Does your name come with a description?  History has given forenames many a soubriquet which makes us curious about their origins.

Some are easy to work out. Doubting Thomas came from the dubious apostle who did not believe that Jesus had arisen from the dead until he saw him with this own eyes. Plain Jane probably comes from Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel Jane Eyre, in which Jane attends a school that enforces plainness among its students.

When the revolving server became popular, it was known as a Lazy Susan, Susan being a generic name for a servant, while Simple Simon, meaning a gullible person, comes from the popular nursery rhyme.

Peeping Tom, meaning a voyeur, comes from the legend of Lady Godiva. To persuade her husband the Earl of Mercia to abolish the crippling taxes of the people of Coventry, she rode naked through the streets of town, first ordering everyone to stay indoors and shut their windows. Only Tom the tailor disobeyed – he looked at her and was struck blind (but the Earl of Mercia DID abolish the taxes).

A Smart Alec is a person considered irritating by their know-all attitude, and possibly comes from a resourceful 19th century thief called Alex Hoag who outsmarted himself in the end and got caught. A similar character is a Clever Dick, also irritatingly knowledgeable, and possibly comes from Dick Whittington, a British folk hero, although Dick was a common name so it could have been any number of people.

Australian boxer Larry Foley never lost a fight and retired at 32, collecting a purse of £1,000 for his final fight, so no wonder we say Happy as Larry.

Old Nick, another name for the devil, possibly came from the name Nickel, a perfidious mountain demon in German folklore.

Some say that Jolly Roger, the pirate flag, comes from the French words jolie rouge meaning ‘pretty red’ but in the Elizabethan era, Roger was a slang term for vagrants. There’s another theory that Jolly Roger is a corruption of the name of a Tamil pirate Ali Raja.

Big Bertha was the nickname given to a heavy mortar-like howitzer used by Germany during WWI. It was named after the owner of the Krupp industrial empire Bertha Krupp.

There are many other names, whose origins are lost in the mists of time, such as Proper Charlie – a fool and a Sloppy Joe, a loose-fitting pullover. A recent arrival is called a Johnny-Come-Lately and an excessively timid person is known as a Nervous Nellie.

Happy Puzzling!

“You are as welcome as the flowers in May” is a much-quoted line from a play by Irish playwright Charles Macklin, and it’s true that May is associated with the blossoming of flowers, and the much-longed-for warmth of summer.

In ancient times, the beginning of May, which we now call May Day, marked the coming of summer and the end of the long harsh nights of winter. It was a time of great celebration, such as the festival of Beltane which was held by the Celtic people. The name Beltane comes from the old Irish Beltene meaning ‘bright fire’ and nowadays the Irish for the month of May is Bealtaine. Bonfires were lit on hilltops at this time and herds of livestock were driven out to the summer pastures or mountains.

In Germanic countries they had Walpurgis Night and in other parts of Europe they held the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers.

The English month of May is named after the Roman goddess Maia and many English villages celebrated May Day by dancing around a maypole on May Day, until Cromwell’s reign put a stop to it. However with the restoration of the monarchy, the custom was resumed and was more popular than ever. The Maypole Dance was originally a dance celebrating the fertility associated with spring, both in nature and in human procreation. Youngsters would dance around the maypole, each holding a ribbon attached to the top of the maypole so that the ribbons became interwoven into patterns.

Villagers would go out early and collect greenery and flowers to decorate their homes and make garlands for the young girls to wear. One of the girls would be crowned as the May Queen.

 “But I must gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay,
For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.”

So wrote Tennyson in his poem The May Queen. The traditional Morris dancing would often be performed on this day as well.

In some parts of Britain, these activities still go on, especially on the May Bank Holiday, which will fall on Monday 3rd May this year. In St Andrews, Scotland, students gather on the beach and at first light on May Day run into the North Sea, which I imagine would be icy cold! Bravo to the brave Scots.

