EU'.
"Answer: 'fuero' - the constitution offered to the Basques in the old
Spanish monarchy."
He will look at me with amazement and I'll say: "Well, you should see
some of the hard clues. The answer to 10 across is 'leiotrichous'
meaning 'having straight hair'!"
Swallowing hard my friend apologises, grabs his bag and hurries to the
next compartment.
Pathetic, I know, but one can dream.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4172455.stm
Derek Wills
>> cryptic crossword?
compile? I'm sure Chinese et al must be very hard to do.
I've seen a few in Chinese (with clues in French, I think)
but the answers are limited to two or three characters. I
don't know whether they are cryptic ones, though - I very
much doubt it.
I'm of Brit origin, teach at a US university, and I'm sure
my fondness for cryptic crosswords is why some students say
my tests are so hard... can't help having a somewhat twisted
mind, I suppose.
Hmmmm, how about a cryptic crossword in Morse Code? Fun!
Derek (not a Chinese speaker, but a Morse Code practitioner)
John Dawson
wrote:
>I settle in my seat in a non-smoking compartment, then draw from my
>jacket pocket a copy of the now-tabloid Times.
>
>On the inside back page is the crossword. I arrange the fold and, with
>gnarled biro in mouth, set about deciphering the conundrums of Fleet
>Street's most fiendish.
Fleet Street?
Colin Blackburn
Newspapers used to produced on Fleet Street in London before
"modernisation" of the industry. The term is still used to refer to the
national press as a whole even though it is no longer the centre of the
business. Incidentally, it is called Fleet Street as the River Fleet
runs beneath it.
Colin
Phil Rose
.--. . .-. .. --- -.. --- ..-. - .... .-. . . .. .- -- -... ...
-.--.- -.... -.--.-
.--. .... .. .-.. aka --. -- ...-- --.. --.. .-
Ilan Caron
Derek Wills wrote:
> >> Where to begin explaining the sheer fiendishness of the British
> >> cryptic crossword?
>
> Are there languages in which crosswords are impossible to
> compile? I'm sure Chinese et al must be very hard to do.
> I've seen a few in Chinese (with clues in French, I think)
> but the answers are limited to two or three characters. I
> don't know whether they are cryptic ones, though - I very
> much doubt it.
>
> I'm of Brit origin, teach at a US university, and I'm sure
> my fondness for cryptic crosswords is why some students say
> my tests are so hard... can't help having a somewhat twisted
> mind, I suppose.
I too am British by birth, though raised cryptically by The New Yorker.
Somewhere on the way I acquired Hebrew and I ust report that the
Israeli newspapers have a (weekly) cryptic -- its complexity as in the
UK a function of its place on the tabloid-broadsheet spectrum.
Virtually all UK-styple cryptic clues types are used in Hebrew along
with a few local variants.
E.g. the Hebrew alphabet is used a base for numerology (those of you
who've read "The Da Vinci Code" will know that) which of course means
that any word can spell a number and v.v.
Compound constructs of two distinct words are very common so that the
"in-between" clue is another local variant. E.g. 'school' is
(literally) 'home-book' and 'cookbook' is 'book-cook'. So that a clue
might be: "What's between the home and the cook?" answer: book.
Derek Wills
> .--. .... .. .-.. aka --. -- ...-- --.. --.. .-
Aha! OK, what common male name spells another common male
name when sent in reverse in Morse?
(this occurred to me while mentally noodling on the drive
to work one day).
Derek aa5bt, g3nmx
Derek Wills
-.--.- -.... -.--.-
Ah yes, . _ . _ . _ of course, thanks!
BTW, to make it easier, the male names that are the
reverse of each other in Morse Code each have 6 letters.
Now it's too easy.
Derek
Phil Rose
Given the letter pairs required - let's open it to the less morse-fluent
A/N
B/V
D/U
E/E
F/L
G/W
H/H
I/I
K/K
M/M
O/O
P/P
Q/Y
R/R
S/S
T/T
X/X
C,J and Z pair with umlauted A, O and U respectively
Simon Montagu
>> Fleet Street?
>
>
> Newspapers used to produced on Fleet Street in London before
> "modernisation" of the industry. The term is still used to refer to the
> national press as a whole even though it is no longer the centre of the
> business. Incidentally, it is called Fleet Street as the River Fleet
> runs beneath it.
recte "across the end of it", beneath Farringdon Road.
