Use your noggin – MEGA Contests 01

The great big city’s
a wondrous toy,
Made for a girl and boy;
We’ll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy!

So go the lyrics to this much-covered song about the famous ‘New York borough’ that appeared in the MEGA Stinker at 53ac. Unfortunately for some entries, MANHATTON and MANHATTEN were incorrect spellings.

In 1626 the Dutch paid the local Lenape Indians a few trinkets for the land. The name Manhattan comes from the local language meaning ‘island of many hills’. What was New Amsterdam was renamed New York in 1664 when the British took over the settlement.

Welcome to the MEGA! Judge Sums Up. In each issue I will happily chat about the words in the competition puzzles from MEGA two issues back, the solutions for which will be printed in the back of the magazine along with the prize winners.

You always have to use your noggin to solve the Stinker clues. Perhaps best known as a slang word for head, it also means a small cup or liquid measure and NOGGIN (not NUGGIN) was the answer to ‘Nip’ at 56ac. We have lots of terms for the head, including brainbox, conk, dome, nut, and perhaps the oddest, noodle. Noodle is probably adapted from noddle, (perhaps because it nods?).

On to 62ac where SCILICET in answer to ‘That is to say’ proved hard to find. It comes from Latin for ‘it is permitted to know’. In English we are more likely to say ‘namely’ but scilicet is sometimes used, especially in academic writing.

ESOTERIC is often used to mean ‘difficult to understand’ or ‘obscure’. In philosophy it means ‘understood only by a few’, so was the answer to 72ac ‘Only for the initiated’. EXOTERIC and ECOTERIC were incorrect. Exoteric is in fact the opposite, meaning ‘suitable for the public’.

At 126ac ‘Nicked’ was FILCHED not FINCHED (perhaps you were confused with PINCHED) and at 138ac ‘Squashed (rumour)’ was SCOTCHED not SCORCHED. Scorch can be used metaphorically but means to criticise harshly not squash. A couple of other incorrect answers were STOUCHED and SMOOTHED, which also made 139dn wrong.

COLOPHON comes from the Greek kolophon ‘finishing touch’. It was the answer to 139dn ‘Publisher’s emblem’ and refers to an identifying imprint or trademark on the title page of a book. A colophon was originally a description written into the back of a book with information relating to its production.

This crossed with 149ac ‘Hominid hoax, … man’. The PILTDOWN man was seen as the possible missing link between apes and humans, when a skull was discovered in Piltdown, Sussex in 1908. By the 1950s it was conclusively shown to be a fraud. Someone had fooled the scientific community for over 40 years with bits of ape and human bones. If it had been found on April 1 perhaps the joke would have been spotted sooner!

In the Mega Mix clue 6dn ‘Is Tibetan monk wicked in Pakistan’s capital?’ gave you ISLAMABAD (Is lama bad?). A couple of entries had ALLAMABAD.

Finally, we had a query about the clue in MEGA! No. 3 ‘Cinch’ for SHOO-IN. This is a tricky clue but is referring to a sure thing or certainty. It comes from the world of racing where a horse seen as a certain winner was said to be a shoo-in. Cinch also has this meaning.
See you next time – happy puzzling!