There are many legends associated with May. Young girls would wake up early on the first day of May to go outside and wash their faces with the dew, which would ensure a clear complexion for the whole year. There is an old saying “Marry in May and you’ll live to rue the day” – oh dear, James and I were married in May.

May Day is the distress call in an emergency and was originated in 1923 by Frederick Mockford, a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London. Mockford was asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the word mayday from the French m’aider.

“Venez m’aider” means “(you) come help me.”

May you enjoy the joys of May!

Happy Puzzling!

Paraphernalia, for instance, comes from the Greek para alongside and pherne dowry. In ancient Greece, when a bride moved into her husband’s house, she took her personal property with her, cooking utensils, jewellery, cosmetics etc which she was allowed to keep. If they got divorced, which was quite common then, the woman was allowed to keep her paraphernalia, while the families sorted out the lands, cattle, house and money.

In those ancient days, the world as they knew it was surrounded by the great river Oceanus, for it was generally considered that the world was flat. If you failed to return from a voyage on the dreaded River Ocean, you must have fallen off the edge. Oceanus gave its name to ocean.

A long, arduous and eventful journey can be described as an odyssey, which also comes from ancient Greece. The Greek poet Homer wrote the long epic poem Odyssey about the Greek hero, Odysseus (known as Ulysses to the Romans) and his long journey back to Greece after the fall of Troy.

The Trojan War lasted ten years and it took him another ten to reach home. His wife Penelope was still waiting for him, fighting off her many suitors, with the help of her son.

Marathon runners might be interested to know that the village called Marathon, north of Athens, was the spot where the Persians invaded Greece, about 2,500 years ago. The Athenians defended and the battle raged on in Athens, resulting in a win by the home side.

A Greek soldier, Pheidippides, who had fought all day, was ordered to tell the people of Marathon that their city was saved. For some reason he ran all the way, about 43 kms, delivered the good news, and dropped dead from exhaustion.

This distance of 43kms, or 26 miles, is now the standard marathon distance run, thanks to poor old Pheidippides.

Happy Puzzling!

I return every year and have just spent the summer there. It has a fascinating history. It lies opposite Berehaven Harbour and got its name, according to legend, from an Irish chief Owen Mór who was defeated in battle, fled to Spain and married Princess Beara. When he returned with a great army and navy, he named the area Berehaven in honour of his wife.

The prehistoric inhabitants of Bere Island left behind an ancient legacy of their time – a megalithic wedge tomb built circa 2000 BC, ringforts and a spectacular standing stone over 3m tall, which stands in the very centre of the island. At the eastern end of the island Lonehort Beach was once a Viking harbour, where a breakwater was built in the Scandinavian style.

Berehaven is the second deepest natural harbour in the world (after Sydney) and the deepest in Europe, and the scene of many a naval clash. Bere Island belonged to the O’Sullivan Beara Clan since the 14th C, but was taken at the The Battle of Dunboy in 1602, when Gaelic chieftain Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare was defeated by Sir Carew and his people massacred.

The French Invasion of 1796 led to the need to build defences and four Martello towers were built on the island, each with a gun battery. Two towers still remain and afford commanding views of the island and bay.

Due to the strategic position of the island, the British maintained a military presence on the island from 1898, when tenants were cleared from the East End and seven gun batteries in all were brought in to protect the British Dreadnoughts when in port. A moat was built to surround the fortifications, prisons and army barracks, some of which can still be seen today. The British army departed in 1938 and in the 1950s the islanders were finally allowed to buy their land back.

The inclement weather has caused many shipwrecks, with ships smashed on rocks and islanders involved in courageous rescues over the years. Fishing has always been the main occupation, and the local fishermen risked their lives many times to ply their trade. Despite the fishing, the island population was greatly reduced by the Famine in the 1840s and later by emigration. In 1841 there were 2,122 inhabitants. Nowadays there are just over 200 permanent residents, although this number swells in the summer with visitors.