Ian Payn
"Simon Montagu" <smon...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:newscache$wb6hai$3b6$1...@news.actcom.co.il...
++++ I've succumbed, and read The DaVinci Code (I mention this because it
was mentioned elsewhere in this thread). Apart from the fact that it's
written terribly (not a word of research is going to be omitted from the
clumping, lumping text), some of it takes place off Fleet Street, down Inner
Temple Lane in Temple Church. It happens that I am familiar with this area:
My office, in Inner Temple Lane, overlooks Temple Church. Now, none of this
would matter were there not at the beginning of the book an authorial note
suggesting that other than fictional charcters everything else is true. The
author's use of the locale indicates nothing but ignorance. He compounds
this by having two characters descend into the "labyrinthine" tunnels and
platforms of Temple Station. What, you mean two platforms reached by a short
flight of stairs, eh, matey? And since when was there a payphone down there?
I know this hardly matters (and is far off-topic), but I was sitting next to
a supposedly intelligent American lady at a formal dinner last Summer. She
had read the book, and was discussing the contents as though they were true.
Millions of people have read this book. It's rubbish (stupid, badly written
and not thrilling at all: The "codes" could be solved by anyone who reads
this nerwsgroup in two seconds flat), and even the non-controversial bits
are innaccurate.
And Dan Brown has made zillions.
Bastard.
Matthew Newell
Ian....@CharterChambers.com says...
I concur - I, quite literally, screamed abuse at the TV set
when a contestant chose "Works of Literature" as her topic
and was asked "Who wrote the Da Vinci Code?".
Regards
Matthew Newell
Phil Rose
It helps to read properly. I was trying to find one that spelt itself
backwards.
- .-. . ...- --- .-. and .-. --- -... . .-. -
Phil.
Danny Kodicek
"Matthew Newell" <ma...@capeside.co.uk> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c5711469...@news.individual.NET...
It's a very poor copy of 'Foucault's Pendulum', and that was rubbish too.
He does write extraordinarily badly. My wife's been working through his
books because she keeps being given them by a work colleague (who sadly
believes that he's somehow reading 'quality' writing rather than standard
airport fodder) and keeps cringing every few sentences. And yet somehow he
does keep you reading.
The worst 'blockbuster' I ever read (I've read quite a few because I used to
work in a bookshop and we often had publisher's proofs coming through the
store that anyone could pick up) was something called 'Choosers of the
Slain'. It was utter tripe, but the worst thing was that the author was
completely in love with high-tech weaponry (sorry, 'matériel') and clearly
got his rocks off by describing their technical specifications. He'd call a
spade a 'Mark IV titanium earth-inverter with polychromide grip, steel core
and twin dilithium stabilizers'.
Interestingly, one of my favourite authors, Stephen Donaldson, is also a
very, very bad writer. His books are almost as cringeworthy as Brown's, he
keeps using faux-french words like 'ire' and 'argent', and he has some very
dodgy misogynist themes too. On the other hand, he comes up with some of the
best ideas and plots in sci-fi and for me, they make up for everything. I
can even get past his atrocious character names, which include Lord Foul the
Despiser, High Lord Kevin, Angus Thermopyle, and perhaps the worst of the
lot, Marc Vestabule.
Danny
Ian Payn
"Matthew Newell" <ma...@capeside.co.uk> wrote
>
> I concur - I, quite literally, screamed abuse at the TV set
> when a contestant chose "Works of Literature" as her topic
> and was asked "Who wrote the Da Vinci Code?".
++++ That's worthy of Bullseye (for non-UK readers: A general
knowledge/darts-based gameshow of low quality, highly regarded in retrospect
for kitsch value).
Ian Payn
"Danny Kodicek" <use...@well-spring.co.uk> wrote
> Interestingly, one of my favourite authors, Stephen Donaldson, is also a
> very, very bad writer. His books are almost as cringeworthy as Brown's, he
> keeps using faux-french words like 'ire' and 'argent', and he has some
very
> dodgy misogynist themes too. On the other hand, he comes up with some of
the
> best ideas and plots in sci-fi and for me, they make up for everything. I
> can even get past his atrocious character names, which include Lord Foul
the
> Despiser, High Lord Kevin, Angus Thermopyle, and perhaps the worst of the
> lot, Marc Vestabule.
