Sunday Times 4584

[ossian]

Folks,

5d. (6) n?e?e? Missing, as was masseur reportedly. Is this needed or needed. I only very occasionally complete one of Mr. Meyer's crosswords and I don't want to muck this one up. A case can be made for either. Any advice would be appreciated.

Many Thanks,

ossian

[dannyk13]

5d.Needed (sounds like Kneaded)

[elliemay1]

needed (sounds like kneaded)

[dannyk13]

Or needing if your second e is wrong

[dannyk13]

Ignore my last post (can't count)

[elliemay1]

Too many letters in needing.

[ossian]

Sorry folks, I meant needed or needer. ossian

[ossian]

Needed sounds like what a masseur does and needer sounds like a masseur. Needer , unfortunately is a bona fide word.

ossian

[factor-fiction]

Neither seems holly satisfactory to me.
I don't see how missing can be 'needer'.
But I don't see how a masseur can be a 'kneaded'

[dannyk13]

I agree Factor.A badly worded clue IMO..

[Baldric]

Bit 'prickly' this morning ff!

[factor-fiction]

lol Baldric.
I think my W key is a bit wonky

[Svejk]

berry good.

[scorpiojo]

Needed works better with missing

[anaxcrosswords]

You need to read that part as 'was masseur' - it makes sense then.

[ossian]

Interesting anaxcrossword. Can you give me a sentence using the brief phrase "was masseur" where it could be construed as reportedly meaning "(k)needed".

ossian

[anaxcrosswords]

It wouldn’t be an absolute ‘natural English’ substitution, Ossian. As setters we aim for that, of course, but, failing that, we look for grammatical logic. If you take a sentence like “The team’s performance was impressive” you could instead say “The team’s performance impressed”.
Although this clue goes a small step further by basing itself on the synonyms ‘massage’ and ‘knead’, the principle is the same. There is an extra level of difficulty, I suppose, in that the past tense verb is equated to the person doing it, but that’s fair. For example, none of us would see a significant difference between “He won” and “He was the winner”.

[factor-fiction]

I still don't see that in this case, ana. The masseur is doing the kneading to the person who is being kneaded. In your example wouldn't that be like saying the winner was defeated

[anaxcrosswords]

Except there’s no reference to the person being kneaded. Remember the clue wording is ‘was masseur’. Cryptic clues frequently use what we call ‘newspaper headline’ wording; we’re free to remove unessential words such as ‘the’. So ‘was masseur’ equates to ‘was the masseur’, and by logical extension you can read that as ‘did the massaging’, or ‘massaged’ – hence ‘kneaded’.
Phew!

[dannyk13]

That makes sense to me

[factor-fiction]

Sorry, I still don't get it anax but thanks for trying to explain. I'll move on