Williams-Hart, We Hear, Is a Fellow In

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7Crosswords

Williams-Hart, we hear, is

a fellow in advertising (4-7)DAILY TELEGRAPH CROSSWORD 21ST SEPTEMBER 1989

Perhaps you either love them or you hate them. Personally I love them, though not to the point of

doing one every day nor, alas, to the point of being able to complete The Times orThe Guardiancrossword with the sort of speed which enables one to win competitions. My grandfather, the same

one who used each new word he learnt in the next letter he wrote, taught me how to do the Quick

Crossword in the Daily Telegraph, from which I eventually graduated to the big crossword in the

same paper after which it was a relatively short step to tackling the Guardian and The Times.

Whole books have been written on the art of crossword-solving. Special dictionaries, yet again,

have been prepared to make crossword-solving easier. The justification for spending any time at all

on crosswords in a book of this size is simply that there you have a daily test of your word power.

You will, I hope, find the exercises in this book interesting and entertaining to do. But once you

have done them, that's that. The newspapers kindly offer you something to exercise your brains onprofitably every day.

Quick crosswords

To deal first very briefly, with quick crosswords if you are stuck, and there is nobody else around to

ask, the best place to turn is a thesaurus (see chapter 2). The answer, as often as not, is a synonym of

the clue.

The first three down clues in theDaily Telegraph Quick Crossword on the day of writing are:

1 Stalemate (7)

2 Bright red (7)

3 Poor (5).

The answers are 'impasse', 'scarlet' and 'needy' respectively. I regret that my edition of Roget

does not give 'impasse' in the same entry as 'stalemate'. Nevertheless the advice in general holds

good.

In a quick crossword an anagram [ = a word or phrase constructed from the letters of another

word or phrase; 'emit' is an anagram of 'time] is announced as such. If you are stuck with an

anagram, first write the letters of the clue out underneath the crossword and cross out any letters

which are already in place from the answers to other clues. Now try jiggling the other letters

around, remembering that many, many words in the English language share common components

(see Chapter 3). If you have the letters available to form a common prefix or suffix 'pre-', 'post-',

'ate', '-tion' etc., try removing that and juggling the remaining letters again.

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Prefixes and suffixes are also worth bearing in mind when you have gaps to fill in. It as likely

that the missing letter in i_n will be 'o', as it is that you need an 'n' to fill in i_g.

Cryptic crosswords

If you find that the quick crossword no longer presents you with very much of a challenge or that

you are getting bored with simply looking for synonyms, it is time to turn your attention to the

cryptic one. There are two sorts of pleasure to be gained from a cryptic crossword. The first andmain one, as with any other puzzle, is the self-congratulatory pleasure at having worked the answer

out; the second and subsidiary one lies in appreciating the ingenuity of the crossword compiler. He

or she has to produce a clue which reads like a more or less rational English phrase or sentence, but

which contains within itself everything you need to solve the riddle for, ideally, clue and answer in a

cryptic crossword should fit together like two interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

You should be able to reach the answer by a quasi-logical [quasi- sort of, to some extent,

seemingly] route. It is very frustrating not to be able to work out the correct solution to a clue. It is

almost equally frustrating to arrive at the solution by deducing what has to go in the slot from the

letters that you already have in place, but not to be able to work out how you were supposed to get

there on the basis of the clue-Let us start straight in at the deep end with the clue which I used as the

epigraph for this chapter:

Williams-Hart, we hear, is a fellow in advertising (4-7)

It is a good clue. It reads completely rationally. But what is it all about?

Most cryptic crossword clues have three components. In the first place there is usually

something not entirely dissimilar to the kind of clue you find in a quick crossword. The quick

crossword is essentially saying to you 'find another word or phrase that means "stalemate", "bright

red" or whatever'. Somewhere in the cryptic clue there is also a term for which you have to find an

equivalent. Most of the rest of the clue consists of the raw materials from which you must put

together the precise equivalent the crossword compiler has in mind. That is the second component.

The third is an instruction or an indication as to how those raw materials are to be used, what youhave to do with them. These instructions are usually pretty standard. Consequently they are

relatively easy to spot once you have gained a little experience. There is one in the clue we are

looking at at the moment. It is 'we hear'.

'We hear' tells you that at some point in solving this clue you are going to have to come up with a

word or words which sound as if they mean the same as something else in the clue There is, in other

words, a pun involved. 'We hear'; what do we hear? The indicator follows the word 'Williams-Hart'.

It is a pretty safe bet then in this instance that 'Williams-Hart' is the raw material which needs to be

worked on, for which some punning equivalent must be found, in order to produce an answer which

means 'a fellow in advertising'.

The word we are looking for is compound with two parts, one containing four and the other

seven letters. Now, what can we make out of 'Williams-Hart'. It looks like a double-barrelled

surname, but it is not a surname that in itself rings any bells. It has two parts like the answer we arc

looking for. Let us take those two parts separately, beating in mind that we are looking for

equivalents that we can hear, things that sound the same but do not necessarily mean the same.

