In today’s NYT crossword, the clue for 22A is DEVOTEE and the answer turns out to be FIEND. How on earth is this possible? Is it some recent slang usage?
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Today’s had a number of things I didn’t get but that’s not one of them… FIEND has had a meaning of intense interest, as with a hobby or pastime, for a while. In fact it’s probably old fashioned. I’ve heard and read of people being described as “fiends” for Bridge, Poker, Canasta, Mah-Jongg, and so on.
“Informal. a person who is excessively interested in some game, sport, etc.; fan; buff: a bridge fiend.”
Today had two one letter intersections of names I didn’t know and I had to guess letter by likely letter until I got it right. The one I filled in crosswise that I didn’t get even after filling it in was TEC for “Shamus”. I know that to be some old 1930s era or something slang for a cop, but TEC? Is that even more obscure slang for de-TEC-tive?
I see TEC a lot in crossword puzzles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in the wild.
There’s a lot of Only In Crossword Land words and clues which after many years of crosswording I now get quickly instead of scratching my head. Tec would be one of them. I think it went out with gumshoe and gat (another common one). Fiend was one of the last ones I got today but that was only because the clue was a bit obscure. Just a bit.
Quite old-fashioned.
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
“Fiend” made perfect sense. “Tec” made no sense at all.
Starting 1 across with an obscure world capital was uncalled for.
Huh, I didn’t even realize that “tec” was obscure. I don’t encounter it much outside of crosswords, but then, I don’t read much of the sort of fiction where it’d be expected to come up.
I’ve seen “tec” in some pulp stories and hard-boiled detective novels from the past. But mostly it’s in crosswords (where i see it all the time).
Today, for some reason, “birdie” was almost impossible to me. I kept thinking that “course” referred to a course in school (maybe because I had just figured out “aplus”). Finally I got it but it was extra tough!
“Fiend” made perfect sense to me because of drug slang. I wonder if “fiend” as a verb (“fiending”) will ever be in a puzzle…
I do a lot of crossword puzzles, have done the NYT one for 20 years (on and off), and yet I can’t remember ever seeing TEC as three-letter fill. Ah well. Maybe this time it’ll stick. I probably always fill it in the other way without ever even getting to read that particular clue.
I know I’d seen FDR’s dog’s name as a clue before but didn’t remember the answer (“Fala”). Apparently FDR had a speech referencing him (Fala Speech). I do remember other four-legger dog name clues/answers that come up all the time, though: Buster Brown’s dog “Tige” and “Asta” from “The Thin Man”, also featuring “Nick and Nora” (not to be confused with the “Norah” from the much more recent film, “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”).
Ha, I got “BIRDIE” pretty quickly because I instinctively thought of it in golf terms (“… HOLE IN ONE doesn’t fit, neither does EAGLE, … aha, BIRDIE!”), but didn’t get APLUS until it was filled in with all but one letter. I thought it was “ALL IN” for a long time before realizing that wouldn’t work for some of the crosswise clues.
Another one I guessed at for a single letter ended up filling out BRAD for “baseboard fastener”. What is that? I’ll have to look it up. The clue in the other direction was Shephard who wrote “Pretty Little Liars”, a title I recognized but have no other familiarity with. I had it down to SA.A already, so it pretty much had to be SARA as a given name. I know Muslim women named SABA and SANA, which I wouldn’t expect to pair with Shephard as a surname, but in any case BBAD and BNAD were nonsensical.
A Google search shows that the Home Depot thinks I should understand the difference between brad nails vs. finish nails. Bwuh?
I know what brads are, but when I hear the term, I always think of the ones used for paper (with a couple of flat brass flaps that fold out, which can be used to attach things together so they’ll pivot), not the ones used for carpentry.
You’ve never heard of a drug fiend? They are very devoted indeed.
Author Paul Theroux, noted devotee of travel and the outdoors, has a collection of stories called Fresh Air Fiend.
“Tec” is pretty standard in x-words and I have never encountered it in the wild–not even reading a lot of mystery books. I also don’t know why people from Yale are Elis. But if the clue fits…
What gets me is endings. Plural things that in real life would never be pluralized, or rarely, or a clue that makes you think the answer is two words and it turns out to be something like “nevers.”
Well actually, a lot of things get me. MLB’s 1964 MVP? … only my stats-fiend cousin knows that one without googling.
Well this has been embarrasing; I should have known.
But never let it be said I was cowardly enough to pretend this thread never happened.
Thanks to all of you who responded.
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That was the last bit I filled in, and I had to get it all on crosses. I was also briefly thrown off by “stand for dogs“, but that’s because I’ve never referred to a hot dog as a dog. Presumably someone somewhere does.