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This might relate to the UK/US differences, but: > American-style crosswords, on the other hand, require both knowledge and a degree of lateral thinking. > On
by oneeyedpigeon 6y ago
This might relate to the UK/US differences, but:
> American-style crosswords, on the other hand, require both knowledge and a degree of lateral thinking.
> One question that Prof Klein is particularly proud that Dr Fill got right was: "Pasta dish at the centre of a murder mystery."
> The answer was poisoned penne.
Does "poisoned penne" actually mean anything as a complete phrase? This clue is very different from a UK cryptic crossword - wordplay features heavily, but answers still have a coherent meaning. Maybe this is why the US crosswords are more complicated for an AI.
- Ensorceled 6y agoIt's a pun ... a terrible, terrible pun.
- oneeyedpigeon 6y agoSure, I get that "poisoned penne" is a pun on "poisoned pen", I was just wondering if there was a real meaning to the complete phrase. In a UK crossword, the answers all have to be legitimate words/phrases.
- DoomHotel 6y agoPenne is a type of pasta, so the phrase does make sense on its own. Does "poisoned spaghetti" mean anything to you?
- oneeyedpigeon 6y agoIt doesn't make sense outside of the pun. "Poisoned spaghetti" makes as much sense as "poisoned penne", in those terms.
- austinjp 6y ago(Not arguing, just adding some perspective.) Penne is pronounced "pennay" in the UK in my experience, making this pun kinda dysfunctional. Also as pointed out, UK cryptic crossword answers are phrases in actual use, not new word combinations. Edit to add relevant example: See 9 across ("Rotten people sin to produce malicious missive") here: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2021/03/08/independent-10733-tees/ https://www.fifteensquared.net/2021/03/08/independent-10733-... I also noticed that "poisoned pen" isn't a phrase in British English, instead it's "poison pen" or more typically "poison pen letter".
- StavrosK 6y agoIs it pronounced "pen" anywhere? That sounds very wrong to me.
- austinjp 6y agoIndeed... it seems that the consensus is tending towards this being so bad a pun that it isn't even a pun :)
- StavrosK 6y agoIt's a poisoned punne.
- whoisburbansky 6y agoLeads right into a clue hinting at Canadian origins, a la "poisoned pen, eh?"
- boffinism 6y agoSo in the UK 'poisoned spaghetti' would not be acceptable as a cryptic crossword answer, because it's not a _recognisable_ standalone phrase, even if it's a thing that could exist.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agopenne is a type of pasta, so yes it means a poisoned pasta of type penne.
- Tycho 6y agothe phrase is meaningful, but it’s not a recognised phrase like “on a roll” UK cryptics feature answers which are words or phrases you’d find in a dictionary
- imgabe 6y agoA poison pen is any maliciously written letter. I’ve always heard it in relation to an overly harsh, negative review. So, this is a terrible pun on that. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poison-pen https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poison-pen
- boffinism 6y agoIn the UK, terrible puns are de rigeur, but the answer has to be a recognisable standalone word or phrase. So 'poisoned pen' could be an answer, and the clue could conceivably contain a pasta-based pun on that, but 'poisoned penne' could not.
- mcphage 6y agoSo the puns need to be in the clue, and not the answer?
- oneeyedpigeon 6y agoYou could have a pun in the answer - although I think that's pretty rare - but the answer itself would still need to be a recognized word/phrase.
- mcphage 6y agoThat's really interesting—I'm not much of a crosswords fan, but I had never even considered the idea that there are "dialects" in what crosswords clues & answers could be.
- joshuamorton 6y agoSort of. Cryptics, which are the international style, might have a clue like "insect in pants" -> "ant", which is pants without the first and last letters. And more complicated variants, like anagrams, mashing words together, etc.
- bl0b 6y agoIn the US, at least (TIL there's a different style across the pond, so fun), a 'pun-based' clue like that would need a question mark at the end of the clue. Additionally, I would say that that, because the answer isn't a coherent standalone word/phrase, that particular clue/answer combo would only be found in a puzzle as part of a hidden theme shared by a number of 'special clues' throughout the crossword, with some kind of rule uniting the answers (add 'ne' to the end of a common phrase, for example).
