Something Rhymes with Purple - Torquemada

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Calling all cruciverbalists! Susie and Gyles have a treat in store for you as they deep-dive into the most popular word game around: the Crossword.  Since its creation 108 years ago, the crossword has transfixed millions on both sides of the Atlantic and the charm of this game has worked its way into literature, fashion, film - even the Royals are known to be fans!  In today’s episode, come be a sleuth(hound) and see if you can outwit Topsy Turvy Roast Mules or a kissing monkey as our very own hosts go head-to-head with the most devilish cryptic clues around. Will an anagram, an envelopment or a web developer be enough to catch either of our two superb wordsmith hosts out? A Somethin’ Else production. If you have a crossword clue that would baffle Torquemada himself, then Gyles and Susie want to hear it! Please email [e-mail]. Trio  Explaterate - To talk continuously without stopping Nyctalopia - Poor vision in low light Nuppence - To have no money Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Something else. Annex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast about words, about language and about passion. And on it, we have played so many word games over the course of our 94 episodes.

And yet, we haven't covered the most popular word game that millions play each day, and I happen to know that my co-presenter knows all about this particular word game because he is a cruciverbalist, and that is Giles Brandreth. Hi, Giles. Hello, it's good to be with you again, Susie. Tell me, what is a cruciverbalist? Cruciverbalist is simply a crossword lover. I am indeed a crossword lover. I'm not very good at crosswords, but I do love them. And I was taught not to worry about not being very good at them by a very great British actor called Sir John Gielgud before your time. But do you remember the name?

I definitely remember John Gielgud. Yes time. But do you remember the name? I definitely remember John Gielgud. Yes, he was. Yeah, what an actor. What an actor. And he lived to be 97 years of age. And I wrote his biography, which is how I got to know him. And he was a crossword fanatic. He lived to be 97. And when he died, there was a completed crossword at his bedside. He attributed his longevity to his passion for crosswords. He used to say, completing the crossword is the only exercise I take. I smoke nonstop, and solving the crossword clears the fumes. But he could do it

very well and very, very quickly. And I was once with him when he appeared to have completed the crossword, the Times crossword, notoriously a very difficult crossword, in about 10 minutes. Wow. And it was on a set. And there was another actor peered over his shoulder and looked at the crossword that he'd completed and said, Sir John, Sir John, 10 across there. Diddy bums. What on earth is diddy bums?

And Sir John replied, I don't know, but it does fit fretfully well. So he was quite happy just to put in silly words. To fill in the blanks with anything. I love that. You've just reminded me of, do you remember the wonderful film critic, Barry Norman? Of course. And he was also a huge cryptic crossword lover. And he and his wife would compete with two separate copies of The Times every single morning and keep a tally as to who was winning, which was obviously the key to a successful marriage. Well, let me take you back to the beginning of The Crossword, because The Crossword really was a Christmas present to all of us, to the world, from a man named Arthur Wynne. Arthur Wynne, originally from Merseyside, he was the son of the editor of the Liverpool Mercury.

And he moved to New York in around 1905, pursued his own career in newspapers. Well, in 1913, just before the beginning of the Great War, he was working at the New York World as editor of their fun section. And wanting something a little bit special for that year's seasonal supplement, he came up with what he called the word cross. Not the cross word, the word cross. And it was really derived from the ancient game of acrostics, you know, a puzzle where you just took the first letter and played games with the first letter of a word going down and across. It was a diamond-shaped one, wasn't it? I think his original. His certainly was. His first one was diamond-shaped,

published on Sunday the 21st of December, 1913, with 31 very simple clues, no black squares, very little fanfare. You say simple, Giles. Sorry to interrupt. You're right. Some of them are ridiculously easy, like the plural of is.

