March 28 2011

Word of the Week: Cacoethes

CACOETHES [kako-EE-thees] – irresistable urge, often to commit a vice [Greek kako-ethes, bad habit.] I’d quit making cryptics, say, if not for my puzzle cacoethes.

Comments

Boniface — 28 March at 02:02AM

Apologies to Sebastian:

Coe cheats uncontrollably!

DC — 28 March at 06:08AM

Evil desires honesty, even in hiding places

Rupert — 28 March at 08:21AM

Chaos, drug etc. Bad, bad habit.

Somewhere around company, these distorted an urge.

Boniface — 28 March at 09:37AM

Hidey-holes harbour weird toe fetishes?

Sam — 28 March at 09:56AM

Brewed these after tree's first leaves for itch

RK — 28 March at 12:24PM

Outside Easter choc mania!

I'm a little unsure about when to add exclamation marks and question marks at the end of a clue. Can someone tell me if it's correct to put an exclamation mark in this one?

DC — 28 March at 12:38PM

RK, my lay opinion is that the ! is not necessary in your clue, because the whole phrase does not define the word (ie, it's not an &lit). Mania is doing double duty, which is not quite the same.

An over-enthusiasm for Easter egg hunts could be considered a bad habit, but that's closer to an interesting surface reading than an actual definition.

DA — 28 March at 12:43PM

Supertough clue, RK - with outside suggesting minus R, and mania doing double duty as anagram signpost, and definition: ouch!

Re the biz of ? and !, the first usually suggests a pun or looser intepretation, while the second can point to an &lit recipe, or fit an outre or declarative sentence.

In your example - too tough for mainstream - the ! is the &lit nod. At least. I pity the poor sod faced with unravelling that baby.

Rupert — 28 March at 01:06PM

DA, surely any clue to which the answer is CACOETHES would be too tough for the mainstream?

RK — 28 March at 02:25PM

Thank you DC and DA for your advice! Maybe this clue is slightly easier:

Cate chose playacting compulsion

SK — 28 March at 04:21PM

Busting for drugs uncovered Berocca...Coe the supplier

RV — 28 March at 05:30PM

Bad actor's irrational impulses crazily chose Cate.

DA — 28 March at 05:35PM

True Rupert, CACOETHES is as obscure as words come, despite its vital meaning. Hardly one for a run-o-the-mill puzzle. Which means a simple anagram, or lucid wordplay, would be the way to play it, if this was in line for publication. Hence:

Deviant bug cheats CEO blind

Though I'm fond of a tougher ask:

Crook teaches clothing firm evil desire

dg — 28 March at 06:54PM

Vice-captain has a joint with these crooks

dg — 28 March at 07:19PM

When Australian horse Better Loosen Up won the Japan Cup he beat Ode and Cacoethes. i thought the name was from a Romance language for 'peanut' (French - cacahuète ; Spanish - cacahuete.) But no. It turns out the horse's dam is Careless Notion.

anax — 28 March at 10:43PM

A former athlete appears in court, and he’s leaning badly? (9)

Eld Jaws Anon — 29 March at 12:41AM

Brain not quite in gear, especially having been away from the site for a while and being late-ish at night! But how about:

Decadent appetite for oxygen-deficient cocoa mixture with argon ethers chaser

As for the words being obscure, once you learn ancient Latin and Greek, most of them become rather obvious... now if only I could make (and solve!) clues as well as I understood those languages, I'd be set :-D !

dg — 29 March at 02:18AM

I think you need to know these Classic languages to work out many of these words. I'm guessing 'retrogress' and 'thermology' aren't real words. But if they were actually just obscure words in a crossword it wouldnt be impossible to guess 'retrogress' was something about go backwards and 'thermology' was something to do with heat or temperature. (I'd expect most good word nerds would know 'cacophony' derives from 'bad sound' and 'ethics' derives from something to do with behaviour and from there have a chance of solving C_ _ _ E _ H _ _ from some of the above clues.)

dg — 29 March at 02:19AM

Correction: I DON'T think you need to know these languages.

Eld Jaws Anon — 30 March at 12:40AM

Right, dg, I was actually thinking of being able to pick meanings more easily in a general, absolute sense, rather than anything to do with them as crossword clues/answers. You're right also that people who don't know the classic languages can get at least some of them by association, but those of us who do know the languages don't need that extra tweakage step and are more likely to figure more meanings (for example, what might "kaliethes" mean?).

Perhaps the biggest leg-up for solving clues by knowing the classic languages is knowing which prefixes, etc. will go with which root, for example you won't find "anagress" since that's a blending of Greek with Latin and is a linguistic no-no. This means that you've automatically got help to rule out some possible combinations for blanks. In cryptics, this is possibly less of an advantage since you've essentially got 2 ways of getting the answer (def + wordplay), but in standard puzzles it helps a lot since you only get the def.

For the record, retrogress and thermology are real words, though my browser's spellchecker doesn't agree ;-).