++++The DaVinci Code's leading English character is called Sir Leigh
Teabing. Okay, step forward anyone who has ever met anyone with a name that
looks even remotely like that. Also, an English librarian turns up called
Miss Something Gettum. Gettum?
Peter Biddlecombe
"Ian Payn" <Ian....@CharterChambers.com> wrote in message
news:41ecfab0.0@entanet...
There's also the bizarre idea that to get from Temple Church to King's
College
you would use the underground at all. Instead of walking from the church to
the
station, you just go straight along the Strand to the college, walking a
roughly
equal distance. And the nearest tube station to Kings is, well, Temple!
Then again, [in a bit that I must have I failed to read while shaking my
head
over where the end of the tube journey is], he shows that he doesn't know
where
King's College is:
"King's College ... houses its Department of Theology ... adjacent to
Parliament on property granted to the crown." Not according to this map:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/maps/map.html
Parliament is where the R in Westminster is - hardly adjacent to any bit
of King's, but next to Westminster tube, which would have been a sensible
ride from Temple. The King's website confirms that the Relig. studies bit
is
at the "Strand campus", not any of the other bits of King's.
Ian Payn
"Peter Biddlecombe" <newsgrou...@biddlecombe.demon.co.uk> wrote
> There's also the bizarre idea that to get from Temple Church to King's
> College
> you would use the underground at all. Instead of walking from the church
to
> the
> station, you just go straight along the Strand to the college, walking a
> roughly
> equal distance. And the nearest tube station to Kings is, well, Temple!
++++ If I wanted to go from my office (i.e. ten yards from whence these
"characters" were fleeing) to King's College, I would indeed go up Inner
Temple Lane and walk along The Strand. I, however, have a key to the gate at
the top of Inner Temple Lane, which these people wouldn't have (how did they
get in on a Saturday? God knows. The only public vehicular entrance to The
Temple is guarded). Never mind: A little shuffle along gets you to Middle
Temple Lane, which is on a latch on Saturdays, so they could have got out of
there. This is a lot easier than getting to Temple station, which, if you
don't know how to get there is actually a bugger to find from Temple Church.
I would also walk rather than risk arrest by vaulting the gates. The guards
at Temple tube station may be on the dozy side, but if there's at least two
of them they'll put up some kind of fight when faced with fare-dodging.
There have always been a lot of walking tours in the Temple: Now, there are
tours which specifically follow the path of this wretched bok. presumably
all the poor tourists tramp down to Temple station, get a train to
Embankment, change platforms, get one back to Temple, thence to King's.
Where they look for Miss Gettum in the library.
Matthew Newell
use...@well-spring.co.uk says...
No - Foucault's Pendulum is great - strange and badly
translated - agreed. It meanders and does not know where
it is heading, it is confusing and badly put together,
there are huge inconsistencies and errors in the text but
all this is the point - the meta-meta-book, around the
meta-book about the writing of the encyclopaedia of the
arcane.
Sorry, I'll go off and lie down (after taking the tablets).
I started Foucault's Pendulum about four times and each
time gave up in disgust - then suddenly it clicked with me,
and I loved it and still do. Preferred it to Name of the
Rose - and didnt think much at all of the Island of the Day
Before and Baudelino
Agree, however, about Donaldson. I heard new chronicles
(TCtU) being published already/soon
regards
Matthew Newell
Ian Payn
"Matthew Newell" <ma...@capeside.co.uk> wrote
No - Foucault's Pendulum is great - strange and badly
translated - agreed.
++++ Some years ago, at the height of her fame, a paper ran one of those
quick question pieces, with Naomi Campbell.
After he'd typed up the resulting article, the journalist took it to his
sub-editor, whose gimlet eye quickly spotted something.
"This bit here, when you asked her what she was reading at the moment."
"Yes, what about it?"
"Are you sure she said 'Foucault'?"
"Er...It sounded like it..."
Matthew Newell
Ian....@CharterChambers.com says...
TFP
MMN
>
Derek Wills
- .-. . ...- --- .-. and .-. --- -... . .-. -
For those too lazy to look it up, TREVOR <--> ROBERT
The Morse symbols for R, O, E and T are symmetric, and B/V are
reversed.
("here come dots" is an anagram of "the Morse code" but you
all knew that).
Derek