But there was a really fiendish one in there, which is the fiber of the gamut palm which apparently is doh like doh which i mean i wouldn't get in a million years so i think it had its challenge it had its challenge but it wasn't then it was simply the first time this ever been done it was a word cross the idea of cryptic clues wasn't didn't exist it was just simply can you find definitional yeah definitions to fit here? And the story could have ended there. But a few readers wrote in, you know, expressing enthusiasm for what they saw as a brain teaser. So it had to go back the next week. And they came up with a

catchier name, and they called it a crossword. And it then spent 10 years at this newspaper, The World, building up a loyal but limited following. But it didn't hit the big time until 1924. So we're coming up to the centenary soon of Crossword's conquering the world when a pair of Harvard graduates, young men, Dick Simon and Max Schuster, those names ring a bell? Yeah, Simon and Schuster. Simon and Schuster. They and Schuster. They were young men. They decided to go into publishing. And they set up a company. They found offices. They

employed a secretary. But they didn't have really any idea what to publish until the day came when Dick Simon's aunt visited the office and took them out to tea. Aunt Wixie. Over tea, she said to her nephew, if he knew where she could buy a book of these crossword puzzles that she so enjoyed from the world newspaper. And they hot-footed it down to the offices of the world. They came away with an agreement to publish the first ever book of crosswords. And within a year, they had sold, wait for it, 400,000 copies of the book. And the worldwide phenomenon began. The country went crossword crazy. Is it true that Simon & Schuster were so unsure about the book's reception, they omitted the publisher's name from the cover

and then didn't realise that all these fears were completely unfounded? Absolutely. Because people thought, is this trivial? And some people did think it was trivial because there were crosswords everywhere. People were, you know, crosswords were put on dresses. It became such an obsession. There were even churches in the 1920s that would have a giant crossword puzzle printed up on a sheet and they'd hang it over the pulpit

so that while you were listening to the sermon, you could also try to solve the crossword. The first crossword published in the UK appeared in the Sunday Express on the 2nd of November, 1924. There was a lot of skepticism, including, interestingly, we mentioned the Times, an article in the Times that branded the crossword a menace that had enslaved America. It shouldn't take hold of us. We mustn't succumb to the puzzle's allure. But people did. Of course, these early crosswords were, as you say, they were definition.

But then, and we are the parents of this, America really pioneered the definition crossword. We pioneered the cryptic crossword. And a famous literary critic called Edward Powys Mathers began setting crosswords in the Observer newspaper, Sunday newspaper, in 1926. And he used a pseudonym, Torquemada. Why is Torquemada famous? I don't know. He was the fiend of the Spanish Inquisition. Torquenada was the name of the most fearsome of all the Spanish inquisitors.

Inquisitors. So his work, yes, exactly. No one expects the Spanish inquisitors. Inquisitors. So his work, yes, exactly. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. So his clues were, they were cruel. They were like an Inquisition. They contained puns and anagrams and a lot of wit. And that's how it gradually grew. And the cryptic is the complicated, intellectually brooding cousin, really, of the definitional.

And I think it's got the mystique, it's got the depth. You know, in the old days, give you an example, if the solution was water, the clue would have been a chemical compound containing two molecules of hydrogen, water. The cryptic version is H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O. I know that one, it's brilliant. You know that one, isn't it lovely? Yes. H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O. h i j k l m n o going h to o it's brilliant apex wasn't the highest point if you were looking for apex a kiss from a monkey do you get it yes and what about this roast mules went topsy-turvy. Roast mules went topsy-turvy. Topsy-turvy gives you an

indication of something going upside down. That's giving you a clue. How many letters? Roast mules. I'll tell you. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten letters. Roast mules. Take roast mules, make them go topsy-turvy, and what do you get? It's an anagram. It's an anagram. I'd have to write it down. Can you leave that one with me? I'll leave that one with you. I'll leave that one with everybody and see if they can come back to it. So, it was really through the cryptic that the special language of the crossword developed. So, if in a crossword clue you read the words we hear, that indicates a pun. Yeah.

The word strangely or unusual or in a muddle point towards an anagram, like, you know, topsy-turvy. Returning usually means a word in reverse. Yeah. But be wary, upset could indicate a reversal or an anagram, and about an anagram or an envelopment where there's something at either end. So a whole sort of language evolved. And then, of course, there is not a newspaper on the planet Earth in 2020 that does not feature a crossword. It is the most successful language puzzle in the history of language. Can I give you one of my favourites?

