The New Orleans sissy-bump music scene is cruelly underrepresented in crosswords
Clueing coincidence
Of the myriad ways of clueing any answer, sometimes one is irresistible. So it seemed with this Telegraph clue…
5d Currentflowing acrossrivernear equator (8)
… and this FT puzzle from Falcon…
1ac Very hot, currentacrossriver (8)
… both of which wittily exploited the ambiguity of "current" in the wordplay for TROPICAL. More literally topical was Dac in the Independent …
23ac Driver shells out at regular intervals for fuel (6)
… anticipating the autumn statement in its alternate-letter clue for DIESEL but missing that it would be train passengers who would end up shelling out more.
Latter patter
The "New Words" noted by Oxford Dictionaries in August included APOLS, DOWNWARD DOG, UNCANNY VALLEY, FAUXHAWK - all of which of course predate August by some stretch. So it is with another of August's list: TWERK, the squat-thrust-like dance which is retaining some mysteries even to Oxford's crack team.
Some will tell you that TWERK is a portmanteau of "twist" and "jerk", which sounds plausible. But sounding plausible is not enough for hardcore lexicographers.
Nor, I would imagine, is dancehall culture an area where etymologies are easy to nail down, since there is no procedure for minuting or otherwise documenting proceedings. It is, though, an area of unstoppable linguistic innovation.
"Probably an alteration of 'work'" is Oxford's reserved judgment: from "work it, girl" to "twerk it, girl", I suppose. The term, Oxford continues, "seems to have arisen in the early 1990s, in the context of the bounce music scene in New Orleans."
So there it is in their list of new words, but none of Oxford, Collins and Chambers has added a full entry for TWERK. Sometimes with neologisms – like in the case of OMNISHAMBLES– it is crosswords that step into the no-man's land, effectively defining the term through clueing before the dictionaries sort themselves out.
Not so, it seems, with TWERK, which I haven't spotted in any of the British papers' puzzles. Thank goodness for the New York Times, then, which last Wednesday welcomed TWERK into the the crosswording world:
15. Area jiggled while twerking
A new clue for an 18th-century sense of REAR, but we're still lacking on the cryptic front – which brings us to our newest challenge. So, reader: how would you clue TWERK?
News of the clues
The Telegraph blesses its solvers with two tricky puzzles – but not on Saturdays. That's why the solvers' blog Big Dave commissions its own unofficial second Saturday puzzle for those who feel bereft after a single solve. It's become an established puzzle series in its own right, with challenges from established setters; it has also become a little academy for newer setters and has reached the 200 milestone with a joint-effort by "Hydra"– as good a place as any to start with this hidden gem.
Clueing competition
Thanks for your clues for LETHE WHARF. There were some smart cryptic definitions, including harlobarlo's "It erases memory bank" and Journeyman7's "Drink here and you'll lose your mind?".
Of the bardic references, I especially enjoyed artemiswolf's "Shakespearean king describes the way Hades' ports initiated forgetfulness here?", Clueso's "Where Hamlet left me bewildered fellow?" and LeSange's "Where Hamlet swims without me, note current location".
The audacity-in-clueing award is split between ixioned's Soulmates-styled "Health freak – 47, short arms, awkward around women, a bit inclined to forgetfulness …" and the blank verse from mojoseeker:
Hamlet, no more the actor timeless,
and the headless midget
got high at the dock of lost memory.
The runners-up are alberyalbery's poignant "Constant stream of senior moments – takes one to hell and back" and Middlebro's stark "Allow the man to slip into oblivion"; the winner is steveran's intricate "Here halfwit drowns forgetting about the current".
Kudos to Steve – please leave this fortnight's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the fortnight
A very plausible surface reading in the Times…
4ac Spy chiefbooksonecriminalfollowingtip from GeorgeSmiley? (8)
… deviously disguising that the smiley in question is an EMOTICON ;o).