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Reader question: Please explain “close but no cigar”, as in the following lyrics: You came close; Close but no cigar; You didn’t miss by far…. My comments: Never heard of this song but never mind, the context is clear. “You” almost won, that’s all it means. To come close is to miss one’s target or goal by a small margin. If it takes a mark of 10.3 seconds to qualify for the Olympic 100 meters dash and you clock a time of 10.35 seconds, for example, then you fail to qualify for the big-time event. You don’t miss by far, but still, no cigar for you. In other words, there’s no cigar for you as a victory prize. “Close, but no cigar” is an American idiom believed to have originated from local fairs and festivals. It’s common to see small toys such as toy bears and cars and pistols given out as gifts and prizes if you win games at a carnival in any park today, but apparently some time ago in America, cigars were given out as such prizes and from that practice sprang the expression, “close, but no cigar”. One can easily imagine a situation where this expression is aptly usable. In a target shooting game for example, if you hit a given target you are given a cigar as a reward. The next shot, you narrowly miss the mark, and the game manager may say exactly that: “Sorry, you were close, but no cigar.” Anyways, over time and in due course, cigar has come to become a symbol for victory in some American circles. Red Auerbach, the late Boston Celtics basketball coach for example, had been known to famously light a cigar after a victory. Auerbach did it so often (because his teams won a lot – garnering eight consecutive NBA titles from 1959-66) that his cigar came to be known as the Victory Cigar. | 
