Alan Connor finds classical composers and narrative devices in his pick of the week's best – and most hitchcockian – cryptic clues
The news in clues
A timely piece of medical advice from Tees in Tuesday's Independent:
18ac Overused fighters' actionbitistaken out (11)
Given the warnings from England's chief medical officer, "overused fighters" is a winningly misleading definition of ANTIBIOTICS.
Culture clue
For Araucaria's one across on Thursday...
1ac Austrian composerrendered inMontebello (9)
...you could get the answer either by rendering "montebello" in German, or by identifying Arnold SCHONBERG, who added another E to his surname when he moved to America. If you got stuck into the same setter's equally musical Easter bank holiday prize puzzle, meanwhile, the annotated solution is now available.
Latter patter
In Thursday's Times, we were asked to find...
4d Hostat homecollectingrubbishthat gets put in plot (8)
...the MCGUFFIN, defined by Collins as:
an object or event in a book or a film that serves as the impetus for the plot
In a 1939 lecture to the University of Columbia, Alfred Hitchcock said that the term was used around film studios; he defined it as the object that the characters are seeking, even if it's not what the picture is really about:
It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers. We just try to be a little more original.
He later suggested, in an interview with Francois Truffaut, that the word derived from a joke about a piece of equipment "for trapping lions in the Scottish highlands". The gag is that since Scotland has no lions outside of the Royal Standard, the MCGUFFIN has no actual use. Michael Walker writes in Hitchcock's Motifs that even though the uranium in Notorious is the secret of the atomic bomb, "the audience is simply not interested: it is the personal story which counts."
In my experience, MCGUFFIN is used more loosely than Hitchcock's description suggests: some critics use it to describe any contrivance which has the benefit of moving the story along and I've even heard writers talk about MCGUFFINs when discussing examples of a quite different technique which provides the subject of this week's challenge: reader, how would you clue DEI EX MACHINA?
Cluing competition
Thanks for your clues for the who-knew-it-was-rude SCUMBAG.
Of those which took heroin as part of the wordplay, the cheekiest was Ambush's "Piers Morgan supplies Spooner's dodgy heroin" and from the prophylactic clues, the tersest was andyknott's double-defining "A hard case?"
I enjoyed the '70s/'80s references in Subjunctiva's violent "A sock with snooker balls? You won't be 'the daddy' if you come up against this" and wellywearer2's Young Ones-referencing "Comedy College gives heads of serious courses sack after hesitation". And hats off to Peshwari for referencing last week's farting dalek in "Alien bum gas engulfs Third Doctor, causing infertility", however loose the definition. An old rumour was subtly rejuvenated by newmarketsausage's scurrilous "Slag stalked by Gladstone? He's a rotter!"
The runners-up are mojoseeker's technical "Fix Mac bugs for protection" and JollySwagman's topical-sounding "Bad guy offended Mugabe – sectarian conflict starts to erupt"; the winner is Truth101's angry acrostic "Leading shoddily, Cameron upstaged Miliband brothers and grew to become a nasty little man".
Kudos to Truth – please leave this week's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the week
Nominated by reader Dave Tilley, here's a delightfully elegant clue from the Sunday Telegraph...
22d Did not bidspadesafter shuffle (6)
...for PASSED. Virgilius comes up trumps again.