I’m guessing it’s “FIEND” based on the China = Friend thing. (Which, I still think is a stretch and something this Yankee would have never figured out before this thread.)
Republican = R. So FRIEND - R = FIEND.
I’m guessing it’s “FIEND” based on the China = Friend thing. (Which, I still think is a stretch and something this Yankee would have never figured out before this thread.)
Republican = R. So FRIEND - R = FIEND.
I still am lost on why China equals friend.
Correct,
It is a very UK specific term but widely enough known here to be a valid part of the clue. “china = china plate = mate”. I’m sure there are US-specfic terms or phrases that would be equally obscure to me.
Do people in the UK really go around calling their friends “plate” just because it rhymes with mate?
Do people in the US really go around calling their friends “broseph” just because it rhymes with “Joseph”?
(Some people do, but by no means a majority of people.)
I’m British and I’d never heard of it either.
It’s a shame more people don’t know how to solve cryptic crossword clues. The learning curve is a bit steep, but it’s so satisfying when you work out the answer.
No, the way it works, if it’s true, they go around calling their friends “China”. And it seems to be, I found this in Wikipedia’s list of examples.
Cockney rhyming slang works like this: First one thinks of a phrase that rhymes with the meaning: China plate for mate, e.g, Then one uses the part of the phrase that doesn’t rhyme to carry the meaning. That’s what makes it so hard for outsiders to figure out.
Very few, but then there are plenty of clue solutions which are words of very limited or specialised usage.
This is my biggest pet peeve with crosswords: let the clue be as intricate and convoluted as you like, that’ fine - but if the solutions are (to pick some examples from recent experience) “Aibaq”, “Spados”, “Daster” “Kyangs” then this isn’t a clue-solving challenge, it’s a knowing weird words challenge. Which is also fine in itself - but super-cryptic clues to words you only see in crossword grids just don’t offer a way in.
@suranyi is exactly right about how Cockney rhyming slang works, but it’s probably also worth pointing out that it’s fading away. Most of the examples you read are pretty old and slang has moved on - people aren’t inventing new Cockney rhyming slang for modern expressions so it’s just getting dated.
This is a general phenomenon in crossword-ese. Conventions which came into being because they relied on current expressions (e.g. AB for “sailor”) stick around because it suits both setters and solvers to have a known convention - and outlast the actual normal language usage by decades. Eventually a new generation of solvers gets frustrated and starts asking how the hell they were meant to an outdated Royal Navy term from before their birth and the convention fades from use. But it takes a while.
I heard the expression “ain’t half taters” once, and the person who used it said that “taters” was Cockney rhyming slang for “cold”. I asked him what the derivation was for that, but he didn’t know. I still don’t.
“Potatoes in the mould” apparently. Never heard that as an expression.
I agree but I wouldn’t put “china” in the same category as the novelty words you list above.
Half the fun with the UK style of cryptics is the use of wordplay and it rarely relies on obscure words though it does often rely on you reading the clue in a non-standard, non-obvious or more contrived way.
e.g. “eros’s mixed-up bloomers” isn’t referring to old-style voluminous knickers but rather “bloomers” points to “eros’s” being an anagram of a type of flower (bloom-ers?) hence, “roses” would be the answer.
Yeah - like I say, I love that stuff. It’s when the solutions are obscure words that my piss really gets boiled because it means you can’t get a handle on the wordplay.
‘Plates’ means ‘Feet’ in Cockney Rhyming Slang; -
Plates of Meat= Feet.
‘Me poor old plates are playing up’.
Incidentally, most of the rhyming slang in Mary Poppins Returns was imaginary.
Next thing you’ll be telling me that Australians don’t call a pie a “Nazi spy”. Or a dog a “chocolate frog”. Or a prawn a “shrimp”.
(Note: song also explains that “China” = “mate”.)
“Crosswordese” is generally frowned upon in American style crosswords and the fun is in the cluing and wordplay. Given the nature of the tight grid and stacks, some is inevitable, but most NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and similar puzzles are not rendered unsolvable because you don’t know crosswordese. The cross clues should be able to fill those in. I find myself stumbling most often on a name.
It’s my understanding that cryptic crosswords published in the U.S. (rare though they are) tend to be “fairer” than those published in the U.K.: they avoid obscure words or names that not everyone would be familiar with as solutions, and they are stricter about following the rules for cluing (i.e. each clue is precisely divisible into two parts, with no superfluous words in either part).