Much of the information here comes from Bere Island – A Short History by Ted O Sullivan. His account of the ingenious prison escapes is highly recommendable reading.

Happy Puzzling!

From Christine’s Hello in Colossus No.214

It’s very hard to write about Charles Dickens and keep it short enough to fit in this column space, because there’s so much to say about the man.

Who knows what sort of world we would be living in if it hadn’t been for Dickens and his focus on social reform? He didn’t make changes single-handedly but he certainly forced people to look at the injustices of his time – and not just English people.

Workhouse conditions, capital punishment, child labour, reform of the legal system, and, in America, slavery, all deeply concerned Dickens. He shocked his readers by depicting Victorian society as being industrialised, greedy and self important.

Many consider Dickens to be the greatest figure in English literature after Shakespeare, and like him, appealed to both popular and sophisticated levels. His works have been translated into practically every language. His novels were written in weekly or monthly instalments in newspapers, with regular cliffhangers creating suspense and keeping the reader coming back for the next exciting episode.

Dickens’ characters are some of the most memorable in fiction and he often based them on people he knew: Wilkins Micawber and William Dorrit on his father and Dickens’ own mother, Elizabeth Dickens, was the model for the always confused, comic Mrs Nickleby. Sometimes Dickens got into trouble, as in the case of Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield, based on his wife’s dwarf chiropodist.
Scrooge has become synonymous with ‘miser’ and may be clued in our crosswords as such. Who has never heard of poor little Oliver Twist asking for more? You may find ‘umbrella’ clued as ‘gamp’, after Mrs Gamp, the alcoholic midwife in Martin Chuzzlewit who always carried an umbrella with her, so that gamp came to mean umbrella. Bill Sykes and the Artful Dodger are well-known thieves from Oliver Twist and Uriah Heep’s name is used to describe an insincerely humble person, known even by those who have never read his novels.

For all his earnest endeavour in making the world a better place, he also had a great sense of comedy. His unique blend of humour, pathos and humanitarianism resounds throughout all his works, which have been a huge influence in the entertainment business. Countless movies and musicals have been made based on his books.

As Tiny Tim the poor invalid boy in A Christmas Carol
would say:
“God bless us, everyone”

Happy Puzzling!

From Christine’s Hello in Colossus No.212

When television was invented, film producer Darryl Zanuck predicted that people would soon tire of staring at a plywood box every night.

In 1986, George Bush made the same prediction about the Internet.  Yet both facilities are here to stay, whether we like it or not.

In countless ways, the Internet has changed our lives in the short time it’s been around. More and more of life’s living is now conducted online.

Emails have become firmly entrenched. How easy it is to write a quick note to family or friends and get an instant answer back.

The Google search engine has become a well-used verb – if you need to know something you find out by googling it, usually ending up with Wikipedia.

Anything you want to buy or sell can be found on eBay, or one of the specialised sites like Amazon for books and DVDs.

Contacting long-lost friends is now possible with sites such as Friends Reunited.

Booking tickets for the cinema, theatre or concerts is so much easier online through sites such as Ticketmaster. In some cases, the only way to book in advance is online.

Travel arrangements can be made on local rail travel sites or airline sites. Hotels are easy to book on lastminute for example. Studying for a university degree, finding recipes…the list is endless.

By the way, I’m not getting a fee for plugging these sites – these are just some of the online facilities I’ve used myself recently.

The Internet has been available in Britain since at least 1993 and the man known as the Godfather of the Web, Sir Tim Berners Lee, was named in 2004 as the greatest living Briton. While working as a physicist in Switzerland, he turned an elite collection of military and academic computer systems into an international network.

The younger generation can’t imagine a world without emails, Internet and text messaging. For the older generation, it has been (and still is) a learning curve, a challenge and in some cases something to be feared.

