A pick of the best cryptic clues finds made-up words, both intentional and otherwise
Culture Clue
The crossword setters' favourite singer probably remains CHER, whose name provides a much more pliable set of letters than it would have done had she stuck with Cherilyn Sarkisian. A newer arrival in the pop world has a way to go before matching Cher's 25 UK chart singles, but as Arachne noted in a Friday puzzle…
1d Stylish Koreanworks in propaganda (6)
… Korean song'n'dance manPSY has even more potential, especially if you're clueing a term such as PSYOPS. Is Arachne suggesting that Psy is part of a South Korean soft-power programme? Nothing should surprise us.
Latter patter
Philistinekicked off with an evocative and underused term …
1ac Attendtailor, me? Unlikely (14)
… for a scruffbag, TATTERDEMALION. This 17th-century word feels ready-dusted with venerability, and perhaps deliberately so; Oxford gives its etymology as:
TATTER, or more probably TATTERED, with a factitious element suggesting an ethnic or descriptive derivative
Factitious etymologies are among the funnest in any dictionary, putting you in mind sometimes of someone artfully constructing a word to sound more like a wordy kind of word. In the case of CHIROPODIST, Oxford goes as far as speculating about the single individual, one D Low, who may have coined the term in 1785:
Whether the inventor put together Greek χείρ, χειρο- hand, and πούς, ποδ- foot, to indicate that hands and feet were the objects of his attention, or whether he had in view the ready-made Greek χειροπόδης (orχειρόπους, χειρόποδ-) 'having chapped feet', does not appear. The latter would better justify his formation, the former better suit his meaning.
Well, quite. Other words of factitious etymology are of course more recent, such as the subject of our new challenge. A gumbo of various parts HUGEOUS, MONSTROUS, STUPENDOUS and/or TREMENDOUS – reader, how would you clue HUMONGOUS?
Clueing competition
Thanks for your clues for SHOO. Lovely letters, as exploited by jonemm in "Pest removal is oh so difficult" and phitonelly's "Drive away after photo session finishes early" – and a promising sound too, as in LowfieldsRoad's "Order out pastry over the phone?".
The audacity award goes to Tedgar for "'Get lost, Sue,' says Connery" and likewise cinematic was morphiamonet's ingenious "Sam Peckinpah's first and last Oscars for The Getaway".
The runners-up are the plausible surface readings of MaleficOpus's "Get lost somewhere in London, throwing up insides" and steveran's "Get gasps of admiration riding backwards on your bike"; the winner is Journeyman7's magnificently terse "Silence rings out".
Kudos to Journeyman – please leave this fortnight's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Cross words about crosswords
The twitchforks were out yesterday regarding an apparent typo in the Observer's Everyman puzzle. The same paper's Victoria Coren Mitchellled the charge:
I have recently joined Victoria's crew at quiz show Only Connect as question editor, with the result that I have now been challenged to express my feelings on the matter. This blog's policy of not commenting on prize puzzles for which the solution has not yet been published prevents me from saying too much, but:
• I cannot find "dissarray" as a variant spelling of "disarray", even in the really big dictionaries;
• a typo in anagram fodder – the letters the solver needs to jumble to find the answer – is worse than a typo in the word indicating the anagram;
• but no typo is ever welcome;
• and especially not in puzzles that are beginner-friendly;
• but I would still recommend the Everyman to cryptic newcomers.
I am, moreover, happy to be quoted on all of the above at the inquest.
Clue of the fortnight
As charming as a clockwork egg, Radian – known locally as Crucible– was suitably both a tad vague and very precise…
8ac Time, say, covering5to9 (it varies) (7)
… in his clue for EVENING, and not an iron in sight. Dusky, yet brilliant.