A crossword clue is like a little program
Sunday, 9th February, 2020
Masterpieces from cooks badly overdue (5-7)
masterpieces (from) "cooks" : "chefs", synonym of "cooks" badly "overdue" : jumble letters of "overdue" => "doeuvre" => "chefsdoeuvre"
Cook once stuffing spring chickens in here (3,4)
cook "once" : jumble letters of "once" => "enco" stuffing : insert previous into following "spring" : "hop", synonym of "spring" => "h enco op" -: chickens in here => "hencoop"
Hot Finnish sauna ultimately designed to inspire love (2,7)
hot :- "finnish" : => "finnish" "sauna" ultimately : last letter of "sauna" => "s" designed : jumble previous => "infashin" to inspire : insert following into previous "love" : "o" # 0, synonym of "love" => "infashi o n" => "infashion"
As the programming language and the data to be processed are both English, much of the challenge is deciding which words are data and which code.
A word can represent an instruction (a transformation or function), itself (“raw data”) or a synonym of itself (a zero-argument function). Synonyms do not respect part of speech.
Any word can play any role in any clue. “Hot” is a good candidate for a jumble instruction; “cook” often stands for itself or its synonyms (e.g. “chef”).
(All clues are from recent FT crosswords.)