My father didn’t take to it instantly. My brothers set up a computer for him and did all they could to encourage him to send emails. When he had run out of reasons not to, he mastered the new technology and now he can’t wait to log on and find out what’s happening in the world.

He’s only a youngster of course, at 86. Some of our online puzzlers are well over 90 and have taken to the Internet like a mouse to cheddar.

Readers occasionally berate me for using clues that can only be found online and I must reiterate that this is definitely NOT the case.
Most answers to our crosswords can be found in dictionaries or encyclopedias. It’s just that you can probably find them more quickly by using a search engine.

This is the way the world is going and we have developed our own websites for puzzlers. Write and tell me your online experiences –  I’d love to hear from you.

Happy Puzzling!

Welcome to our new-look website.  Our Webmaster has been slaving day and night to make it more user-friendly and including ways for our loyal readers to contribute more to the site.  You can now read the latest news about Lovatts Magazine titles and have your say in the Mailbag by providing comment on other readers’ letters or submitting your own letter. You can order your subscriptions online and now play even more online puzzles.

We love the way it looks and hope you do too.

From Christine’s Hello in Colossus No.211

The catchphrase, which we sometimes use in our clues, is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a well-known sentence or phrase, especially one associated with a particular famous person”.

Winston Churchill’s phrase Blood, Sweat and Tears was only one of his many stirring wartime quotes. Lord Kitchener urged millions of young men to enlist with the slogan Your country needs you. US president George Bush made the promise Read my lips and Martin Luther’s I have a dream has inspired many a speaker to repeat the phrase.

Back in the 60s, I remember Norman Vaughan’s Swinging, dodgy and Roses grow on you. Expressions such as Dick Emery’s You are awful … but I like you, Mr Humphrey’s I’m free and Baldrick’s I have a cunning plan are still thrown into a conversation. You dirty old man! said Harold Steptoe to his father every week.

TV comedy shows are still a rich source of catchphrases. Catherine Tate introduced Am I bovvered? and What are you like? Little Britain gave us Computer says no.

Groovy baby said Austin Powers, and who could forget Here’s looking at you, kid, when Rick says goodbye to the love of his life in Casablanca? Dirty Harry encouraged felons to commit crimes with his line Go on punk, make my day.

It’s funny what sticks in your memory. I can clearly remember that sporting chant dedicated to footballer Cyril Knowles Nice one Cyril which became an advertising slogan for bread. Beanz meanz Heinz was so popular it made a comeback. Don’t be vague Ask for Haig and Guinness is good for you also stand out in the trivia department of my memory.

Have I left out your favourite catchphrase? Write and tell us. But first, see if you can you remember the film or TV show that the following catchphrases came from (answers in Colossus 211 magazine):

• You talkin’ to me?
• Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn
• May the force be with you
• Don’t mention the war
• Book ’em Danno
• Good thinking 99
• Shaken, not stirred
• Hasta la vista, baby.

Happy Puzzling!

Was there ever a single person who influenced a language as much as William Shakespeare?

Considered to be the greatest writer of the English language and the most well-known dramatist in the world, Shakespeare was born 445 years ago this April, and lived to the age of 52. Celebrations have been happening around the world to remember the great man, known as the Bard.

He must be the most quoted writer in the history of the English-speaking world and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages.

When we think of Shakespearean quotes, To be, or not to be: that is the question: from Hamlet springs to mind. Yet Shakespearean expressions and words are unknowingly quoted by most of us on a daily basis.
He used around 29,000 different words in his plays – at least double the vocabulary of other great English writers. An amazing 10,000 of these had never previously been used in any surviving English literature, and 1700 of them are household words today.

You may be surprised to know that excitement, lonely, flawed, fashionable, champion, tranquil, blushing, amazement and zany were all invented by Shakespeare. He is also responsible for many everyday expressions including it’s all Greek to me, cold comfort, and without rhyme or reason.

