Justifiable confusion and an attempt at a moustache in our pick of the best cryptic clues

Unique solutions?

I think often of Paul's clue…

25ac Misshapen genitals, funny things? (3,5)

… for TAG LINES, because it was identified by Guardian crossword editor Hugh Stephenson as an example of cryptic clue that, unusually, provides another answer, valid but inaccurate. In this case, one solver parsed it as wordplay for ODD BALLS.

It can, of course, be vexatious for the solver when she realises she will have to erase a perfectly good answer, but that was not the case for me with a clue by Radian (known locally as Crucible) …

24ac Eastern citytook offwith inflow oflocal currency (5)

… since I tend to confuse KYOTO with TOKYO so readily that any setter who exploits that ignorance is doing me a serious favour. Thank you, Radian.

Latter patter

Staying with Paul, any male solvers tackling his recent clue…

8ac Uselessgaffethat's faced by pubertal boys? (8)

… for BUMFLUFF will have been transported back to the schoolboy's dilemma: is a pseudo-beard likely to attract more or less derision than no beard at all? (The answer is: don't draw attention to yourself; go and buy a badger brush.) The various editions of Partridge's dictionaries of slang tell us that (a) the expression may have its origin among Victorian Cockneys; (b) that it also means "empty talk" in Australia and (c) that the "unfortunate youths" sporting said BUM FLUFF …

are often advised to smear it with butter and get the cat to lick it off.

Partridge also lists some convoluted boilerplate teasing from the 1920s, which involves the conceit that there are 11 hairs on each side of a first attempt at a moustache, from which: "I see that one of your team is playing a man short." Hardly side-splitting, but surely preferable to whatever its modern-day equivalents might be.

BUM FLUFF, then, is not merely a word which can be used in banter; it is banter. Even in Howard Barker's play Victory, when the character Charles Stuart (described as "a Monarch" in the dramatis personae) rails at a crowd including a poet laureate named Clegg …

Oh listen, who is the monarch here? Who wears the ermine bum-fluff, me! I have been down, ain't I, in sight of the tit of England, got the oil of Christ on me, out then when I say it. Out!

… this is a kind of meta-banter, with Charles II bantering himself. Self-banter? No surprise from a playwright who insists that theatre "should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety".

Like it or be driven by it into despair, banter is inescapable, unless you manage not to see the KEEP CALM AND BANTER ON T-shirts and FULL ENGLISH BANTER pub signs that bring us to the subject of our next challenge. It would be nicer if English language did not contain it, but there it is: reader, how would you clue TOP BANTS?

Clueing competition

Thanks for your clues for ROCKER. No surprise that such a versatile word (with relatively friendly letters) should give us such a handsome collection. Of the explicitly musical references I enjoyed jonemm's "Chair-person of the AC/DC fanclub" and robinjohnson's "One of the Queens of the Stone Age?", and for very different surfaces, we ranged from MaleficOpus's "One may wear Black Cats' top in part of Sunderland" to cgrishi's "China's limited curve".

The runners-up are wellywearer2's apparently bureaucratic "By which chairperson's motion is carried" and machiajelly's jolly "Musical chair"; the winner is steveran's exquisitely terse "Mod con".

Kudos to Steve – please leave this fortnight's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.

Clue of the Fortnight

And staying with music, some extraordinary stuff from Rorschach, in a clue which mentions the former Tin Machine frontman twice …

18d The latestBowie hit herefinally– DavidBowie (1,2,4)

… but has absolutely nothing to do with him, instead going via Davy Crokett's pal Jim Bowie for the answer A LA MODE. Boogaloo, dude!

Alan Connor looks at the newest kid on the cryptic block, an 'intermediate' puzzle from the Times

How do you get a non-solver into cryptic crosswords?

One way is to tackle head-on the trepidation felt by many: the sense that cryptic clues are based on a way of thinking and a set of conventions so arcane that six years at Bletchley would leave you none the wiser. Hence how-to guides such as our own Cryptic Crosswords for Beginners and Guardian crossword editor Hugh Stephenson's book Secrets of the Setters.

Another is to provide puzzles designed to be less arduous. At this site, you have Sunday's mellow Everyman and the weekly Quiptic, "for beginners and those in a hurry". Now those have been joined by the Times Quick Cryptic.

