I did it! I have solved my first English crossword ever!)
It was not a piece of cake, but on the other hand it was not so complicated as I had expected English crosswords to be either.
Yesterday I recieved a usual morning letter from the Visual Thesaurus with a word of the day and a post containing May’s crossword. I decided to forget all I know about English crosswords being extremely difficult to solve and printed it out.
I was very much surprised when I guessed a couple of words without even looking them up in a dictionary or on the internet.
And though I did resort to the help of a Crossword Tracker I still managed to answer some of the question with only a dictionary by my side and I learnt so many astonishing words that trying to solve this crossword puzzle was definitely worth the effort.
English crosswords are only a tad similar to Russian ones. For one thing, the answer can be a verb, or even a phrase ( ILLBE stands for I’ll be, SAYSYES for says yes).
There was also a quip by Mark Twain hidden. That is how I knew the word quip
quip — колкость, насмешка
The quip from the crossword was ‘Never trust anyone who can’t spell a word more than one way’ 😉
The вопросы are called clues. And they are rather unexpected. For example, there was a clue ‘Cogito ergo…’. I know what the last word is, but I studied Latin at the university. Does a common Briton know a bunch of latin phrases so well that the editors put them in crosswords? It apparently is so.
There was even a case in my crossword when the answer was a wrongly spelled word — ‘lite’ instead of ‘light’!
What other words I learnt:
to go off the deep end — слететь с катушек, прийти в ярость. The clue was ‘off the deep end’ and the answer ‘nutso’
slur — оскорбительный намек, инсинуация. The clue was ‘Attack on one’s character’
Well, I’ll be! — вот так так!, вот те на!, ну и ну!, Господи Боже (мой)! (восклицание, выражающее удивление). The clue was «Well, ….!».
In a moment she had returned from the bedroom carrying a big, blond, tousled-haired boy of five, flushed with sleep but eagerly staring at the strange soldier… ‘Well I’ll be!(Вот это здорово!) Joey, you’re almost as big as Mike!’
mope — вялый, апатичный. The clue — A.A. Milne moper. Answer — Eeyore.
wacky — эксцентричный; странный, идиотский (об идеях, поступках)
foot — это не только стопа как часть ноги, но еще и стихотворная стопа. Thereof ‘metrical foot’ is ‘iamb’.
els stands for ‘elevated sistem’ — «воздушная» железная дорога. The clue was ‘raised railroads’
«The Axis of evil» — ось зла; фраза придуманная Джорджем Бушем-пладшим для описания стран, потворствующих терроризму
bulb — не только «лампочка», но и «луковица» (и это первого значение слова bulb)
to ogle — глядеть во все глаза, уставиться. The clue was ‘makes eyes at’.
shrine — место поклонения. ‘online shrine to a celebrity’ — ‘fansite’
slush — грязь, жижа
sinewed — мускулистый, сильный
egosurf — поиск упоминаний о себе в интернете
*Кстати слово puzzle состоит из корня puzz и смыслового суффикса -le. Какой смысл несет это суффикс вы можете узнать в посте «Английское словообразование: суффикс повторения -le».
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