(I sometimes wonder if the reason cryptic grammar can be such a slippery concept is that "surface" is a great word for the superficial way of reading the clue, whereas "cryptic reading" is a confusing name for the real way of reading the clue. The CR should be like a secret second surface!)
Also potentially an intuitive way to show what's meant by cryptic grammar, because the way replacements are shown in this interface lets users gradually strip the clue back to its real meaning until there's a perfectly ordinary sentence staring back at them
Interesting. This looks like a good way for new cryptic solvers to get more comfortable with substitutions.
www.parseword.com/daily
Wow!
@cranberryfez.bsky.social I only picked Paul McC because he's uber-famous, but I've just remembered he's a more appropriate example for crosswords than most. For 10 points can you tell me why?
"Orderly" and "disorderly" is a helpful distinction.
The final few sentences feel slightly ominous from my perspective...
poster for 12 Angry Men
poster for Chimes at Midnight
Two films, both 12AM
I've been unemployed for a few months. I now set myself pretend jobs to prevent the rot setting in. My son thinks this guy is funny, which is a good enough excuse to make something. Any requests?
Thank you Peak(e)
Flashbacks to early 2020...
The fatty owls are not what they seem
Anagrams seem less whimsical because it's applying a dictionary def of "drunk" figuratively, whereas "primarily" to seem to require a whole new def
What if you make "first" mean something like "first-ified" or "reduced to its first" though? Doesn't seem a million miles away from redefining "firstly" to me. (In fact the redefinition of "firstly" almost implies a corresponding redefinition of "first"!)
That's modifying "walking" rather than the street though isnt it?
I agree on "first XYZ", I just don't see the clear justification for "firstly" if there are no IRL cases where "firstly [list]" or "firstly [thing]" would mean first list item/component
True, but I think that's a figurative application of the dictionary def of "drunk", whereas "primarily" seems to be pretending it's got a different dictionary-meaning entirely. (Maybe)
I don't mind those particularly and don't find the arguments against them very convincing
(I'd defend "business leader" and probably "redhead" on the same basis - i.e. they use established ways of positioning words or word fragments together)
Maybe the difference is that getting "<adjective> <noun>" to refer to a part of that noun requires a fundamental change to *grammar*, whereas "firstly lady" uses established grammar ("<adverb> <noun>" as seen in "0.5 decimally") so just requires that we give "firstly" an invented *meaning*
People would say exactly the same thing in response to finger-wagging about "first lady", wouldn't they?
Well, fair point, but then our dialect of cluing *mostly* flows from a set of principles, but also includes some stuff which isn't really justified but is permitted because it's convenient - easy to see why some would ask why they can't just make convenient use of "first lady" in the same way
I don't think I'm assigning real-world meaning to the letters. Considering them purely as letters, "first of tech" makes sense because a teacher might ask a pupil to write "[the] first of TECH" on a blackboard, and "TECH primarily" doesn't the pupil wouldn't know what is meant
I might be. It's just that I like to think of cryptic grammar as a well-founded set of principles which it's worth learning about rather than a set of traps/shibboleths for new setters, but approving of "jobs oddly" while disapproving of "odd jobs" looks suspiciously like the latter, really!
Maybe? I'm not sure. A reference to how mathematicians might (but probably don't) talk about sets is a world away from the clarity of "first of technology", though, isn't it? It still feels like the adverbs are just a shorthand we've all agreed to use and not look at too closely
Surely mathematicians aren't using either "the set of square numbers, primarily" or "[1, 4, 9, 16 etc], primarily" to refer to the first member of the set?
I was only using actual houses/streets as a way to see whether there's a real-world use of adverbs to pick out individual components of an object. If there isn't really one I think non-Xims would be entitled to think we're arbitrarily including adverbial indicators and excluding adjectival ones!
Does that really work though? Is "select each string primarily" an intelligible instruction IRL? A street is a set or string of houses, but you're never going to hear "street, oddly" for the odd side of the street
Hmm... Is that really true though? When would "[thing], lastly" ever mean the last bit of the thing?
Best I can do is that "one half, decimally" means a particular version or rendering of "one half", so maybe "[fodder], lastly" means the fodder rendered in a "only-show-the-last-ified" manner.
Hmm... 🤔 Isn't that the bar "first lady" is accused of failing, though? (To be clear, I'm not trying to rule "first lady" in, I'm just wondering if "lady, primarily" is a bit hypocritical because it's a helpful fudge not supported by the IRL meanings of the words)
Do we just accept "<adverb> <fodder>" forms out of habit, or because they're less fragrantly divorced from non-cryptic English than "<adjective> <fodder>", or is there a way of properly justifying them I'm overlooking?
