Wodehouse asked them, but they remained unanswered – until now. Here are our crowdsourced solutions
Six clues. No answers. In the novel Something Fishy, Wodehouse seemed to have fallen out of love with the Times cryptic crossword. Throughout the story, Lord Uffenham racks his brain and fails to answer a series of clues; unusually for Wodehouse, no butler is on hand to furnish his lordship – or indeed the reader – with relief.
But where valets cannot provide, Guardian solvers can step in. For the most part, anyway.
So the subordinate professional on trial gets wages in advance not without demur
Not 100% cracked, but PAID UNDER PROTEST seems likely, with "subordinate" providing UNDER, "professional on trial" PRO and TEST, "wages" the PAY and the whole thing a rather iffy definition.
Naked without a penny has the actor become
This was no problem: an anagram of "naked" minus a penny (1d, in the old money) for the thespian Edmund KEAN.
No see here, it's a sort of church with a chapter
The trickiest one of all. TABERNACLE and CARTE BLANCHE can both be justified as anagrams of each other, give or take a CH; TEMPLE would be a good answer to an unsatisfying clue and CACHE the most convincing, with the C of E surrounding A for "a" and CH for "chapter". No wonder Lord Uffenham was scratching his head.
Spasmodic as a busy tailor
Almost certainly FITFUL as a double definition, the second one cryptic.
The ointment in short has no point
Another stinker, but most likely the aromatic oil NARD, also known as SPIKENARD (hence the missing of the point).
Tree gets mixed up with comic hat in scene of his triumphs
Another win for the Guardian crew: andyknott was quick of the mark in suggesting that an anagram of TREE and HAT gives THEATRE, the home of the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree, once a crosswording stalwart.
Of the dafter suggestions for alternate answers, JollySwagman put a fascinatingly detailed case for HAMLET and Middlebro's ARAUCARIA was hard to argue with …
'Tree gets mixed up' is an allusion to the 'monkey puzzle tree', ie 'araucaria' which is the (comic) 'hat' that the Reverend John Galbraith Graham MBE wears when setting crosswords for the Guardian – the scene of his triumphs.
… other than its being obviously wrong. Reader hardatwork suggested that "Actor gets mixed up with comic hat in scene of his triumphs" might have made it a more satisfying clue – I'm just glad that Tree has been chopped out of present-day puzzles.
Exclaim when the twine gives out (10)
Finally, we looked at a real-life clue which stumped Wodehouse: TCRIslington proffered the correct if irritating musical instruction STRINGENDO ("getting faster") and you went on to provide suggestions of better clues for the same entry.
Sam Bootle and Ryja kept things musical with "Crazy Ringo tends to get faster" and "Musical acceleration doesn't ring out" while JollySwagman concealed the context with "Prepare dinner togs for expedition". MaleficOpus mentioned an excellent real-life clue from the Hindu: "Grindstone turns faster and faster", but it's hard to beat andyknott's terse "Faster's dinner got disposed of".
Finally, 0800 noted with some poignancy: "I reckon it should be clued with its dictionary definition. That way I might (might) get the answer."
So what have we learned? That we should be glad of the tidying-up in crosswording that has taken place since the 1950s, that even a brain as nimble as Wodehouse's got stumped sometimes, but most of all that there is no cryptic problem that Guardian solvers cannot address with aplomb. Many thanks to everyone for putting to rest what had remained a bothersome note in an otherwise excellent novel.
If you've been reading the passages containing the clues and thinking that you really should get around to reading the whole thing, you're right.