A place where all your confusions can be sorted out.
63 thoughts on “DA Confusions on the 26/27th of November, 2010”
any chance of a bit more of a clue on 3 down, I have several possiblities but can’t decide whch might be the one!!
The ad-hoc crib is from the early chapters of Matthew
Please can I have another clue about 3 down? I am a very novice DA tripper….thank you
Oh my goodness i figured it out! – and you’re right, 18d/22a is hysterical. YAY!
This might give you all a laugh: I thought 20A was a reverse hidden word to do with the NSW rugby team but now I’m confused as it doesn’t work with 7D. Oh well, I’ll soldier on….
@Jonathon, i thought it was TAHS too, we were only one off i suppose
Is 24A the crime or the city? Both fit with what I have. Either way, I’m a bit lost on 21D. That’s my last two to do.
I’m stuck on LOTS but I am much more far advanced than my normal 3 clues in a DA. Help with 17D please? No clue.
Being new to this site I’m not sure how much we are allowed to hint before Monday (please advise) but 17D is one of Wagner’s.
OK – I’ve solved 24A and 21D – it’s all to do with the ellipsis – didn’t quite realise you could use them to have the meaning in the previous clue. Cheers!
@Jonathon, on this, the Confusions page, i think we can hint and help all we like. No spoilers on the general thread. still do not get 24a or 21d – are they both German cities? and 11 a is my 3rd missing. @Alison, i got the opera in 17d, but can’t see the wordplay.
@kk, and @Jonathan (thank you both!), I guessed the opera too (before I read your clue), but have no idea how to figure out the wordplay. I am missing 27A, 29A, 1A, 11A, and 2D and 25D. I don’t think I’m right on 23D or 24A either. That’s it for me, over and out….I’ll have to look tomorrow and see if I can figure them out backwards.
Yes. Both are cities and think of cricket and acting for 11A.
Thanks Ian
Took me a while even with your clue and day at work in the way but finally got there!
Alison – revolver isn’t a gun in 23D, and weight is KG in 29A. That should help with 25D and then 24A.
I had to cheat this morning!
Answers I had wrong: 1D, 23D, 27A, 21D. (Had 24A right!)
Clues I can’t understand even WITH the answers: 17D, 24A, 27A. The only use I know for 27A is a type of pastry!
However, by far my most success with DA yet. Normally I only get 2 or 3 clues.
Will wait for Monday.
Thanks!
Alison – 24A is an AFL thing!
Any clues on the wordplay in 16D?
I think the word play for 17 d is: Barely fix up = LOH (hole – being in a fix – reversed minus the e); and fix deeply – “engrain” with the ‘a’ depleted = ENGRIN… But I’m stuck on 16d’s wordplay, and the taile end of 10a… and still a handful I’ve no idea on!
16D: man sheds m and n for an a, and seemed = sounded with a t (shirt). I think that’s it!
Thanks Jonathan!
10A: for the second part I think it is a ‘gun’ starting late, i.e.move g to the end to make ung?
thanks again Jonathan – that makes sense. Ok, now left with 27a – is it an anagram of email in PR – but can’t get that to be more promising… unless you shake hands a lot?
@Sam: It is indeed but it’s not a meaning I recognised. More of a French pastry in my view!
Thanks Jonathan, but I’m having trouble understanding why DA, who usually values brevity, has used ‘man sheds clothing’ just to get ‘A’. And it doesn’t even match the tense of ‘seemed’. But 18D/22A was a gem!
I like the way ‘piece’ is a gun and ‘revolver’ isn’t.
What a great cryptic!
I love 18 Down – 22 Across!
Another favourite was 26 Across, the wordplay is very clever. Other good ones are 9 Down, 24 Across, 29 Across, 3 Down, 4 Down and 8 Down.
Though palmier is a pastry, I suppose it can also mean more promising.
Any help for wordplay for 15 Across, 1 Down, 17 Down and 21 Down?
Thanks
@GB: Doesn’t the tense of ‘seemed’ match ‘sounded’?
@MS: 15 Across: Just a double meaning in there “Shock loss” and “hotel service”.