The new puzzle is introduced by the paper's new crossword editor Richard Rogan– who, for the avoidance of doubt ...

does not intend to increase the difficulty of the puzzles through the week, as happens with Su Doku

... and comes in a more compact 13-by-13 formation, giving the solver 56 fewer squares to peer at than does a normal broadsheet cryptic.

So that's one way of reducing the load. What are the others? So far, it seems to me that the Quick Cryptic demands less of the solver in terms of what you might call the very general knowledge required for some cryptics, or at least the sometimes specialist vocabulary that might require an inspired guess.

I wondered whether the same might go for some of the abbreviations and short references which are found more often inside crosswords than outside them - and that's not the case. The newcomer has to remember that nurses used to be called SENs, that a sailor might be a TAR and that the world of cricket has a panoply of notation.

Pointing out these speed bumps is not a complaint, by the way. Any solver converted by the Quick Cryptic will find this sort of thing soon enough in the full-fat puzzles, and it's hardly the job of this new crossword to reinvent the vocabulary of wordplay. (The inclusion of setters' pseudonyms may be innovation enough for some readers of the Thunderer – not to mention a hidden message in the first puzzle.)

And I was delighted to see that the surface readings of the clues – what they are apparently referring to before their true purpose reveals itself – are no less devious. Being willingly misled is the chief joy of solving. The decoding itself is the bit that's less convoluted here, with clues that you can more readily imagine dissecting for the benefit of a newcomer and meeting with a delighted "ah!" rather than a baffled "nope, still don't get it". And so we see, I think, a higher proportion of double- and cryptic definitions, in the manner of Rufus.

A quick word of advice to those, like this Times reader ...

Sir, I am not so sure this is a good idea. To fail to complete the regular cryptic crossword might just hint at a weakness in one's intellectual ability. To fail to complete the quick cryptic removes all possible doubt.

... who remain stuck: the Times solver blog Times for the Times has an explanation of every clue. And my favourite entry so far is from one "Joker" ...

8d Professional commoditynogoodinhosiery business (5-2-5)

... where we remove the G from STOCKINGTRADE of STOCK-IN-TRADE. Welcome to the world, Quick Cryptic.

Earlier this year, John Humphrys gasped an incredulous "No!" at the idea that cryptic crosswords are easier than those we call quicks. John Henderson, known as Enigmatist to the Guardian solvers he has been teasing since 1979, told the Today presenter that he had spent three times as long on that morning's quick than he had on the full-fat cryptic. Humphrys was flabbergasted and not a little defensive. The counterintuitive claim confirmed his fear that there are those whose brains are suited to cryptic wordplay and that he will never be among them.

His suspicion is understandable. The cryptic solver is often depicted as having otherworldly intelligence Inspector Morse finding inspiration for a murder case from a tricky acrostic, or George Smiley's MI5 colleague Connie Sachs filling in the Times's puzzle with an ink pen. In real life, the cryptic fan is more like the beleaguered commuter struggling with a clue in Madness's single Cardiac Arrest an everyman who can't quite face the "news" part of the newspaper. Still, the sceptic wonders: those freakish sentences "Poetical scene with surprisingly chaste Lord Archer vegetating", say surely the cryptic is inherently more baffling, more time-consuming, more arduous than its quick counterpart?

There was a bonus extended-play edition of this blog on Saturday: Celebrating 100 years of the crossword. It's a place for cryptic newcomers to start; I also enjoyed the comments enormously, especially an unexpected visit from indefatigable letter-writer Keith Flett, who recalled that the eminent Guardian setter Araucaria once used him in a clue.

When may a young man be said to have arrived? Adam Faith got a double accolade last week, recognition in two fields outside his art: (i) Having a signed column in the biggest circulation Sunday paper; (ii) Having his name used as a pun in a quality Sunday paper's erudite crossword puzzle.

How did Ryan Adams know that he had truly made it? "The day before yesterday I was 21 across in the New York Times crossword puzzle," he says a little diffidently. "I didn't call my mom I just don't want to bother her with that. Plus I don't want to hang on to being part of a crossword puzzle, because there's going to be many more crosswords down the line."