Yes. I work on a spelling app with a brilliant Andy Salmon. The spelling app is called Sir Link-A-Lot, and he loves linking, which means he absolutely adores crosswords. And he gave me one of his favourites, which was the clue was simply O, and it's an eight-letter word followed by a six-letter word. Eight and six, yeah. And the clue is simply O. That's the whole clue. Yes. Good grief. It's an eight-letter word followed by a six-letter word. Eight and six, yeah. And the clue is simply O.

That's the whole clue. Yes. Good grief. It's just brilliant. I'll tell you this one because I think it's fiendish. The answer is circular letter. Oh, my goodness. I know.

I mean, isn't that amazing? Oh. Amazing. This is the satisfaction of the cryptic clue the clue is simply the letter o is all you see eight letters and then six letters circular letter well let me give you another fiendish one and then we'll explain to give people an idea who aren't into cryptic crosswords of what the phenomenon is this is a clue from zimines they give themselves these crossword setters fun names considered by many the master setter this is a clue from Zimini's. They give themselves these crossword setters fun names,

considered by many the master setter. This is the clue. Excitement. It will interrupt the end of term. Now, I'll help you there. The end of term is going to be interrupted. You, like me, went to Oxford University. Some of these old universities give their terms funny names.

There's the Michaelmas term in the autumn. Hillary. That's the spring term. Is that this term is called the Hillary? Yeah. Good. Think about that. Hillary term.

Hillary. Okay. Take the end of Hillary and interrupt it. Excitement. Excitement. Hilarity. Hilarity. You've got it. That's so clever. Isn't that nice? That is really clever. Can I do another of Andy's? Please. Okay. This is another. It seems so simple. The clue is GEG. G-E-G. And the words or the answer, the solution is a nine letter word followed by a three letter word, geg. Good egg. Almost. Oh no. It's nine followed by three, but you're on the right track. It's scrambled egg. Scrambled egg. Because it's eggs, but in a jumble.

It's just brilliant. Oh, that's so clever. I did a book of mazes once, and we called it Scrambled Exits. Oh, there you go. Brilliant. Of course, the crossword has played its part in history, because in the run-up to the D-Day landings in 1944, Allied commanders became alarmed because morning after morning, the daily telegraph crossword in Britain appeared with yet another clue that led to a code word for the operation.

Overlord, Neptune, Mulberry, all appearing in the run-up to the D-Day landings, and nearly a dozen appeared in total. The clues had been set by one man, Leonard Daw, the chief crossword setter at the paper for nearly 20 years. An MI5 descended on his home in Surrey. But Daw managed to convince them that it was nothing more than the most incredible of coincidences. Isn't that extraordinary? But over the last century, I mean, the crossword entered the history books and the record books because the world's biggest crossword had, wait for it, 3,149 clues

across and 385 clues down. And of course, you know, in a way that imitation, things like the kind of taking it into the world of numbers, but you can't beat the original crossword. And I think, you know, the times of the Telegraph are amongst the most clever. I think one of the best Telegraph clues ever was the one set for the two millionth clue. I think it was his two millionth clue in the Telegraph. And he's a man called Roger Squires. He used to be the world's most prolific setter. And this is the clue.

Two girls, one on each knee. Two girls, one on each knee. Okay, so what do you think you're looking for there? Two girls, one on each knee. Two girls, one on each knee. Okay, so what do you think you're looking for there? Two girls. Patella? Did you genuinely just get that? I did. Honestly, I did.

Because I thought Pat, and I know that the patella is to do with the knee, but I'm trying to get the Ella bit. Ella's a girl's name. Two girls. Oh, Pat and Ella. Oh, God, that's stupid. You see, I worked it out without actually studying it. One on each knee. Perfect. That's a girl's name. Two girls. Oh, Pat and Ella. Oh, God. Pat and Ella. You see, I worked it out without actually studying it. One on each knee. Perfect. That's brilliant. Patella. That is so clever. Oh, God. That is brilliant. I'm going to give you one like

scrambled eggs. Okay. A jammed cylinder. Five and four. Five letters and then four letters. A jammed cylinder. I think it's so clever. How many five followed by four? Five letters and then four letters. A jammed cylinder. I think it's so clever. How many five followed by four? Five letters, then four letters. Two words. A jammed cylinder. But the jam will take you to something you eat, okay? And a cylinder will take you to a shape.