1 Down is another type of 18 down – lager and cider if I remember right from my student days, but I’m sure there is a better one! 17 Down was explained by Sam earlier. 21 Down: To live – think of Hamlet! (Gives you very large 3 Down hamlet too!)
Jonathan – I meant ‘seemed’ not matching the tense of ‘sheds’. Would have thought ‘man shed clothing, yet seemed to’ would have scanned better.
@GB – ah I see, got it now. Thanks. And ‘man shed clothing’ could have confused us by being an overall?!
Perhaps he was being kind, after all!
I’ve just realised why no-one else was puzzled by the wordplay in 9A. I was using ‘us’ to get ‘AUS’ or ‘AUST’ rather than ‘US’.
Gee, a lot of Sydneysiders on board this week – 14 posts on the Friday! No wonder 24A caused some puzzlement.
Just one wordplay query left after a number were answered above. I see that 20A appears hidden and reversed in the clue, and I see the word “turnover”, which might means a reversal. But it also provides the “ut”, so maybe it’s an &lit, but that doesn’t really work … can anyone give a neat clue justification?
AG – could ‘over’ just be the reversal indicator, and ‘residents’ the container?
Not sure what an &lit means AG? (I’m new here!). But I thought it was just that the letters ‘hatu’ are residents (i.e. inside) the next words and the ‘over’ part means to reverse them. A case of looking the the word ‘turnover’ as two pieces rather than one?
Thanks Sam – you said it much more elegantly than me!
Re 27A: lots of palm trees would be a sign of prosperity; Oscar Wilde used the term palmy in this sense, ‘the palmy days of the British drama’.
How about the wordplay for 5A?
I wasn’t sure about 5a either Peter – is ‘throws’ = CASTS, and ‘forward’ = UP; and a wrap party is the do for the end of filming for the cast – so CAST SUP?, or just a double meaning with the CASTS work being UP?
Help with wordplay in 21d please? I had the answer but only because I was born there…
21d = synonym for ‘live’ + end of motor + synonym for rail, minus the last letter
! thanks:)
18d, 22a is funny but I thought 6d was also hilarious in a shlapshtic sort of Sergeant Schultz way.
PS Can’t find much to support palmier in the dictionaries or on internet (other than a pastry) so I think it borders on unfair even if the wordplay was gettable.
Agree with you about palmier!
I don’t see what’s so unfair about palmier; my dictionary had palmy defined as prosperous or flourishing, and if you google ‘palmier definition’, several of the top hits also give that definition. The only problem I have with it is that ‘promising’ suggests potential future palminess rather than being a direct equivalent.
Some dodgy stuff this week, I thought. Here are a few I wasn’t keen on:
5A: “throws forward” = “casts up”. “Forward” is not “up”. If “vomits” was the intended meaning, then “throws forward” might more accurately describe the trajectory, but it’s not idiomatically correct! And the other part of the clue “wrap party” = “cast sup” seems laboured to me.
27A: meaning not quite right as JL has already said, and an inelegant word.
6D: Surely the clue should have said “schpits” or “shpits”, not “shpitsh”?
16D: As already mentioned, “man sheds clothing” to yield “a” is too verbose. And it spoils the tense of the surface too.
18D/22A: Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this “little boy” DA gem as much as others as it was a new term for me. I thought “cosmopolitan” = “cocktail” didn’t quite work. In this sense, the former is an adjective and the latter a noun.
23D: I’m struggling with “spent” = “up”. Is it as in the phrase “your time is up”? Seems a bit contrived to me.
6d: there’s a homophone indicator, which makes shpits fine.
18d, 22a: what about the cocktail called a cosmopolitan? Vodka, triple sec, lime juice, cranberry.
Ian, my analysis is that “noisily” and the first “sh” in “shpitsh” explains the metamorphosis from “snaps” to “schnapps”, leaving the final “sh” in “shpitsh” unexplained. Do you see it differently?