8d Fish turnedtobull in SpainwhenKeith, correspondentof the Queen, gets appropriate degree (6,2,7)

20ac In maturity, getting podgierwithale, perhaps? (4,3,3)

29ac One setting puzzleIamsettingcryptic (10)

8d Gunpowder plot? (3,10)

With the centenary of the crossword approaching, I smell newcomers around the puzzle page of the paper. Maybe it's time, some are saying, to give this cryptic malarkey a bash? And so it's only fair to add another tip to our ongoing series, Cryptic crosswords for beginners.

Today we look at the first person. Cryptic clues are typically unpredictable pieces of language, seemingly unconnected to anything in the rest of the paper, possibly the rest of the world.

11d Boatman employs misdirection€” it'€™s widely admired (4)

24d Repeating oneself in something that might go viral (4)

10ac Cabturned colour€” setter'€™sgetting stuffed (9)

1d Withexclamation of regret, setter'sbrought upsausage! (6)

2d Aim for the thingGordius has? (9)

26d This writer goes up and downaboutonegirl (5)

2d Solverno good? Won't be so forever (5)

2d Change ofdirection: Boatman'€™s lostfaith (8)

What characteristics are demanded in a newspaper's crossword editor? The most obvious answers are along the lines of being good at spelling, and spotting mistakes. But also ...

This position requires a flair for crossword-setting but also to have an impressive level of organisation and diplomacy to manage the network of Times crossword-setters sensitively and appropriately.

21d Man of note sees Ripleyarounddrama school (7)

27d Man of noterightto dissectrevolutionary novel (4)

25 Future woman of note given goldstar (top 50%)in French (6)

7d/5d Withonset of nineties, memoriesnotworking could result in one (6,6)

(humorous) a lapse of memory common in elderly people

1996   Re: probably Most Stupid Question to ask in this Group in rec.food.cooking (Usenet newsgroup) 3 May, Please ignore this person. He is obviously suffering from a senior moment.

And duller shouldst thou be
Then the fat weede which rootes it selfe in ease On Lethe wharffe.

4d More than one fibencapsulatingfineautobiography (4,5)

There are many reasons it's hard to choose a selection of Araucaria clues, but among them is not sadness. The chutzpah in those puzzles which John Graham set between the diagnosis of his cancer and his death yesterday seems to me an invitation to respond with gentle playfulness.

As always in crosswording, the problem is what to leave out. And as always, the fun starts with structure.

22d Preserving jelly so pretty? (5)

14d/24d Consequence of gripe led into Nye's basis for the welfare state (9,4)

29ac Film lover's FT version of the 2s 10 (9)

24ac A lesser figure in Jude the Obscure have you read this somewhere before? (4,2)

12ac Hair swept back? Mr Rusbridger must be in love (9)

21ac Squashed? Accommodation urgently needed with an easy lot of pieces (4,2,1,7)

13ac Rise and fall in subsidy (8)

19d It isn't so funny to be given the elbow (7)

6d Funny thing afoot shy vernal youths go contemplating girls: Thus (in catalectic trochees) poem by 19 unfurls (2,3,6,1,5,4,5,7,5,2,8,2,4)

9ac/7d Dickensian whisky makes Christmas music (6,5)

12ac Prevent passing of legislation to reduce police numbers? (4,3,4)

1d Crave drug from receiver of kicks? (4,5)

8d Traditional feast of Wagner's work gets us up into its sequel (9,6)

23ac Bike burnt by Eliot makes line for the Irish (6)

Correcting sets in the North? O don't! I can't bear it (11)

7ac For first option there's no end keep going! (5,2)

11ac Lady's man? (5)

24ac Embarrassed Spooner broke fast and went fast (3-5)

16ac People like Lolita it's a difficult thing to do (3,7)

Devoted to health, no? Word is, antiphlogistine will be needed (3,4,2,4,2,5,4,4,10)

14d Not red and not quite blue bone in antelope's back (10)

1ac I turn green in front of 25's work (7)

O hark the herald angels sing the Boy's descent which lifted up the world? (5,9,7,5,6,2,5,3,6,2,3,6)

X Return from fraud, an axed scheme for site of dome (6)

Y Farmers' circle in Middle Eastern country (6)

Z Figure God not quite good parent? (6)

If you're enamoured of British countercultural heroes, or of children's television, look away now or rather, go directly to Orlando's puzzle from Tuesday.