So if you think of a jam roly-poly, that can't be it. But think what might be food that's the shape of a cylinder that could have jam as a filling uh uh what does she what roll no yes roll is the cylinder okay and then the first bit is it's a swiss roll swiss roll oh my goodness i should have got this one cylinder it's very good okay i've got one for you please this is a four letter solution amundsen's forwarding address amundsen now amundsen was the explorer and where did he go forwarding address did he go to the south pole or the north pole uh it doesn't actually matter with this it's a pole yes does pole become involved no oh it's really clever this one the answer is give me another clue give me a clue he's addressing his huskies to go forward oh it's his forwarding address to the dogs what's the shout

that you always give to huskies tally ho mush or mush do you do you say that yes m-u-s-h mush that is that the answer is that what you said husky i didn't know that well there you go next time you see one the thing is with a crossword you do need knowledge though they do try the best crossword clues give you everything you need to know within the clue. That is the trick of it. You really have to know it all. I'll give you just one more.

Okay. Which I like. A stiff examination. A stiff examination. How many letters? Two words. A four-letter word followed by a six-letter word. A stiff examination.

Well, if you examine something in retrospect, we always, after the show, after we've done our podcast, we think back, we say, well, look, you know, we got the best entertainment podcast in 2020. How are we doing this year? Oh, I'm not so sure. Are we up to it? We have what's called a, as we look back on it, we examine how we did. What do we call that? Art examination. In four letters? No, just what would you and I call looking back on?

Retrospective. Yes, or a post. Mortem. A post-mortem. We examine in past. A stiff examination. A post-mortem. Oh, that's excellent. A dead body is known as a stiff. A post-mortem isortem. Oh, that's excellent. A dead body is known as a stiff. A post-mortem is an examination. Oh, that's brilliant.

It's ingenious, isn't it? Yeah, that really is. I mean, the centenary of the crossword goes back to 2013. But in 1925, Buckingham Palace actually released an official statement declaring that Queen Mary was a crossword enthusiast. And the royals have always loved crosswords. In 1954, her granddaughter, Princess Margaret, went one better, entering the crossword competition in Good Housekeeping magazine and winning first prize. She didn't say who it was. Well, she put her name and address. She didn't say,

hello, this is us. princess margaret i'm entering she just sent in the how brilliant and she won first prize how brilliant the queen is said to enjoy a crossword and i do know because i have written a book about life in prison and visited a number of people in prison so do people entertained at our pleasure of course so you know it is a it is a great pastime. But people have been critical about them over the years. But there was a famous, the first famous female crossword puzzle editor, a woman called Martha Petherbridge. And she famously said in the 1930s, when people were being critical of the crossword, the time of the Great Depression, who can worry about the rent when you're trying to solve 25 down?

Oh. That's why I love a crossword. I agree. Should we take a break? Yes, I'll give you one more. Give me a couple and then I can try and solve it and people listening can try and solve it too. Okay. Clue, 13 letters in the solution, the cruelty of 39 cards. the cruelty of 39 cards the cruelty of 39 cards okay and another one

and finally this is for definitely for british listeners here so apologies to those who aren't british but hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway the clue is a bar of soap. Six and then six. So six letter word followed by six letter word. A bar of soap. Okay, six and six. The British institution is involved in the answer here. Okay. Excellent. We'll take a quick break.

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Daddy's little grifter. That's this season on the podcast, Power the Maxwells. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple. And I left you and Giles with two fiendishly difficult crossword clues, which Giles has been sweating over during the break. How did it go? How did mine go as well? Because I left you earlier on with the clue roast mules went topsy-turvy. Yes, somersault. Is that right? Somersaults. I think it's in the book. Somersaults. I should have got that because I've got it written down here. Somersaults. Somersaults. Very good. Roast mules. Go topsy-turvy.

Just anagram of roast mules and shuffle up the letters, making them topsy-turvy, and you get somersaults. Now, what were your two again? Okay, so the first one for our British listeners, bar of soap. Six-letter word followed by a six-letter word. Bar of soap. Now, the reason that you said this is for British viewers and listeners is because the clue here takes us to a British television soap, our longest running soap called Coronation Street. But in fact, Susie, it's shown around the world. You can get it in

America, India, Australia. They love Corrie all across the world. Amazing. And of course, it is a soap. And in that soap is a bar at the pub. Yes. And the pub is called The Rover's Return. The Rover's Return. Excellent. It's a bar of soap, The Rover's Return. Good sleuthing.