- Zanni 6y ago"Poison pen" (or poisoned pen) is the phrase the answer is punning on.
- ellipsisfrog 6y agoFrom the perspective of this UK cruciverbalist that's a terrible clue. You can't just clue anything you like and call it a cryptic definition. I would argue there isn't even a proper definition component to the clue since 'poisoned penne' isn't a 'pasta dish' in any normal usage. A fair way to clue this would be to indicate the pun and use normal composite clueing (e.g. anagrams).
- simondw 6y agoWell, from the perspective of a Ruby programmer, Python is terrible Ruby code. There are different rules and conventions in American crosswords; you might actually learn to enjoy them once you got past your initial "This is different! And therefore terrible!" reaction.
- mjw1007 6y agoI think the basic idea would be OK in a UK cryptic, but you'd clue the pun explicitly. You might have something like « Pasta dish at the centre of a murder mystery and a spiteful reviewer on the radio. » Though you'd really want the surface reading to come out a bit smoother (and I don't think "penne" and "pen" are pronounced exactly the same).
- oneeyedpigeon 6y agoI genuinely can't think of an example of a broadsheet cryptic crossword that would do so. Maybe other sources, though.
- wccrawford 6y agoI haven't done a ton of crosswords in the US (because I don't really enjoy them) but I haven't experienced "pun" clues like that very often. They're usually in crosswords that think themselves special somehow. You can tell because it'll be a famous source, or the description will tell you way too much about the author of the puzzle and how awesome they are. The majority of the crosswords just had plain clues that weren't confusing. (And didn't require "lateral thinking".)
- BenFrantzDale 6y agoNYT crosswords have a theme. I would imagine “poison penne” is one of the theme answers along with other pasta-based alliterations. Once you know that’s the game, then it’s not a weirdly meaningless pun but wordplay that builds as you first figure out the theme and then figure out the theme answers.
- Zenst 6y agoOne UK crossword that always stuck in my mind and captures a form of word play was: Clue: Scrambled Eggs Answer: Gegs That without working out the other clues would make that alone very hard to work out and be interesting how an AI would work that one.
- mangamadaiyan 6y agoGegs is usually cited as an example of a _bad_ clue in cryptic crossword circles.
- gmac 6y agoBecause it’s only half a traditional clue — the cryptic part with no definition?
- mangamadaiyan 6y agoYes :) It's become such a trope that I remember seeing this clue in a crossword somewhere: Gegs (9, 4) The answer is "Scrambled Eggs", and the clue is (I think) both a cryptic definition if you're familiar with the original, as well as a reverse anagram.
- gmac 6y agoI’ve seen this sort of reverse clue signified as ‘clue for gegs’ before.
- hencq 6y agoUK crosswords also have patterns though. Words like scrambled in this case often indicate you're looking for an anagram.
- zem 6y agoto expand on other answers, a themed NYT crossword often has four or so entries that involve some sort of punnery or wordplay, and are not actual words or phrases but can be deduced from a combination of a real word/phrase and the theme. so in this case there might have been other entries like Pasta dish served at a burger joint: BIG MACARONI Lose your temper at some pasta: BLOW A FUSILLI etc.
- GrumpyNl 6y agoWe call them anagram puzzles, crosswords puzzles are for us other words with the same meaning.
- alisonkisk 6y agoIt's not an anagram, it was portmanteau (in this case, but other wordplay is seen too). Also, folks in the thread are ignoring Henry Hook, a famous UK constructor who used plenty of "non-standard" wordplay.
- zem 6y agohenry hook was american (and wrote american style cryptics, which are very similar to uk cryptics but have a few stylistic differences) also i'd say portmanteau clues (and rebuses) are standard wordplay for an nyt crossword, they just unfamiliar to people who don't do that kind.