As for 18D/22A, my ignorance of cocktails (which partly explains my lack of enthusiasm for this week’s crossword) led me to believe that the explanation for “cosmopolitan” = “cocktail” was in the broader sense of both words i.e. a mixture of a number of things. Your explanation is obviously correct. But I’m not going to go down without a further quibble! “Cosmopolitan” is but one example of a cocktail, and thus should have been denoted by a “for example” in the clue. We’ve had this discussion before: going from the general to the particular is generally deemed OK, but going the other way (as in this case) requires “for example” or “eg” or “say”. I know DA is not one for convention (and I’m usually comfortable with that), but this “convention” is, I think, worth observing. In this instance it would have marred the surface so I see why DA didn’t do it. I think he sometimes pays lip service to the “convention” by adding a question mark, as in 11A and 26A, but as his use of question marks is rather profligate, I might be guilty of over-analysing.
I took it that “shpitsh” is someone with a vaudeville German accent saying spits (the dummy) and that schnapps is someone with a similar accent saying snaps (although to be consistent it should be schnappsh I suppose, which is not a German spirit). On thinking this through “shpits” would have been fine, given that someone with a vaudeville accent would probably only say sh for s before a consonant.
Yes, that’s my point, JK. I reckon DA overdid the “sh” affectation to the point where it was no longer entirely accurate. A small point maybe, but small points are often the very stuff of cryptic clues, so it’s only fair that they be accurate.
As an aside, like you RB I am not really a cocktail person, and before I got 18d, 22a I thought that “little boy” might be a reference to the atomic bomb & therefore spent a lot of time thinking about bombed German cities & WW2 in general as a possible theme for the linked clues. After that “cocktail frankfurt” was a bit of an anti-climax. I know you didn’t especially enjoy this crossword but I think there is always a particular pleasure with a themed puzzle when everything that was obscure suddenly comes into focus once you solve that primary clue.
Re “little boy”, I thought maybe Hiroshima too. And it’s true that once I got 18D/22A I was much happier, having already got snakebite, stinger, Manhattan, Alexander without figuring out the connection.
24A – Can the AFL-aware among us please explain 24A?
11A – Spear carrier to mean extra is pretty tenuous
27A – Palmier is just weird
17A – guessed the clue but appreciate the explanation – never would have got that!
4D – what’s with the Umlaut on the O? Unnecessary to the clue whether it’s a band or a revhead?
This week’s stats – 60% internet-free, 40% assisted – seems ok
Belated thanks to Sam and Jonathan for the gen on 20A. Happy with that one now, but still a bit underwhelmed by the clue quality this week.
Isn’t the frankfurt sausage named after the town? How is that part of the clue cryptic?
Not being born an Aussie, I’d never heard of a LITTLE BOY being a mini-sausage so even after I had the answer I was still confused! And I thought it was a FRANKFURTER not just a FRANKFURT.
As for the umlaut (and capital M for that matter), I think it’s just there to confuse us (as with most punctuation) as that’s the way the group Motorhead write it.
@CL 24A is ESSENDEN without NED.
No, 24a is Essendon without Don
Motörhead is how it’s spelt. Look up Heavy Metal Umlauts on Wikipedia. Mötly Crüe do a similar thing.
11a: I found spear carrier meaning film extra in several dictionaries.
A cocktail frankfurt is a small red sausage somewhat reminiscent of a little boy’s penis – hence the nickname Little Boy.
I chose pallier over palmier as more promising though I can’t really explain either; admittedly palmier contains all the letters of email.
I cannot explain 16D apart from the A which is man sheds clothing. I managed to get the whole thing out with a little help.
Surely the Queen of Hearts clue is “Red card” not “Red hand”. You are dismissed after a red card.
Thanks for that Ian – us Sydneysiders can’t even spell AFL teams!
JK – Having got Stinger and Snakebite before 18D 22A, I was looking for ‘little boy’ to have something to do with danger, so I was thinking along the lines of bombs as well! Manhattan only added to my confusion because of the Manhattan Project. I ran those three words past Sandy and she came up with cocktail straight away! Clearly signs of a mis-spent youth.
Thanks to Jonathan & Ian for your comments – now I’m 100% educated!
(until next week :)
Lance, 27A has to be PALMIER – as you say, it contains an anagram (“zapped”) of email, and outside (“without”) this anagram is PR (“publicity”).
