Quick Cryptic no 3051 by Jalna

We had GI in Wednesday’s QC and Mike explained at length the origin of how it came to mean an American soldier, and how the popular etymology of GI standing for General Infantry is a late formation at best.  My own favourite derivation is that GI, ie Government Issue or General Issue, originally referred to military equipment and only later in World War II became a somewhat tongue-in-cheek term for military personnel, and specifically conscript soldiers, who were also “issued” or supplied to the military by government order.

Whatever the origin, the term is now used for the archetypal American infantryman – and never to be applied to the Marines!

The “perhaps” is because while nodding can be, indeed usually is, a sign of agreement, in some cultures, eg Greece, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, and parts of Albania, nodding the head can indicate disagreement or negation, the complete opposite of the more common “yes” meaning.  And to complete the potential for confusion, in these regions a head shake from side to side is more likely to indicate agreement or affirmation. 

Per for A, as in “£1 a go/£1 per go”, is one of those crosswordland tricks that took me an age to remember when I started doing cryptic puzzles, but it is very common and worth noting down.

Although cru now has overtones of quality (premier cru, cru bourgeois etc), the original meaning of the word in French is simply a vineyard or group of vineyards.

This was my LOI; the checkers -I-N do not narrow things down much and I was fixated on Oz being Australia – as no doubt Jalna meant me to be with the reference to the New South Wales city of Wollongong.  Instead we need the mythical Land of Oz, and in the book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, the main travellers to Oz are Dorothy and her dog Toto, who are later joined by the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion.  And it is the last of these that we want and that enabled me to complete the puzzle.

I was well misled by this clue, as having worked out there was an E in the answer from “back of theatre”, I was convinced that it was inserted into something, given by “around”, and then could not see what.  A big PDM when I realised how the clue worked – and a very smooth surface too, so it gets my COD.

Brag is an 18th century English card game which contains similarities to poker, with hands ranked in order from most powerful downwards and players betting on their strength without seeing their opponents’ cards.  It appears that the verb “to brag”, ie to boast about something, pre-dates the card game, which then got its name from the betting and bluffing part of the game as players “boasted” about how good their hidden hand was.

I am perhaps more familiar with pastel meaning a light or delicate shade of a colour, as in “pastel greens and blues”, but pastel as a crayon is a mainstream meaning as well.

I used to think Op-ed meant something like Opinion/Opinionated Editorial.  In fact the derivation is “Opposite the editorial”, which in many papers was a position reserved for  staff of the newspaper to write an article expressing a view, rather than a factual piece of news reporting.  In the Times, however, the page opposite the editorials is reserved for Letters to the Editor – and these are often very opinionated indeed.

IM was new to me as an abbreviation for instant message, but it is apparently common for those more IT-literate than me.  And it is even used as a verb, as in “Did you just IM me?”  Though how one spells the various verb forms such as IM-ing, IM-ed I don’t know.