It's time to stop

[pjthompson]

You know it's time to stop messing with the crossword puzzle when you fill in all the letters of an answer by doing all the ones around it and come up with:

FEATHEROFDERRINGDO

The clue is "Plucky plume?" so you know the question mark means it's one of those awful punny ones they do, but you keep asking yourself, "What's a feather of der ringdo? Is it some German word? Why would they have German in and English crossword fer gawd's sake??"

After much squinting you see it:

FEATHER OF DERRING-DO

Put the pencil down, ma'am, and walk away from the crossword.

Comments

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

There was a term for this in my family. It's called a "Cratso". It's when you come up with an answer but you can't see why.*

*In the original case it was an anagram and we couldn't make it anything else. Next morning we discovered that the answer was actually "Castro".

[pjthompson]

lol--sounds very familiar.

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Everyone always forgets the ringdo. :-)

[pjthompson]

The other white meat.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

*lol*

Your language skills are very international and now I have this image of a German Do-Do like pigeon lodged in my head.

[pjthompson]

I hear they're quite a Black Forest delicacy. ;-)