A charmed life was said by Macbeth to Macduff in reference to the witches’ prophecy. Come full circle is from King Lear, neither here nor there is from Othello and the idea of being cruel to be kind is from Hamlet.

When you rise after a restless night you can thank Cymbeline for the expression I have not slept a wink and when you catch someone doing something they shouldn’t, again thank Cymbeline for the game is up!

As You Like It has given us not only All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players, but also too much of a good thing.

A foregone conclusion comes from Othello, as does wearing your heart on your sleeve and the green-eyed monster of jealousy.

So next time you use expressions such as kill with kindness, come what may, heart of gold or every dog will have its day, think of William working away with his quill and ink.

Happy Puzzling!

The postal service plays an important role here at Lovatts. Although emails are becoming ever more popular, we still receive daily Post Office sacks containing competition entries, cheques and letters. One of my favourite tasks is reading the letters, because it keeps me in touch with readers. And one reader recently asked: Why do we have two words, post and mail, meaning the same thing?

In the 19thC, mail referred to correspondence going out of the country and post meant incoming letters. So you sent mail and received post. Mail comes from male, Old French for a bag or wallet and then went on to mean a bag of letters. Today’s French word malle, meaning box or trunk, is from the same source.

Post comes from the Latin ponere ‘to place’ from the idea of placing riders at intervals along a road to convey letters at speed by relay system. The word ‘post-haste’ comes from this direction on letters.

Another reader recently claimed that we were using American words in our crosswords, such as ‘mail’ and ‘jail’. Yet both words are of Old English origin.

The American version of our Royal Mail is the United States Post Office. Perhaps the confusion comes from our postman being called a mailman in the USA, and our postbox is their mailbox.

It often happens that our old English words are accused of being American words. For instance, both gaol and jail have been used in England for centuries. Very few words used in America haven’t had a British history, and we are very careful to use the correct meaning.

However, with cinema and song lyrics popularising American expressions, I would be amazed if anyone in Britain didn’t know that closet, cookie and truck meant wardrobe, biscuit and lorry. The main difference is spelling and we never use American spelling in our crosswords.

While on the subject of post, please be aware that if you have any difficulty finding Lovatts titles on the shelves of your newsagents, you can receive them in the post by subscription. Unfortunately, some of the major retailers will soon no longer stock our titles due to the ever-increasing retail charges. Don’t forget about the ‘Just Ask’ program, where your local newsagent will keep your requested titles for you.

Happy Puzzling!

There’s been a lot of emphasis recently on Brain Training, sharpening up your grey matter and keeping it in tiptop condition, so we’ve got some challenging cerebral exercises for you – what we call the Gym of the Mind.

So hitch a ride on the Brain Train and don’t get left behind!

The word train comes from the Latin tragere, to pull, and has several meanings which are all derived from this sense.

To instruct or discipline comes from the sense of ‘draw out and manipulate in order to bring to a desired form’. The railway train comes from the sense of a vehicle that pulls other carriages behind.

Train is also a retinue or procession or the trailing part of a skirt. A trainer can be a running shoe, an athletic coach or a racehorse tutor.

The world’s first fare-paying rail passengers travelled in a carriage drawn by horse, on the The Swansea and Mumbles Railway in South Wales in 1804, and since then, our English language has incorporated many expressions involving train travel.

To go off the rails is to become mad or disordered, like a train that gets derailed, as opposed to getting on the right track.  To ride the gravy train means to get paid for not doing much and comes from ‘gravy’ meaning ‘an unexpected bonus’.

All Aboard is what the train conductor used to cry out as a warning when the train was about to leave the station. When steam trains were used, full steam ahead came to mean ‘with all possible energy and enthusiasm’.  And to get up steam is to take off quickly.

In the days when the railway tracks divided a town, the poor were said to come from the wrong side of the tracks. To have a one-track mind means to be obsessed with a single idea or subject.

So why not climb aboard our Lovatts Brain Train for the ride of your life!

Happy Puzzling!