- throwaway287391 6y agoIt's likely from a NYTimes (or maybe LATimes or WaPo) crossword where all 4-10 of the longest answers followed the same punny format. But yes, it's intentionally left up to the person solving to figure out the theme, usually by filling many of the easier/shorter non-theme answers first. This style makes these prestige hand-crafted crosswords (like those in the NYT and a couple other outlets) particularly satisfying/rewarding to solve. The themes can be amazingly creative and original on a daily/weekly basis.
- rovek 6y agoI don't know if this is a cultural difference with cryptic crosswords in general or if it's specific to NYT crosswords, I used to do NYT crosswords with my American partner (I'm British) and the wordplay never made sense to me. Answers often seemed to be made up of words which could literally relate to the clue but combined made no sense as a term or phrase, even as a pun. Edit: Don't want to sound like I'm deriding their style too much, my partner always got the wordplay so clearly there was a learnable style to it
- zem 6y agoyep, the thematic entries are nothing like cryptics; the only similarity is that they both involve wordplay. the wordplay here is closer to jokes like "what fruit wanted to conquer the world?" "alexander the grape!" - that is, while the answer will not be a real word or phrase as would be required in a cryptic, it will be logically derivable from the theme and the clue. one interesting thing about the non-thematic entries in an american crossword is that the only form of wordplay they allow is what in cryptic parlance would be called a "cryptic definition", that is, a clue which is a straight definition in which the words need to be read laterally. the nyt cryptic definitions are as good as any i've seen in the guardian, particularly my all-time favourite, John, to Ringo (3) for LOO
- whoisburbansky 6y agoI don't actually get how "John, to Ringo" translates to LOO, would you mind explaining? [Edit]: Ah, totally missed the toilet connotation, thanks folks!
- jeffwass 6y agoI’ve been doing the NYT crossword regularly the past year or so. NYT crosswords often have tricks, either in the clues themselves or patterns in the puzzle. Will Shortz commented on one of his favourite clues Q: “It may turn into another story” A: Spiral Staircase. There are others I’ve found sneaky, eg Q: Greek Leader. A: Alpha Today’s puzzle had for example Q: Whopper Junior A: Fib 2. Some puzzles have rebus answers, where more than one letter will fill a single square. It’s not obvious when this is the case 3. Sometimes there is an overall pattern to the puzzle. One recent example was a rebus where several squares had double O rebuses in single square. If you connected these squares together they formed the shape of a 7, ie 007. A few clues on the puzzle related to James Bond and would be meaningless without this context, eg the clue would mention a range of years and the answers were Sean Connery or Daniel Craig.
- dnautics 6y agoIIRC when I was doing NYT the super tricky rebuses (the one I remember was "bell" being the rebus and you could draw a bell in the square) are only allowed to be on one day of the week. Sunday, was it?
- markelliot 6y agoThey’re most common on Thursdays but increasingly appear on Wednesdays, too. Sunday is typically the “big” puzzle day, and has a titled theme that usually provides a hint to at least some of the clues, or the puzzle aspect.
- tzs 6y ago> Some puzzles have rebus answers, where more than one letter will fill a single square. It’s not obvious when this is the case. Another deviation from the "one letter per square, all in a line" that they sometimes have is the bent answer. I recall one for instance where there were several isolated black squares, and some answers that ran into these continued after a 90 degree turn. So you might have 5 spaces to the left of the black square, but the answer was actually 9 letters with the last 4 written upward from the black square. As with rebuses, they don't tell you that a puzzle has this sort of thing. You are left to figure it out on your own. For that 90 degree turn example, you'd probably get it by filling in enough of the words that cross it to notice that the 5 space section matches the start of a 9 letter word that would work, and notice that the 4 letters that would complete that word are going up from the black square. That seems unlikely to be a coincidence, and then you'd go look at other places where the answers seemed to short and see that same trick works there. I don't think I've seen any the have both rebuses and non-linear answers. That would be a nightmare.