I like that one. Have you been watching The Crown, by the way? I have, but I'm so far behind everybody else. been watching The Crown, by the way? I have, but I'm so far behind everybody else. I'm still on the first series and the Queen is still arguing for Philip to keep flying. Oh, very good. Yeah, Matt Smith is just amazing. So I'm really far behind. That's a soap that is seen globally. I call it the fabulous pink cameo of soaps because it's high gloss, but it's nonetheless a soap opera of sorts the cruelty of cards a cruelty of 39 cards yes now there are 52 cards in the back 39 what does this mean i thought of 39 steps uh i was lost you were right with the first one there are 52 cards in the pack but if you take one suit out

you're left the cruelty of cards so we've got spades, hearts. It's broken hearts. One word, 13 letters. One word. So we've got three suits. So one of the suits is missing. Is it the missing suit that we're looking for? Yeah, you got the right one.

Hearts. Yes. So if you are without mercy, what are you? Heartless. Hold on. Heartless is the answer. A heartlessness. Heartlessness.

Heartlessness gives you 13. Oh, you see the cruelty of cards. That's it. 39 cards is a pack without any hearts. Cruelty is heartlessness. Yeah. It's so ingenious, isn't it? And so satisfying if you do actually crack it.

Yeah. Crosswords feature everywhere. I mean, they're part of people's life. They featured The Simpsons. They do crosswords, Brief Encounter. You know, that wonderful 1940s film with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson. Her husband's too busy doing the crossword to notice his wife's anguish. I don't remember the crossword bit.

It's just a moment. They appear everywhere. There's an episode of Inside Number Nine, Rhys Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, and the plot revolves around a cryptic crossword. Oh, by the way, is there an interesting origin to the word cryptic? Well, not particularly. It's related to a crypt, as you would expect, and that goes back to, you know,

the underground room for religious rites, the vaults, the crypts. So the idea is that it's kind of hidden and concealed. And of course, if something is cryptic, it is not easily accessible. Yeah. Lots of writers have loved crosswords. One of my favourite English authors, B.G. Woodhouse, big fan, as of course, was the character Inspector Morse created by colin dexton in several episodes of the crime series inspector morse a clue is relating to the crime committed he manages to solve it by dint of looking at a crossword puzzle yeah you mentioned pg Woodhouse there as well. And if you know Ben Schott, the writer of some wonderful miscellanies, well, he has written a Woodhousian novel called Jeeves and the Leap of Faith. And he sets a crossword puzzle. It can be a standalone or they can relate to specific points in the story. But it was within the book. I've ordered it. I haven't actually seen it yet, but it sounds absolutely ingenious. And of course, you know, as you say,

building on the fact that P.G. Woodhouse used crossword clues in his own stories. Well, M.R. James had a character. He's the great writer of ghost stories who timed his breakfast egg by the time it took him to do the Times crossword. And he did not like a hard-boiled egg. Well, I find that almost impossible to believe that he could do it. How long do you boil your eggs? Well, you know, I never quite get it right. I always try for five and then it's just still a bit too, the white, the albumen is still a bit too translucent for my liking.

And then I do it for six and it's too far gone. So I've got to obviously go down the middle. I can't get it quite right, just the same as I can't poach my eggs very well. How about you? I like mine about four minutes, to be honest. Oh wow, really, really runny. Oh no, it's not really runny. It's not really runny. I don't think I'm doing it wrong or my time is wrong. Yeah, I think your time is wrong. Because five minutes gives me quite a runny egg. Oh really? No, four minutes. I think we should just stick with gegs in the future. Yes. If I put a stick in your eye, it's a pig in a... How do you spell the next word?

Poke? Yeah, how do you spell it? P-O-K-E? Good. People who go dancing, dressed like mamas, that kind of traditional dancing, what's that called? Folk? How do you spell folk?

