Listener No. 4337: Relationship By Aedites

[AHearer]

In retrospect, I should have seen that coming. Good fun, with generally straightforward clues. Many thanks, Aedites.

[Scorpius]

I'm inclined to agree with freiheid about the clueing. I found most very easy to solve, but unimaginative. Like contendo I had another answer to 31a initially, which is completely justified by the wordplay, making it impossible to get 25d and 32d. I prefer such ambiguities to be avoided.
I'm also puzzled by the relevance of a couple of words to be highlighted.

I cannot find any support for 11d as the defined answer, and only limited support for it as a word. It doesn't show up in Chambers word-matching pattern facility or in that of any other dictionary. My computer version of Merriam Webster's has it as a noun, that does not fit the clue's definition.

[Scorpius]

After giving further thought to the highlighting I think it's yet another puzzle where the setter's intention is not absolutely clear and I suspect there's going to be a lot of fretting. I can see two possible solutions; one seems marginally better in several respects, but weaker in one respect. Given the wording of the preamble and that of the description from the corrections, I don't think one is obviously wrong and one obviously right.

[jim360]

I'm confused by what possible second solution there is that Scorpius has seen; I thought the ending was unambiguous.

[fallster]

While I am reasonably sure about what is to be highlighted, I agree with Scorpius -- the description from the corrections adds some murk to the matter, and it almost feels like the setter may have deliberately been setting a trap, aided by that murk.

[olichant]

Scorpius, I agree with you entirely - that's where I have come out, too.

[AngryUncle]

My reading of the description-from-corrections is that it confirms the two visual entities to be highlighted, as per the preamble and regardless of any apparently contradictory wording (so no ambiguity there).

If I'm right about the two words whose relevance has puzzled Scorpius, I would suggest the following exposition: 'If (the first element) equals (the first word), then (the second word) equals ...'

I'm with Jim360 on this.

[Scorpius]

I do not believe the existence of an alternative three-letter word in the grid is accidental. The setter has set a trap, but which is the trap, the obvious choice or the less obvious one? The less obvious is not a trap if people don't notice it or don't give it a second thought, so perhaps the trap is the obvious choice.

Mind you, the last time I thought there was a trap I turned out to be wrong.

[jim360]

I might agree were it not for Flying Tortoise's effort recently having at least two, if not three, accidental thematic words in "wish", "aim" and even "Dis" appearing, none of which turned out to be relevant to the intended solution, so yet another unfortunate oversight is possible.

[AngryUncle]

Scorpius, I hadn't noticed any alternative reading until you specified one involving a three-letter word. But surely that word (assuming again that I'm on your wavelength) would (a) vitiate the revealed visual description, (b) play havoc with the thematic relationship and (c) - given the order in which it proceeds from the starting point of its rival - make sense only to solvers in Yorkshire.

Perhaps they spoke of little else at The Old Swan.

I think it's no more than a coincidence. And I say that as one who over-anxiously removed WISH from the Infernal puzzle, thereby bringing to an end my all-correct status. No quarter for those of us who did that, whereas solvers who used a non-ODQ quotation were nodded through. (That's enough Angriness - Ed.)

[IainGrace]

Thought the grid fill and final solution were quite straightforward. Beginning to wonder if we are missing something now.

[Scorpius]

My initial inclination was to go for a physical delineation of the two key words in the description emerging from misprint corrections, and I think I'll stick with that, but that other word caused me a lot of agonising. If it's a deliberate red herring, I think it's an unfair one.
I spurned symmetry in the Dante puzzle, omitting 'here' from the re-arrangement, which turned out to be 'wrong' though accepted as an alternative. Perhaps the safest thing here is to opt for symmetry.
AngryUncle, I'm sorry that your removal of 'wish' should have wrecked your all-correct status, especially as the obviously wrong order submitted by some was accepted. Without wishing to prolong that debate, the only thing I would say against your choice is that if that had been the intention I'm sure the editors would have insisted on a preamble warning, something like, "solvers must make additional changes to the grid to comply with the quotation..."

[jim360]

If anyone was watching University Challenge yesterday, they asked about the Dante quote and "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" was accepted as correct. Sigh...

[olichant]

Jim, yes - I saw that and had the same thought!

[Ruthrobin]

We were watching and just smiled - I wouldn't sigh Jim360. There has been a lot of talk about the ODQ's three variants of the Dante phrase but, as a one-time Italian/English translator, I would accept all three. The 'All hope abandon...' was the literary version with a stylistic cadence. The 'Abandon all hope...' modernised it, putting the imperative where it would be in current English, but the 'here' would be tolerated and even suggested in a translation class where the aim is to convey the sense. In 'Voi ch'entrate...' 'Entrare' translates as 'to go in/into, or 'to come in/into'. In the 'come in' sense, a 'here' is implied and is not the aberration some have identified.
OK I'll be accused of being pretentious again but, in view of what was obviously the compiler's and editors' failure to spot that there were three ODQ versions, I feel that their generosity in accepting all three was only fair.

[AngryUncle]

Scorpius, that's a very fair point.

RR, you refer to 'three ODQ versions', but I'm aware only of the poetic one in ODQ1 and the modernised one in ODQ4. The Listener Crossword website mentions only two. If there is a third one in there somewhere then I owe the editors an apology for misunderstanding their grounds for generosity. I can see that Angriness has led me astray; next week, I shall revert to the safety of Ugliness.

[JackDeCrow]

Greetings all. Has there been any official confirmation (perhaps emerging from the Dinner) that removing WISH from the Infernal puzzle was indeed wrong? (Even with a note explaining what had been removed and why?). If so, I guess I can relax for the rest of the year. (If one can relax while gnashing one's teeth)!

[Ruthrobin]

Yes, Angry Uncle, I have three versions (all ODQ) in front of me:
Second edition, 1953 reads 'All hope abandon ye who enter here'
A concise paperback version changes that YE to YOU
and the Seventh edition (2009) has 'Abandon all hope, you who enter'

Just to add a bit of spice, the New Penguin Dictionary of Quotations (a lovely thing published in 2006) has: 'Abandon every hope all you who enter!'

[AngryUncle]

Ah but then that's not really three versions, is it? The one I objected to was 'Abandon hope, all ye ...', which it turns out that ODQ doesn't after all support, as I suspected. So I shall continue to wax wroth.

[Scorpius]

No ODQ version supports "Abandon hope, all you/ye etc." nor does Dante's original. I don't speak Italian, but the first thing I did on finishing the puzzle and checking ODQ was to ring a friend of mine who is fluent in the language, who confirmed that 'all' qualifies 'hope' not 'you'.

[olichant]

"Ogni" definitely qualifies "speranza". I guess there may be a view from the point of view of creative poetic translation that one could legitimately use "all" in front of of "you/ye" to emphasise the fact that the message is directed at "you" plural ne'er-do-wells (although, with "ye", that would be tautological anyway, I guess).

For anyone interested in the difficulty of translating poetry effectively, I can't recommend Douglas Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot" highly enough. To say nothing of Clive James' intriguing recent translation of the whole of the Divine Comedy. I remember the joy of encountering the text for the first time and realising that it wasn't all completely highbrow - "ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta", and all that...