And 16D goes like this (after the A which you correctly explained):
“seemed to retain shirt” = SOUNDED to retain T = STOUNDED
I grant you it’s not one of DA’s best clues, and it isn’t alone in that regard this week.
any chance of a bit more of a clue on 3 down, I have several possiblities but can’t decide whch might be the one!!
The ad-hoc crib is from the early chapters of Matthew
Please can I have another clue about 3 down? I am a very novice DA tripper….thank you
Oh my goodness i figured it out! – and you’re right, 18d/22a is hysterical. YAY!
This might give you all a laugh: I thought 20A was a reverse hidden word to do with the NSW rugby team but now I’m confused as it doesn’t work with 7D. Oh well, I’ll soldier on….
@Jonathon, i thought it was TAHS too, we were only one off i suppose
Is 24A the crime or the city? Both fit with what I have. Either way, I’m a bit lost on 21D. That’s my last two to do.
I’m stuck on LOTS but I am much more far advanced than my normal 3 clues in a DA. Help with 17D please? No clue.
Being new to this site I’m not sure how much we are allowed to hint before Monday (please advise) but 17D is one of Wagner’s.
OK – I’ve solved 24A and 21D – it’s all to do with the ellipsis – didn’t quite realise you could use them to have the meaning in the previous clue. Cheers!
@Jonathon, on this, the Confusions page, i think we can hint and help all we like. No spoilers on the general thread. still do not get 24a or 21d – are they both German cities? and 11 a is my 3rd missing. @Alison, i got the opera in 17d, but can’t see the wordplay.
@kk, and @Jonathan (thank you both!), I guessed the opera too (before I read your clue), but have no idea how to figure out the wordplay. I am missing 27A, 29A, 1A, 11A, and 2D and 25D. I don’t think I’m right on 23D or 24A either. That’s it for me, over and out….I’ll have to look tomorrow and see if I can figure them out backwards.
Yes. Both are cities and think of cricket and acting for 11A.
Thanks Ian
Took me a while even with your clue and day at work in the way but finally got there!
Alison – revolver isn’t a gun in 23D, and weight is KG in 29A. That should help with 25D and then 24A.
I had to cheat this morning!
Answers I had wrong: 1D, 23D, 27A, 21D. (Had 24A right!)
Clues I can’t understand even WITH the answers: 17D, 24A, 27A. The only use I know for 27A is a type of pastry!
However, by far my most success with DA yet. Normally I only get 2 or 3 clues.
Will wait for Monday.
Thanks!
Alison – 24A is an AFL thing!
Any clues on the wordplay in 16D?
I think the word play for 17 d is: Barely fix up = LOH (hole – being in a fix – reversed minus the e); and fix deeply – “engrain” with the ‘a’ depleted = ENGRIN… But I’m stuck on 16d’s wordplay, and the taile end of 10a… and still a handful I’ve no idea on!
16D: man sheds m and n for an a, and seemed = sounded with a t (shirt). I think that’s it!
Thanks Jonathan!
10A: for the second part I think it is a ‘gun’ starting late, i.e.move g to the end to make ung?
thanks again Jonathan – that makes sense. Ok, now left with 27a – is it an anagram of email in PR – but can’t get that to be more promising… unless you shake hands a lot?
@Sam: It is indeed but it’s not a meaning I recognised. More of a French pastry in my view!
Thanks Jonathan, but I’m having trouble understanding why DA, who usually values brevity, has used ‘man sheds clothing’ just to get ‘A’. And it doesn’t even match the tense of ‘seemed’. But 18D/22A was a gem!
I like the way ‘piece’ is a gun and ‘revolver’ isn’t.
What a great cryptic!
I love 18 Down – 22 Across!
Another favourite was 26 Across, the wordplay is very clever. Other good ones are 9 Down, 24 Across, 29 Across, 3 Down, 4 Down and 8 Down.
Though palmier is a pastry, I suppose it can also mean more promising.
Any help for wordplay for 15 Across, 1 Down, 17 Down and 21 Down?
Thanks
@GB: Doesn’t the tense of ‘seemed’ match ‘sounded’?
@MS: 15 Across: Just a double meaning in there “Shock loss” and “hotel service”.
1 Down is another type of 18 down – lager and cider if I remember right from my student days, but I’m sure there is a better one! 17 Down was explained by Sam earlier. 21 Down: To live – think of Hamlet! (Gives you very large 3 Down hamlet too!)
