A LITTLE WORD PLAY

Clue:  Nag and a ram reordered Word . (7).

Solution: ANAGRAM.

 And that is what this post is going to be about.

It all started with a few email exchanges between my brothers and sisters – youtube links to some old (they have to be, because we are all over 50!) family favourites like Mustafa and House of Bamboo.

Which prompted my sister Gowri to come out with a crossword clue :

Clan is got into knots reliving past? (9)

We worked out that it is an anagram and got the answer NOSTALGIC.

All of us at home are crossword puzzle solvers, in varying degrees of competence/incompetence. My father enjoyed doing them, and he encouraged my mother and us to try them. We picked up the habit, and enjoy working on the puzzles - the more cryptic the clues the greater the pleasure. Regardless of cracking the clue my joy in racking my brains over a puzzle is great. And  the delight of getting a particularly tough  one is just unbeatable.

The simplest clues are the anagrams – but you have to find out which words in the clue form the anagrams.

I just checked with my family over their favourite anagrams, and I got these

Lives and Levis for– Elvis.

Severely Slip, Sleepy Silver, for Elvis Presley

Mr Mojo Risin  for Jim Morrison  from his song L. A. Woman

Old West Action- Clint Eastwood

Maiji remembered my father’s favourite - Webs Ran Hard!  - Bernard Shaw.

And Gowri made anagrams of the names of some of us:

Gowri - I Grow

Mohan - Oh, man!! (her husband)

Bala - A Lab

Raji - I jar!

If you work on them long enough you usually get the anagrams. A crossword clue tells you what the anagram is going to be.

For instance Elvis could be:  Singer in crumpled Levis (5).

An example from a crossword in the Guardian:

As direction, I fancy reference books (12).

With this you have to find the anagram to form a word of 12 letters to mean a word or words in the clue. (Answer at bottom).

Can you see the underlined clue which is an anagram, and the answer is boxed in

Constant practice, and your eyes zoom down on the words which form the anagram. And it becomes a fairly easy occupation to juggle the letters around and find the word.

Nobody I know is as good as my brother Raja at this – he is the ace crossword solver too. But all that is a preamble to this - Taking Gowri’s clue at the top, he formed this jingle using the words ‘Clan is got’

clan is got

cat logs in

got in lacs

it can slog

go sit clan

act is long

lags in cot

cot nil sag

con lit gas

sang i clot

cats lingo

o! it clangs

losing act

last in cog

aligns cot

at closing

lo! casting

o! castling

l'coasting

l'agnostic

logicstan

nostalgic


ALL anagrams of NOSTALGIC!

Howzzat!

Answer to the Guardian clue:  DICTIONARIES 

'reference books' is the definition.(dictionary is a kind of reference book).

'as direction i fancy' is the subsidiary indication.

'fancy' indicates an anagram.

'as'+'direction'+'i'='asdirectioni'

'asdirectioni' anagrammed gives 'dictionaries'.