'Williams', a name, also the plural of 'William'. What words suggest themselves as equivalents of

'William'? Are there any with four letters? The shortened forms of 'William', of course - 'Will' or

'Bill'. Given that the rest of the clue is 'a fellow in advertising', a little light might start flashing at

'Bill'. The word 'bill', as in 'handbill' or 'playbill', means a poster. There is your connection with

advertising. So we have 'bill'; in fact we have 'bills' punning on 'Bills'. Now for 'Hart'. 'Hart' with a

small 'h' means 'stag' or 'deer', but there aren't enough letters in either and neither of them seems to

point toward anything remotely connected with advertising. But 'Hart' we hear also as a pun on

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may be found in heart of Tikitiki, wingless' (4)

Insert Clues often require you to insert one word inside another. It is worth considering

this possibility with any clue than contains the word 'in' e.g., 'A passage in a

document that's withdrawn' (8). To get the answer you need to insert a word for a

'passage' inside a word for a 'document' to produce a word which means

'withdrawn' [in the sense of 'taken away from']. An alternative method of indicatingthe same procedure is to include the word 'about' or 'around' in the clue. In other

words you are being asked to split one word and put the two parts about or around

another word, e.g. 'Split about always being reverential' (8). Take a word meaning

'split', insert a word meaning 'always' inside it and you should come up with a word

meaning 'deferential'.

Pun Usually indicated by 'we hear', 'say', 'it is said', 'sounds like' etc. For example, 'It

sounds like honest money' where you need a word for 'money', or a currency, which

sound like a word meaning 'honest'.

Spellbackwards The inclusion of the word 'back', 'backing' or 'backer' in a clue frequently means

that a word needs to be spelt backwards in the answer. In down clues the word "up'

may perform the same function. The phrase 'in retirement' is also often used in this

way, e.g. 'In retirement, spares the belt' (5). Here you need a word meaning 'spares'

which if reversed will give you a word meaning 'belt'.

Now a few conventional codes that appear in clues and what they often require you to insert in the

answer:

In clue In answer

American the letters US

Artist the letters RA (i.e. Royal Academician) .

Beginner the letter L (i.e. learner)

Communist the letters RED

Copper the letters CU (chemical symbol for copper); occasionally also the letters PC

(police constable)

Cast, Eastern the letter E

Editor the letters ED

French the letter F or the letters FR. NB 'the French' often requires you to give the

French word for 'the' i.e. 'LE' or 'LA' just as 'the Spanish' often requires 'EL'.

Good/holy man the letters ST (i.e. Saint)

Gold the letters AU (the chemical symbol for gold) or the letters OR (term for

gold in heraldry)

Key any of the letters A - G (i.e. musical key)

King the letter K or the letter R,(i,e. Rex, the Latin word for King)

Left the letter L

Loud the letter F (forte " loud in music)

Many the letter C or the letter M (Latin numerals for one hundred and one

thousand respectively)

North,

Northern the letter N

One the letter I

Point any of the letters E, N, S or W, being the points of the compass

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Politician the letters MP

Queen the letters ER.(i.e. Elizabeth Regina as on c decimal coins)

Quiet the letter P (piano = softly in music)

Record the letters EP or LP

Right the letter R

Silver the letters AG (chemical symbol for silver)

Single the letter I

South, Southern the letter SStudent the letter L

West, Western the letter W.

Exercises

1. Try to work out the following anagrams: clues given in brackets.

a. listen [quiet]

b. sceptres [esteems]

c. limey [girl's name]

d. cart-horse [musicians]

e. enactor [not a sign of]

f. so averse [abroad]

g. salt mined [take apart]

h. go at 'im, Miss [not the marrying kind]

2. Fill in the missing letters.

a. p_n _ _ n_ having a sharp smell

b. _ __x _ _ on _ _ six sided

c. _d_i__ _ strange thing

d. c_ _ t_c__ religious song

e. __l_r__e capital city

f. _ _ _ o_e_y distantly

g. _q _ _ _ _ y slightly drunk h. o_ _ o _ e _ _ e _ _ becoming out of date

3. Here are some partly solved cryptic clues. Can you complete them?

a. 'Sacked when practically sure of succeeding' (2,3,3)

_ n | _h _ | _ _g

b. 'Held forth part of wheel' (5)

s _ o _ _

c. 'Loud-just horrendous' (9)f_ _g _ _ f_ _

d. 'Not the conventional means of withdrawal'w _ _ | _ u _

e. 'Pay the earth, possibly, for sun-lamp treatment?' (4-7)_ _ a _ |t _ c_ _ _ y

f. 'Spirit photograph? That takes the biscuit!' (5-4)

b _ a _ _ y|_ n _ p

g. 'Scan roadside and meet at one point' (8)

c_n _ _ r _ _

h. 'Yellowish variety of bream' (5)

a _ _ _ r

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8Active Vocabulary

I gotta use words when I talk to youSWEENEY AGONISTES, T.S. ELIOT

Up to now our attention has been focused for the most part on acquiring increased word power by learning

the meanings of words with which we were previously unfamiliar. But that, as I indicated at the beginning, is

only half the battle. To learn the meaning of a word is a major step towards taking possession of it for your

own use, but, outside quizzes, exercises and crossword puzzles, words seldom crop up in isolation. They

have to be used in context, that is to say in conjunction with other words. Even if we leave aside strictly

grammatical issues - and it is not my intention to try to give you any grammar lessons - there are still

questions of idiom, usage and register which need to be considered if you are to use a new word correctly

and effectively.All of these words are in the glossary which I have included in this book. All of them have cropped up

from time to time in the text. It is time to devote some special attention to them.

Idiom and usage

If you are a native speaker of English, you will have acquired a grasp of English idiom naturally in childhood

along with other language skills simply by listening to the people around you and imitating them. Idiom is, to

quote one dictionary, 'a mode of expression, esp. an irregular use of words, peculiar to a language' or, to

quote another, a 'use of language that is typical of or natural to speakers of a particular language'. If you are

not a native speaker of English, then a command of idiom, which comes naturally to people 'horn with' the

language, is

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Williams-Hart, We Hear, Is a Fellow In