Can you help solve the real-life cryptic clue for which PG Wodehouse had no answer?
Thanks for your most recent thoughts about the clues in the PG Wodehouse novel Something Fishy.
Before we take stock of our success and otherwise in solving the clues for which Wodehouse gave no answers, a bonus extra mystery. This time, we're looking at a real-life clue.
It's fair to say that PG Wodehouse did not have what they call "a good war". He spent some of it in Paris, and there has been muchdiscussion of his decision to make radio programmes saying that all was tickety-boo for him in occupied Europe.
The letters written by Wodehouse at the time don't show much agonising or other thought about world events. He wondered about how his old school was doing in sports matches and longed for a newspaper, until, in February 1945, he wrote to the novelist Denis MacKail:
Already things are much better in Paris as regards reading, as we now get the London papers a day after publication, and I have been able to resume my Times crossword puzzles. (What is 'Exclaim when the twine gives out' in ten letters?)
The collection of Wodehouse correspondence does not reveal whether MacKail was able to help. It doesn't seem as if Wodehouse himself solved the clue, and by May the very idea of cryptics left him despondent:
I have finally and definitely given up the Times crossword puzzles. The humiliation of only being able to fill in about three words each day was too much for me.
I for one am not surprised. It's not an easy clue. But perhaps you can help, reader. And at last we have a letter-count. What is "Exclaim when the twine gives out (10)"?
Rules
• One piece of wordplay or suggested definition at a time.
• Wild speculation is as welcome as precision.
• Explanations of any out-of-date abbreviations, people or vocabulary very welcome.
• Alternate answers that fit the definition and wordplay very welcome, even if obviously inaccurate.