Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Chambers 'Some first names' has 22D as 'Happy', not 'Lucky.'

I can make 25 cells, all within the 'other clues', but the 25 includes the object I drew, which I make the sixth object, and which is only obliquely diagonal...maybe this is wrong.

And I think the message is missing a 'hic.'

I checked that Felix is a lucky man in Wikipedia. The hint makes no sense to me. How is it interpreted?

I know, Unclued, the hint was the last thing I solved...not a lot of help really ! It's just a year...

On 22D, if Chambers is the primary reference...

Does the primary reference thing apply to real names which were left out of Chambers in one edition a while ago?

You've got me there, Unclued.
I still use the 2008 edition. The name is definitely 'happy'. I don't understand how it can be anything else, because if you take the first 4 letters and add on 'city', the definition is happiness ! Luckiness isn't mentioned. Though I suppose, at a stretch, if you were just to add on 'd' you end up with a member of a lucky family.

Hi, Meursault,

The first definition for “happy” in Chambers is “lucky”, while the definition of “lucky” does not mention the word “happy”. So the clue for 22d requires us to translate “lucky man” into “happy man” before solving the clue – we can’t get directly from the wording to the answer. This sort of thing is what Ximenes (who preceded Azed as the setter of the difficult crossword in The Observer) referred to as “a clue to a clue” – his rule was: “A clue, or part of a clue, should refer to the word itself, or part of it, not to a synonym of it.” But I’ve found over the years that setters are often a bit relaxed with meanings of names.

By the way, I see that Hedge-sparrow, in his notes to Listener 4417 on the listenercrossword.com website, defended the cross-reference of “meer” in 23d to the fourth definition of “mere” given in Chambers (which you questioned in the forum for that puzzle) by claiming that the cross-reference was correct in pre-2003 editions of Chambers!

This week’s puzzle was a relief after the last two difficult ones. I suspected that this week’s theme would involve the historical event in question, which made the endgame easier, and the grid construction was clever. Yes, the “hic” is grammatically part of the message, but it’s quite a distance away from the rest of the message on the historical depiction. Indeed the relevant illustration on the Wikipedia page for the source doesn’t show the “hic”.

Hi Wintonian. Yes, I accept your explanation for how the setter has made happy and lucky interchangeable, though I've not seen that done with respect to 'Some first names' before.

I don't really accept Chambers confusion of the two. A man who walks out of a plane crash can be said to be lucky, but if his wife and children weren't able to escape with him, he can hardly be called happy...

Hi, Meursault, I think that by putting “lucky” as the first definition of “happy”, Chambers is showing that “happy” was originally formed from “hap”, whose definition as “chance, fortune, accident” is basically the same as the definition of “luck”. I don’t think it’s a particularly common present-day meaning for “happy”, though it’s not marked as “obsolete”.

However, the setter Stick Insect may have been thinking of the quote from Virgil’s Georgics, which begins with the answer to 22d and continues “qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas”. Wikipedia notes that the first word in the Latin quote is usually translated “fortunate”, though Dryden translated it as “happy”. Chambers gives “lucky”, but not “happy”, as a definition under the word “fortunate”.

But this is all rather academic – the clue to 22d would have worked just as well if it had read: “Happy man keeping priest’s effects.” Given the classical allusion, I’d have been happy (in the sense of “expressing contentment”) if the clue had read: “Fortunate man keeping priest’s effects.” But “lucky man” is pushing it.

We may be lucky to get a straightforward Listener crossword from time to time, but if we are after a challenge, we might not be happy.

Re HMS ARCADY, in the blog on Listen With Others, Hedge-Sparrow acknowleges that MEER was a mistake.

https://listenwithothers.com

Hint on the number of letters in the sixth object and starting letter will be welcome so that I can go off to a pub lunch!