Daily Mail Prize Crossword Friday June 22nd 2012

[shooty]

Please parse.

4d plaster base for gilding art in france and so on (5) g----

The answer is obviously 'GESSO' as previously answered, but why ?

SO on GES ?

[Frank97]

I don't know Shooty, I simply entered base, five letters begining with G into oneacross, it came up with Gesso, but I can't see why either.

[Frank97]

beginning

[ubasses]

I didn't get the parse either, knew gesso was plaster and it fitted

[shooty]

Thanks for your response D97 ubasses, I guess 'and so on' means SO on the end of GES. Hmmm.

[Texasetes]

plaster = gesso

base for gilding = g
art in France = es (thou art = tu es)
so = so

[Psybbo]

g(gaul) es so

[dannyk13]

Brilliant Sibton!

[Psybbo]

Thank you danny

[shooty]

Hi sibers, I'm still puzzled (not hard). Can you elaborate a bit more as wood and tre's are in play. Ps, Thanks for your response Texasetes. : )

[shooty]

**tree's**

[Psybbo]

Gaul France
es (verb etre)
add so on

[shooty]

Many thanks, I would never had parsed that one. Ya clever sausage. : )

[Texasetes]

Sorry to disagree, but I have never, ever, seen the letter 'g' clued as 'France'.
'art' can only really mean 'es' if there's some indication that the language being used is French. And if 'France' were also clueing the letter 'g', then it would be doing double-duty, which isn't allowed.
So here, the 'g' is the base (i.e. the first letter of) 'gilding'.

The definition is simply 'plaster'.

[Duncer]

..................and my brain is well and truly fried with that one!