19d Goldsmith's musical (6)
24d Lettersfrom the office (4)
21a Guncarriage finally makes an entrance (4)

15d What'smanaged to turn uproundvery softbaby's bottomandhas spread? (5,4)

I'll go out on a limb, I might have slept with Stanwyck, Crawford and Harlow note I said "might" but here is one thing I'll stake my life on. Humphrey Bogart will never go to bed with Greta Garbo not that I wouldn't want to.

22ac Actresswho could makeBogartrage (5,5)

Pity the new crossword editor at the Times. You don't generally associate the Thunderer with such frivolities as themes or pranks let alone themed pranks. Last year, though, April Fools' Day came on a Monday the day on which the Times prints the answer grid to a recent Saturday puzzle.

And since the puzzle of Monday 1 April and the puzzle of Saturday 23 March were designed to use completely different sets of clues to arrive at identical answer grids, this was a subtle, playful fooling which quietly resembled a printing error (the answer grid appearing right next to the puzzle, against time-honoured convention) or at the very least a missed opportunity for any solver who was stuck and hadn't glanced over to Solution No 25,430.

Because of a print production error we published the wrong Down clues for Times Crossword No 25,749 in the first edition (Apr 1). We apologise for this mistake. If you wish to be sent a copy of the correct grid please email crosswordeditor@thetimes.co.uk

22ac You're in trouble locallyafterautumn in Boston?Sounds like something you'd do on April Fool's Day! (4,3,2)

9d Section in top ranks' term for one orchestrating stunt (9)

5ac Relating to sacred festival, not hard for religious philosopher (6)

9d Cameronisfurious withthem: "I can't stop the clock!" (4,7,2)

15d Pronounced oddnessraginginbigotry (9)

Hodgson is, as we know, a highly educated man. Listening to his speech, (not very closely) I get the impression he uses at least two, possibly three ways of sounding 'r'. And good luck to him. To my ear he is completely clear.

13d Raymondprendle dessert (10)

The sickest collection of argot, for my money, is Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, which first appeared in the 1930s. As David Crystal noted, the book ...

was well received at the time, though when librarians discovered that it had 'those words' in it, many banned it from their shelves and it is still often available only on restricted loan.

1 Definitely, dawg!

FO' SHIZZLE makes its debut today, even though, technically speaking, it is so last decade.

Is 50 years outdated better or worse than 10 years outdated? The former seems quaint while the latter just clangs against the ear.

I totally understand the effort to be more hip and cater to the younger generation, and if this had debuted even five years ago, I think I would have liked it better.

implies the entire phrase 'fo shizzle, my nizzle' or 'for sure, my (racially charged bad word).'

It's true that it's dated language. But then so are HEP, RAD, EGAD, and other old-fashioned terms, which appear in crosswords all the time. The key is to clue things like these in similarly dated ways. For example, FO' SHIZZLE was clued as 'Definitely, dawg!', which is a contemporaneous way of saying approximately the same thing.

Here's a Times clue ...

21d Lawlessnessneararea in European peninsula (6)

14d Airmanandcrewinvolved in conflict (7,3)

6ac You can read thisstatement of grievancefrom formertime (5,4)

3d Proposalto introducecurrenttheme that's en clair (5,4)

14ac/24d Dark sort of talesof a northernerandwrought iron (12,4)

The Telegraph recently published a Centenary Collection of its puzzles, from the earliest grids to the Toughies and Enigmatic Variations of today.

Telegraph puzzle editor Phil McNeill gives a lively introduction to each section, and the collection includes the most apparently dangerous puzzles that the Telegraph has ever printed. Yes, and seemingly for the first time, Cryptics 5,246, 5,775, 5,792, 5,797, 5,799 and 5,802 are collected to reveal their apparently treacherous joint legacy.

"So, is that the end of the story? Somehow I doubt it. Somewhere, someone will clear out an attic and come across more papers relating to 'The Crossword D-day Codenames'. I hope they will contact The Daily Telegraph when they do."

"An official-looking car turned up," he recalls. "I was interested, so I kept watching. After a time, I saw Mr Dawe go off in the car with whoever it was."

A proper tribute to the late Bob Hoskins from Eimi in the Independent.

