Ran into this in yesterday’s Washington Post puzzle. Is that the one you did?
And feed it to an erne or a nene.
I’ve been staring at this and can’t figure it out. Help? Is there another meaning of the word “lower” I’m missing?
The sound a cow makes, like “Moo”, is called a ‘low’.
Huh. Learn something new every day. I figured it must be something like that, but I’d never heard the word before.
A cow will low in a lea.
How familiar are you with Christmas carols?
The cattle are lowing, the poor babe awakes
but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes…
I’ve come across the word in only two situations:
a) in crossword puzzles
and
b) in the lyrics to “Away in the manger”:
The cattle are lowing, The Baby awakes.
But the little Lord Jesus No crying He makes.
Apparently not well enough that I actually knew the lyrics past the first verse.
Or a synonym for the noun number.
As in something or someone that makes you numb.
And a flower can either be a plant or a river - something that flows.
And while we’re at it, a sewer might convey waste, or might be a tailor or seamstress.
Or someone who spreads seeds around.
Are other languages as weird as English?
Wouldn’t that be “sower”? Or is “sewer” an archaic spelling the same way “show” once had “shew” as an alternative spelling?
You know, suddenly I’m not sure. Probably should go research it…
These words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, or “homographs”, are a staple of cryptic crossword clues because they lend themselves to misdirection, which is the name of the game in cryptic puzzles, literally. The aforementioned “flower”, in particular, is a red alert that the clue may be about rivers rather than plants. Another couple of examples:
Might have debt in Puerto Rico (5)
Provide weapon beside church entrance (5)
The homographs here are “might” and “entrance”, respectively.
Another hint is that upper case B and lower case e. Chemical element symbols are always written with the first (or only) letter capitalized, with any other letters, if applicable, in lower case. Historically, there could be at most only one other letter, but recently three-letter symbols have been been assigned to a few of the heaviest known transactinide atoms, e.g. Uup for Element 116.
This one makes sense to me, in that I know what is meant by “a good layer” despite being utterly without any personal experience in barnyards or in the gathering of eggs.
But the one mentioned above about “flowers”? Really?
Cruciverbalists do take quite a bit of literary license in the clues. The enjoyable part is when you get enough letters going the other direction to figure out the answer, then you’re in on the joke.
This one is especially interesting, because you have to use both meanings of “entrance” to construct the answer.