How do you spell folk? F-O-L-K. Yeah. What do you call the white of an egg? Yolk? How do you spell folk? Folk? How do you spell folk? F-O-L-K. Yeah. What do you call the white of an egg? Yolk. You see? That's one of my grandchildren's favourite jokes. Of course, the white of an egg is the albumin. It's the yellow of an egg. And I just said albumin a minute ago.

Yeah, exactly. That's what made me think, do you really got that wrong? I thought you were playing along with me. No, that's really stupid. How do you spell yolk? Y-O-L-K or Y-o-k-e y-o-k-e-l so you're falling to pieces woman l-k and the other yoke is the horrible harness that you put around cattle i've got as a revenge for that really mean joke i've got one one clue that's on Andy's list, which I think is just really good. And he actually wrote this one himself. Hidden talent, six letters. Hidden talent, six letters. I don't know, bushel. As in hiding your light under a bushel? Yeah. Maybe that isn't six letters. It's hidden in the word talent. Oh, hidden talent, six letters. Okay, so it's going to be a version of talent.

It's going to be an anagram of talent. Version of talent that means hidden. Latent, latent, latent. Very good. Thank you, but you did have to help me. And if people are coming new to crossword puzzles, I do suggest you do it with a partner or a friend so that you can chat it through like this.

Because doing it on one's own, I find very frustrating yes so that's it well i've got one one final one which is possibly my favorite in the list and i'll give it right at the very end the clue is web designer six web designer six web design i'll give you the answer right at the end. Okay, right at the end of the show. Yes. All right, I'll work on that. While you tell me, have we had any letters this week? I think we have had letters. If people want to get in touch with us,

send us the most fiendish crossword puzzle clue you've ever come across in your lifetime. And also, if you've got an original one, feel free to send it to us. People do send us the most eccentric things. Somebody was in, I don't know how they managed to get to People do send us the most eccentric things. Somebody was in, I don't know how they managed to get to South Africa over Christmas, but they did,

sent me a photograph of a sign in a safari park. And it reads, if you read the sign, elephants, please stay in your car. But that's what the sign says. Of course, I assume it means elephants, please stay in your car. Watch out. There's no punctuation.

That's brilliant. What have people been sending us? We've had something from Brad Albrecht. I think we might have heard from Brad before, actually. He says, thank you so much for the podcast. It makes me smile to hear those SRWP opening notes when they pop up in his feed. So thank you for that, Brad.

He has a question about the phrase meet cute, used to describe the scene in romantic comedy where fate or luck brings the central couple together in a memorable way the components of the phrase are straightforward enough but the word order seems backwards and he's completely right it's a really weird formulation and it's filmmakers jargon as brad says it's to have an accidental meeting which leads to romantic involvement. Apparently it was first used in a film I haven't seen, even though I used to watch loads of old movies with my mum. In 1938, Bluebeard's Eight Wife. Have you seen that, Charles?

No. No. Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper. Oh, it sounds my sort of film. Yeah, they meet while shopping for pyjamas and it turns into a delightfully cute conversation and I guess romance after that. And why they have flipped the two words, I honestly don't know, Brad. I wish I could tell you. The only thing I can say is that so often in this kind of tribal shorthand, we do play around with things to make it our own. But if any of the purple people have a better explanation as to why it's not cute meat rather than meet cute please let us know because i'm not completely sure so that was from brad and from gary no from george

it's not your day it's the drugs she's on this drug she says they're for medicinal purposes but i think that her new year parcel from her secret admirer contains some wacky-backy or something. It's obviously, I'm doing the Sherlock Holmes thing to kind of improve my crossword sleuthing. Okay, so George, and a Dr. George, so definitely not a Gary. After our enlightening and entertaining session on sex, he wonders about the origin of the word camp, as in rather theatrical behaviour. on sex, he wonders about the origin of the word camp as in rather theatrical behaviour. Okay, so the first definition of the term we can find in the OED is 1909. Definition is ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, effeminate, etc. And it became synonymous with really stereotypical male homosexuality. So definitely how, you know, people wanted to portray those

