Those of you who're avid cryptic crosswords players would know the general structure of a cryptic clue.
In a typical cryptic clue, there is usually something that defines the answer. That something is usually located at either ends of the sentence. Then within the sentence itself, there is a keyword which will signal to the solver the kind of operation involved to derive the answer. That keyword is commonly known as the indicator. For example, when there is an anagram indicator, the solver will know that he has to rearrange the letters found in word (s) to form a new word (s), thus deriving the answer. The word (s) which is/are the target (s) of the indicator are commonly known as the fodder. Most of the time, the fodder is located adjacent to the indicator. However, sometimes, the fodder is located several words away from the indicator.
Consider this simple example:
Opening of emporium
That word "opening" is an initial indicator. The fodder in this case is the word "emporium" even though that word is separated from the indicator by the word "of". That "of" is there mainly for grammatical purposes only; it plays no part in arriving at the answer. Some setters may even go as far as:
Opening of the emporium
In both cases, we are concerned with the letter "e", which is the first letter of the word "emporium".
When the solver reads the above questions, he sees this in his mind:
Opening of the word "emporium"
Now let's have a look at this question which surfaced during theSun Hunt 2008:
Q6) A medicine man beginning to sing here.
Where should we start? Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but as far as I am concerned, I usually try to single out all the keywords first, i.e. those which are potential indicators. Then I'd try to identify the fodders. And finally, if there are definitions involved, I would look up possible synonyms in a thesaurus.
In this case, the word "beginning" stands out from the rest because it is a potential initial indicator. But then if it is indeed an initial indicator, then where is the fodder?
In a typical cryptic clue, there is usually something that defines the answer. That something is usually located at either ends of the sentence. Then within the sentence itself, there is a keyword which will signal to the solver the kind of operation involved to derive the answer. That keyword is commonly known as the indicator. For example, when there is an anagram indicator, the solver will know that he has to rearrange the letters found in word (s) to form a new word (s), thus deriving the answer. The word (s) which is/are the target (s) of the indicator are commonly known as the fodder. Most of the time, the fodder is located adjacent to the indicator. However, sometimes, the fodder is located several words away from the indicator.
Consider this simple example:
Opening of emporium
That word "opening" is an initial indicator. The fodder in this case is the word "emporium" even though that word is separated from the indicator by the word "of". That "of" is there mainly for grammatical purposes only; it plays no part in arriving at the answer. Some setters may even go as far as:
Opening of the emporium
In both cases, we are concerned with the letter "e", which is the first letter of the word "emporium".
When the solver reads the above questions, he sees this in his mind:
Opening of the word "emporium"
Now let's have a look at this question which surfaced during theSun Hunt 2008:
Q6) A medicine man beginning to sing here.
Where should we start? Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but as far as I am concerned, I usually try to single out all the keywords first, i.e. those which are potential indicators. Then I'd try to identify the fodders. And finally, if there are definitions involved, I would look up possible synonyms in a thesaurus.
In this case, the word "beginning" stands out from the rest because it is a potential initial indicator. But then if it is indeed an initial indicator, then where is the fodder?
IF "beginning" is meant for "medicine man", then it means we're looking for "mm" (the first letters of "medicine man"). Or perhaps it's meant only for the word "man" which is adjacent to "beginning". On the other hand, it is also possible that we're looking for the first letters of "to" or even "to sing". These are the possibilities which we can work on before even reaching the question sector. It is always a good idea to have at least a rough idea what we're looking for before reaching the sector.
OK, fine. So now we are in the question sector; and after combing it, we find 2 appealing signboards. I saw AMOS; and Ek Leong saw AVALALA. And believe it or not, we debated quite a bit about these 2 possible answers. In the end, we ended up with a 50-50 vote—Ek Leong and Kok Cheeng were for AVALALA; and I was lucky to have won the support of Kah Sing for AMOS.
Now let's reason it out and I'll leave it to you to decide which is better.
First, let me explain my AMOS. I like this answer because AMO agrees with "A Medical Officer", which in turn agrees with "A medicine man". Of course "medicine man" need not necessarily refer to MO only. It might be Dr or Doc (abbreviations for doctor). Or the scope might be wider to cover pharmacist etc. But because there's an AMOS in this sector, I zoomed in to AMO.
But how should I connect to the remaining "S"? Here, it becomes a little tricky. The question we must ask ourselves here is whether "beginning" can be an initial indicator; the answer is most definitely, YES. And whether "sing" can be the fodder? My answer for this last question is NO.
I know I said earlier that there are exceptions to the general rules. But we have a different situation in this case. In the first example above, I said:
Opening of emporium
In this case, we can import (in our minds) the implied "the word", i.e.
Opening of the word emporium
But now what we have is different:
beginning to sing
If we were to import "the word" here, what would we get?
beginning to the word sing
Do you see it now? It does not fit!
We say beginning OF the word; not beginning TO the word. TO is more commonly used in cryptic clues to mean that we want to join the words together, although it is not always used for this purpose. For example:
Go to north east = GONE (joining GO to NE)
For the above reason, the two team mates in the front seats did not like my AMOS. And I was prepared to listen to their justification for AVALALA:
Through their hardwork, they found that LALA = SING. Don't ask me, I honestly don't know where they got that. But well, keeping an open mind, I was willing to listen on. The "A" at the beginning of AVALALA agrees with the "A" at the biginning of the clue. OK, I can accept that. But now they came to a stumbling block—they couldn't explain how to equate VA = medicine man.
Furthermore, if indeed the intention of the CoC lies in the direction of AVALALA, I fail to see the purpose of "beginning" in the question. If "VA" could be equated to "medicine man" somehow, then he could do without the word "beginning". He could have joined AVA and LALA by means of the charade operation without the need for "beginning"!
We kept this particular question under KIV for a good hour or so, and still no justification for VA. So Kah Sing and I were able to force the other 2 to concede to AMOS.
Later that evening, it was revealed that the correct answer was indeed AMOS, but I wasn't really happy about it.
I don't like "to" in the question. And I don't think it was entirely necessary for the setter to risk that kind of inaccuracy. If I were the setter, I would have made it simpler like this:
A medicine man starts singing here
The clue is much simpler and straight to the point. More importantly, it does not give rise to a possible objection to the word "to".
4 comments:
pls continue your analysis!
My team also debated on the "beginning to sing" part of the question ... whether it was TS or just S that the COC wanted. Since we could not find any other better signboards, my team mates had to convince me to take AMOS and consider "to" as just part of the grammar.
5050,
Based on my conversation with some other teams, most of them did not think the presence of "to" in the question was very accurate, although I have a feeling they reluctantly chose AMOS anyway due to no better alternatives.
I am a perfectionist in many ways. I'd like the hunters to arrive at the answer because of a learned analysis; not because it's not so good, but taken anyway because there is nothing better!
Another friend asked me if I would accept WATSONS as the answer. I did not ask him for the explanation for this answer. I thought it's unnecessary to ask.
I suppose he meant to say that WATSON refers to Dr Watson; and then the S is derived from "beginning to sing" as analysed in the above post.
The possibility of this answer is a good indication of the weakness in the clue.
That "A medicine man" is vulnerable to almost unlimited interpretation. And there must be thousands upon thousands of doctors, nurses, pharmacists etc whose names are WATSON; and not necessarily referring to the fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes novels. I bet if we randomly choose any name on any of the signboards within that sector, we're bound to find a doctor by that name too.
Having said that, however, for the purpose of cryptic clueing, whenever names are included, they usually refer to famous people, e.g. Dr Watson of Sherlock Holmes, or Dr Watson, the geneticist who won the Nobel Prize.
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