Friday, 3rd of October, 2003

In a previous entry, I complained about lax standards in the Sydney Morning Herald's Quick Crossword. In particular "NS" annoys the hell out of me… Yesterday's crossword had

3 Down: Not accustomed to writing with the right hand (4-6)
Would you guess LEFT-HANDED?
What's wrong with that? It's just a stupid clue; the word "hand" in the clue is part of the answer. What kind of effort went into that?

Today, however, I'm tempted to actually write in to complain about this extremely frivolous (nay, pointless) issue. "DA" today commits a grievous error in giving this clue:

15 Down: Musical climax (9)
The desired answer is, of course, CRESCENDO. Anyone with any musical knowledge winces everytime that word is used to mean climax. A crescendo is a gradual increase in volume. "DA" would do well to check out dictionary.reference.com's entry for crescendo, in which both Webster's and The American Heritage Dictionary mention this "Usage Problem". The Macquarie Dictionary's entry, on the other hand, just ignores the "climax" usage and mentions only "a gradual increase in force or loudness".

I hate to be the language maven, but it's the fucking crossword. You'd think they'd have a clue. Cross I am.

4 Responses to “Crossword follow-up”

1. Emma says:
   October 20th, 2003 at 9:00 am

   hahahaha. your like my mother

2. Ms .45 says:
   January 17th, 2004 at 3:25 am

   I have to ask. If crescendo DOESN'T mean climax, what word is correct?

   Try doing the Murdoch papers' crosswords sometime for real stupidity. Aside from the fact that they're all bought in from an American media company, they are all generated by computer and frequently give completely wrong hints – for instance, a STOVE is definitely not an OVEN. I hasten to add that I do not buy Murdoch products if I can avoid it, but I do pick up the free paper MX on the way home from work… when I have work, that is.

3. Peter says:
   January 21st, 2004 at 3:07 pm

   I think the word is… climax. Really. The bitch I was having about that clue was in particular because it was a sortof reverse of the usual misunderstanding. Usually the word "crescendo" is used metaphorically, so at least there's a small excuse that it's not a literal use of the musical term from the Italian.

   But this clue says specifically a MUSICAL climax! It's just plain wrong. There's no specific Italian term for climax used in music, because it doesn't really make sense as a direction. Climax will do.

   I dread to even open up a murdoch usually but I'll give it a go just to make me feel better about the damn Thursday SMH one ;)

4. Ms .45 says:
   January 21st, 2004 at 6:52 pm

   I like to do online crosswords, but this has the interesting problem of allowing you to "cheat", depending on how you feel about the morality of this, by using the "Check" button to see if you have the right answers. (Of course I should be more self-disciplined [slaps wrist]). However it enables me to do something as hard as the NY Times crossword, which is freely available in archived form (new crosswords are a paid service) and get answers that probably wouldn't come naturally to non-Americans (baseball questions, f'rinstance…)