who were gay, but it's been completely embraced by those it was slightly used against. It's a kind of spirit of extravagance, isn't it really? And women can be camp too. I think Susan Sontag famously said that camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of 3 million feathers. And at more and more awards ceremonies, you have people arriving on, we talked about divans last week, I mean, arriving on these most incredibly embellished, you know, chairs that have been carried by six naked men, etc. I mean, really, really camp. The best guess we have is that it stems from 17th century France and their verb se camper, which meant to posture boldly. In other words, to strike a pose, as Madonna would say. Good. So when you're camping about, you are indeed striking a pose. You absolutely are. I've got one other shout out I would quickly like to make, which is from the girls at St George's in Ascot,

because their first year pupils are filming for their or have been filming for their production of A Christmas Carol. Sadly, it was a virtual experience that obviously went out before Christmas. And they decided to have a debate about Dickensian language. And that feeds right back into our episode on Dickens. And they did brilliantly. And I just wanted to say well done. And well done, too, for their interest in language and linguistics. You use the phrase shout out.

That's a relatively new expression, isn't it? Yes. I mean, it's clear what it means because you're literally shouting out. But when did that come into popular? Okay, I'm looking that up in the OED. I associate it with kind of Radio 1 DJs. 1990. Yeah. Good. So pretty recent. It's evolving. And you mentioned Sherlock Holmes and sleuthing. And of course, people who solve crossword puzzles are seen as word sleuths. The origin of the word sleuth, S-L-E-U-T-H. Yes. It's a trail that was pursued by hounds, I think. And so a sleuth hound was obviously one that was kind of following a track. So yes, it goes back to, I think, Old Norse and Norwegian slew, meaning a trail. While I continue sleuthing to see whether I can unravel the six-letter word that the clue web designer is supposed to lead us to, can you share with us your trio of interesting words that you feel we should know and use and bring to life?

The ones that I like. Well, this is one that I particularly like because it describes a lot of people. There are a lot of words in English for sounding off, for speechifying. And this is one of them, explatterate. So you're basically running off at the mouth, I guess, if you're explatterating, which I think is quite nice. I don't know if you have this. I seem to at the moment, and I need to eat more carrots unless that is a myth. Nyctalopia. So N-Y-C-T-A-L-O-P-I-E is poor vision in low light. Nyctalopia. Just quite useful, I think. And simply, I think after Christmas, a lot of us are feeling this just right now. And of course, some people far worse than others after 2020. But nuppance means having no money at all.

So nuppance is just nothing because you have no pence left. So if you just say, I have nuppance, you can even say I am nuppance, but don't ever write yourself off because things can come good. But yes, as I say, I think a lot of us are feeling impoverished at the moment. Nothing's. I'm hoping this year is going to come good eventually. Yes. It's January still. I'm not quite feeling it yet. No, the despair will come. Do you remember that was one of our words of 2020, despair, fresh hope, it'll come. Well, there's a lovely poem that I'm going to share with you by Matt Goodfellow, and it captures in a way that sense of uncertainty and yet anticipation of what the new year might bring. Something's moving in. I hear the weather in the wind, sense the tension of a

sheep field and the pilgrimage of fins. Something's not the same. I taste the sap and feel the grain, That's beautiful. It is beautiful. Who was that by? Somebody called Matt Goodfellow. And of course, the images there are very rural images and we are both really townies. But I think we're hoping that the clouds that shroud the mountains are slowly, softly starting to part because we want to feel this is going to be a better year that we move into. Yes, it's starting from a very low base, so let's hope so. Thank you to everyone for listening. As Giles has said, please do get in

touch, especially if you've got some fiendish clues, and let us know at purple at somethingelse.com. And before we get to the credits, Giles, did you get the answer? Now, the question was, the clue was web designer. Yes. And I wasted a lot of time looking at the letters in web and designer. And then I thought about different, who would make a web? And then I thought, of course, I'm locked into the modern world and the World Wide Web. But of course, the origin of the web was the interconnection between a spider's web. That's how you got the idea of the World Wide Web. It looks like a spider's web. And who designs a spider's web?

But a spider is the answer. Spider. Excellent. Excellent job there. Yes, a spider. I love that one. Web design is so simple, but pretty cryptic at the same time. Something Rise With Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett

with production help from Harriet Wells, Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale and... What's he called? Yeah, I've forgotten his name. So cryptic, we never see him these days.

Gully. Gully.