1st Anniversary Virtual Hunt—Extraordinary Question

I have said that about half of the questions for this virtual hunt would be easy ones. Q1 is one of them. No—I’m not kidding! In most of the hunts that I have clerked before, there is usually at least one question which is so easy, yet so tough to solve because the hunters are caught unaware of what they're looking for.

Q1) Extraordinary vocalist.

I decided to start the hunt with a two-worded clue. Most of the time, when you see such a short clue, it means that all the words in that clue are significant; don’t ignore any of them.

That word “Extraordinary” is most obviously an anagram indicator. And I did not think that any of the masters would fail to recognize it as an anagram indicator. It’s obvious that the masters have to rearrange the letters found in “vocalist” into a new word, and then that new word is to be found on the signboard. There is also another possibility, and that is to use the synonyms of “vocalist”.

I have mentioned before that some cryptic purists do not consider indirect anagrams as playing fair. But in the sport of treasure hunt, indirect anagrams have long been accepted, and that practice is still alive up to now. And it’s because of this that I had to spend a good hour or so combing all the signboards to make sure that no words thereon could be formed from “vocalist” and its synonyms. Of course I might have missed something, but I decided to take the risk anyway.

Because “Extraordinary” is almost certainly an anagram indicator; and because that is the most likely avenue that the hunters are going to explore first, the psychology of the question is that “Extraordinary” is not an anagram indicator! I intended it to be a noun instead; in fact, I intended it to be the title of a song.

“Extraordinary” is a very famous song which actually reached No. 2 on the US Billboard Chart in 2007. The vocalist, i.e the singer, of that song is also a very famous person named Mandy Moore. So actually, Q1 is a general knowledge question, and one can very quickly find the required information from the internet. It’s just that I did not make it so obvious. If you don’t even know what to find, what use is the internet, right?

A1) M&Y INTERNET

Because M&Y is, cryptically, same as MandY, i.e. the required name of the singer, Mandy Moore.

You will realize now why that word “Extraordinary” is the first word in the clue. It is placed there because it has to be there—because it is the title of a song, it has to start with a capital letter. If it is found somewhere at the back, I would still have to spell it with a capital letter first; and then you would know what you’re gonna do with your google search engine, right?

However, there is a small problem if “Extraordinary” is treated as a noun. Strictly speaking, from the grammatical point of view, that word should be followed by the apostrophe S, so that the question should become:

Q1) Extraordinary’s vocalist.

Only then it is grammatically correct. Think about it, we should say “Titanic’s author”; or “John’s briefcase”.

Incidentally, a few weeks ago, a friend wrote to me. He was apparently enjoying his daily dose of cryptic crossword when he stumbled upon a question which probably didn’t impress him. He said in his email:

“from Star crossword today

Q) ideal trio to arrange daily work

A) editorial

should it be daily’s work”

For the benefit of the new hunters, “daily work” is the definition part of the clue. And then “ideal trio to arrange” is the riddle part of the clue which must somehow be equated to the definition part eventually. “to arrange” is the anagram indicator and “ideal trio” is the fodder. If you rearrange the letters in “ideal trio” you can get “editorial”. And “editorial” is supposed to agree with “daily work”. In this case “daily” is referring to the newspaper.

My friend’s question is a sensible one. I think grammatically speaking, there should be an apostrophe S after the word “daily”. “daily work”, without the apostrophe S, refers to a routine task that is done daily, but not necessarily pointing to the newspaper. “daily’s work”, on the other hand, points specifically to a job specification for the newspapers, thus narrowing the search substantially.

However, in the cryptic clueing world, perhaps because of trickery, the omission of the apostrophe S has long been the norm. Consider some of these common examples:

LIONHEART = IO

Because the indicator heart refers to the letters I and O in the “heart” of LION. But actually, it should be LION’s HEART to be grammatically correct.

A FOLLOWER = B

Because the letter B follows A in the alphabetical sequence. But actually, it should be A’s FOLLOWER.

WEEKEND = K

Because the letter K is the ending letter of WEEK. But actually, it should be WEEK’s END.

So you see, the cryptic crossword folks have long accepted the omission of apostrophe S in the clues. Although I’m an advocate of grammatical accuracy, it is too late now to raise the objection in connection with the apostrophe S since such “inaccuracy” has long been accepted on our shores.