1ac Avant-garde Somalian painting (4,4)

8d My word, Brydon's upset with character often mentioned in The Trip to Italy (4,5)

22/10ac Molièrerequiresthree secondsto contrivea comparatively oxymoronic theatrical cliché? (4,2,4)

12ac Like the blubber in Homer'slacypants (10)

I was mildly startled to note that, until a fortnight ago, these pages had not covered one of the most intriguing episodes in crosswording: the D-day codewords enigma.

While choosing which information, apparent information and theories to include in telling the tale, I wondered momentarily if I was short-changing its protagonist: Leonard Sidney Dawe, the setter who was visited by MI5 to find out why his puzzles contained so much information about the most secret of top secrets. I was indeed. As reader Jolly Swagman remarked:

It's a shame that L S Dawe's name only ever comes up in this context. He was one of the [Telegraph]'s leading setters and [probably] one of the key figures in the evolution of cryptic crosswords in UK dailies.

It may be that there are Lib Dems who believe that their party would have retained a scintilla more soul under the leadership of the business secretary, but Arachne wants to remind us ...

5d Cable screwedPost Officeover, which may humour some deluded people (7)

19ac 25 publicistthe mostbluffordickhead? (3,8)

16ac Ex-PM's policies with Murdoch, say, breakingBritishstrike (8)

1d Stoneinarabica(out of Central America)damagedcoffee-maker (7)

28ac Bodywork with bumper off finally exposed (8)

Welcome to the third in a trilogy of D-day posts. We've looked at the mystery of why Overlord codewords appeared in the Telegraph puzzle in the days before the landings and we've got to know, a little, the setter who gave the spies conniptions.

This time, we're meeting James Cary, a writer responsible for such things as The Casebook of Milton Jones, Miranda and Bluestone 42. Why so? D-day was the day of publication of his novel Crossword Ends in Violence (5), a story which involves codewords, puzzles and, well, the Normandy landings. Crosswords in fiction, eh? Sounds like something this blog should know about

What were the odds that the setters of 2014 could let 6 June pass without alluding to the events of 70 years ago? (For more on the D-day Telegraph crossword mysteries, see the background, the suspect and the novelisation).

11d Four members of that university set up in American state (4)

7d Happyaboutuniversitygettingpounds - it should bear fruit (8)

19ac Ruleuseful to a Cockneysomewhere in France (8)

20ac Gin swilledincountries in breaks between flights (8)

3d Arrangement for free distribution of MirrorbyLabour (8)

(law) a form of licensing that imposes fewer restrictions on the use of a work than copyright. Typically, copyleft grants permission for a work to be used free of charge, to be distributed freely and to be modified in any way, under the condition that any works derived from the original work are released according to the same rules

4ac An article, or three in different languages (6)

Alan Connor turns the tables on the torturers. Under the spotlight this time is RD Anderson, AKA Crucible

Duggie Anderson has been setting as Crucible for the Guardian since 2008. His canvas is broad featuring Stanley Gibbons and Jonathan Swift, rainbows and noughts and crosses, the Proms and 1 Timothy 6:10 but Dull and Boring he is not, and his humour is always intact. Anderson sets the Daily Mail's daily puzzle, and appears as Radian in the Independent and Redshank in the Financial Times. Among my favourites of his clues are "In which role Clegg should take a bow? (6,6)" for SECOND FIDDLE and "Time, say, covering 5 to 9 (it varies) (7)" for EVENING. So, let's Meet the Setter.

Cook has these, but can he keep them? (3,5)

Are you interested in how the fleshy, fallible human mind can persist with a belief despite the piling-on of evidence to the contrary?

11d Justicefollowed byex-PMmanyaredisputing? Interrogator required (6,6)

10ac/24ac Ultimately, England home before their postcards: relativeshide (8)

22d Some fancy a nice greenish blue (4)

... this particular colour circle is not much use to printers, or to those who mix their colours through the cathode-ray tube, or to those who work the paint-mixing machines in hardware shops. The printers' primaries are yellow, cyan, magenta and black; televisions mix red, green and blue light; the colour circle of commercial paints has four effective primaries in red, yellow, blue and green.

5d Get upsetaboutsufferingrightshowerduringpreparation for the classroom (7,8)