Jonathan – I meant ‘seemed’ not matching the tense of ‘sheds’. Would have thought ‘man shed clothing, yet seemed to’ would have scanned better.
@GB – ah I see, got it now. Thanks. And ‘man shed clothing’ could have confused us by being an overall?!
Perhaps he was being kind, after all!
I’ve just realised why no-one else was puzzled by the wordplay in 9A. I was using ‘us’ to get ‘AUS’ or ‘AUST’ rather than ‘US’.
Gee, a lot of Sydneysiders on board this week – 14 posts on the Friday! No wonder 24A caused some puzzlement.
Just one wordplay query left after a number were answered above. I see that 20A appears hidden and reversed in the clue, and I see the word “turnover”, which might means a reversal. But it also provides the “ut”, so maybe it’s an &lit, but that doesn’t really work … can anyone give a neat clue justification?
AG – could ‘over’ just be the reversal indicator, and ‘residents’ the container?
Not sure what an &lit means AG? (I’m new here!). But I thought it was just that the letters ‘hatu’ are residents (i.e. inside) the next words and the ‘over’ part means to reverse them. A case of looking the the word ‘turnover’ as two pieces rather than one?
Thanks Sam – you said it much more elegantly than me!
Re 27A: lots of palm trees would be a sign of prosperity; Oscar Wilde used the term palmy in this sense, ‘the palmy days of the British drama’.
How about the wordplay for 5A?
I wasn’t sure about 5a either Peter – is ‘throws’ = CASTS, and ‘forward’ = UP; and a wrap party is the do for the end of filming for the cast – so CAST SUP?, or just a double meaning with the CASTS work being UP?
Help with wordplay in 21d please? I had the answer but only because I was born there…
21d = synonym for ‘live’ + end of motor + synonym for rail, minus the last letter
! thanks:)
18d, 22a is funny but I thought 6d was also hilarious in a shlapshtic sort of Sergeant Schultz way.
PS Can’t find much to support palmier in the dictionaries or on internet (other than a pastry) so I think it borders on unfair even if the wordplay was gettable.
Agree with you about palmier!
I don’t see what’s so unfair about palmier; my dictionary had palmy defined as prosperous or flourishing, and if you google ‘palmier definition’, several of the top hits also give that definition. The only problem I have with it is that ‘promising’ suggests potential future palminess rather than being a direct equivalent.
Some dodgy stuff this week, I thought. Here are a few I wasn’t keen on:
5A: “throws forward” = “casts up”. “Forward” is not “up”. If “vomits” was the intended meaning, then “throws forward” might more accurately describe the trajectory, but it’s not idiomatically correct! And the other part of the clue “wrap party” = “cast sup” seems laboured to me.
27A: meaning not quite right as JL has already said, and an inelegant word.
6D: Surely the clue should have said “schpits” or “shpits”, not “shpitsh”?
16D: As already mentioned, “man sheds clothing” to yield “a” is too verbose. And it spoils the tense of the surface too.
18D/22A: Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this “little boy” DA gem as much as others as it was a new term for me. I thought “cosmopolitan” = “cocktail” didn’t quite work. In this sense, the former is an adjective and the latter a noun.
23D: I’m struggling with “spent” = “up”. Is it as in the phrase “your time is up”? Seems a bit contrived to me.
6d: there’s a homophone indicator, which makes shpits fine.
18d, 22a: what about the cocktail called a cosmopolitan? Vodka, triple sec, lime juice, cranberry.
Ian, my analysis is that “noisily” and the first “sh” in “shpitsh” explains the metamorphosis from “snaps” to “schnapps”, leaving the final “sh” in “shpitsh” unexplained. Do you see it differently?
