Michael
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I'm refusing to finish this one. MPs aren't lords, ever - same way you can't simultaneously be a senator and a congressman. Saunas are Finnish - Icelanders prefer hot springs. TCM isn't also TMC. There were some fun clues and I like the setter's sense of wordplay but you'll have to read the Athletic to find worse editing in the Times. (Don't actually do that - it's bad for the digestion.)
Must be the best debut puzzle in a very long time. Possibly the best gimmick puzzle of the year.
ET ALII? Aliquis linguam Latinam a misogyno didicit. ET ALIA since at least the suffragettes, surely?
As a citizen of a nation dismissed as "hewers of wood and drawers of water," I'm here to tell you that hewing ain't felling. They aren't synonyms any more than "solving" and "hoping" are.
@Lynn That's fascinating! I was unable (at least over the course of 10 minutes) to find a British or Canadian dictionary that includes that meaning.
If my engine was clunking as hard as some of those puns, I'd sacrifice a lawyer or two to the god of warranties. Why is offering a handful of ponderously-worded, low-effort clues once or twice a week considered a better option by the Times than publishing a proper cryptic edited by someone with less sympathy for the least-able solvers?
@Bill One of the ways we know Latin is a living language is that its usage - ok, now primarily within legal and academic matters - continues to drift and be adapted for circumstance, just as it did when all roads led to Rome. You might wish to have a look at the scholarship of people like Eleanor Dickey, Michael Fontaine, Keith Hopkins (my uncle-in-law?) et al. for examples and discussion.
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