As for 18D/22A, my ignorance of cocktails (which partly explains my lack of enthusiasm for this week’s crossword) led me to believe that the explanation for “cosmopolitan” = “cocktail” was in the broader sense of both words i.e. a mixture of a number of things. Your explanation is obviously correct. But I’m not going to go down without a further quibble! “Cosmopolitan” is but one example of a cocktail, and thus should have been denoted by a “for example” in the clue. We’ve had this discussion before: going from the general to the particular is generally deemed OK, but going the other way (as in this case) requires “for example” or “eg” or “say”. I know DA is not one for convention (and I’m usually comfortable with that), but this “convention” is, I think, worth observing. In this instance it would have marred the surface so I see why DA didn’t do it. I think he sometimes pays lip service to the “convention” by adding a question mark, as in 11A and 26A, but as his use of question marks is rather profligate, I might be guilty of over-analysing.
I took it that “shpitsh” is someone with a vaudeville German accent saying spits (the dummy) and that schnapps is someone with a similar accent saying snaps (although to be consistent it should be schnappsh I suppose, which is not a German spirit). On thinking this through “shpits” would have been fine, given that someone with a vaudeville accent would probably only say sh for s before a consonant.
Yes, that’s my point, JK. I reckon DA overdid the “sh” affectation to the point where it was no longer entirely accurate. A small point maybe, but small points are often the very stuff of cryptic clues, so it’s only fair that they be accurate.
As an aside, like you RB I am not really a cocktail person, and before I got 18d, 22a I thought that “little boy” might be a reference to the atomic bomb & therefore spent a lot of time thinking about bombed German cities & WW2 in general as a possible theme for the linked clues. After that “cocktail frankfurt” was a bit of an anti-climax. I know you didn’t especially enjoy this crossword but I think there is always a particular pleasure with a themed puzzle when everything that was obscure suddenly comes into focus once you solve that primary clue.
Re “little boy”, I thought maybe Hiroshima too. And it’s true that once I got 18D/22A I was much happier, having already got snakebite, stinger, Manhattan, Alexander without figuring out the connection.
24A – Can the AFL-aware among us please explain 24A?
11A – Spear carrier to mean extra is pretty tenuous
27A – Palmier is just weird
17A – guessed the clue but appreciate the explanation – never would have got that!
4D – what’s with the Umlaut on the O? Unnecessary to the clue whether it’s a band or a revhead?
This week’s stats – 60% internet-free, 40% assisted – seems ok
Belated thanks to Sam and Jonathan for the gen on 20A. Happy with that one now, but still a bit underwhelmed by the clue quality this week.
Isn’t the frankfurt sausage named after the town? How is that part of the clue cryptic?
Not being born an Aussie, I’d never heard of a LITTLE BOY being a mini-sausage so even after I had the answer I was still confused! And I thought it was a FRANKFURTER not just a FRANKFURT.
As for the umlaut (and capital M for that matter), I think it’s just there to confuse us (as with most punctuation) as that’s the way the group Motorhead write it.
@CL 24A is ESSENDEN without NED.
No, 24a is Essendon without Don
Motörhead is how it’s spelt. Look up Heavy Metal Umlauts on Wikipedia. Mötly Crüe do a similar thing.
11a: I found spear carrier meaning film extra in several dictionaries.
A cocktail frankfurt is a small red sausage somewhat reminiscent of a little boy’s penis – hence the nickname Little Boy.
I chose pallier over palmier as more promising though I can’t really explain either; admittedly palmier contains all the letters of email.
I cannot explain 16D apart from the A which is man sheds clothing. I managed to get the whole thing out with a little help.
Surely the Queen of Hearts clue is “Red card” not “Red hand”. You are dismissed after a red card.
Thanks for that Ian – us Sydneysiders can’t even spell AFL teams!
JK – Having got Stinger and Snakebite before 18D 22A, I was looking for ‘little boy’ to have something to do with danger, so I was thinking along the lines of bombs as well! Manhattan only added to my confusion because of the Manhattan Project. I ran those three words past Sandy and she came up with cocktail straight away! Clearly signs of a mis-spent youth.
Thanks to Jonathan & Ian for your comments – now I’m 100% educated!
(until next week :)
Lance, 27A has to be PALMIER – as you say, it contains an anagram (“zapped”) of email, and outside (“without”) this anagram is PR (“publicity”).
And 16D goes like this (after the A which you correctly explained):
“seemed to retain shirt” = SOUNDED to retain T = STOUNDED
I grant you it’s not one of DA’s best clues, and it isn’t alone in that regard this week.