Alan Connor finds words that mean one thing and then another in his pick of the week's best – and rockiest – cryptic clues
Cluing coincidence
From Morph in Thursday's Independent …
12ac Fishwho's stirring on-line (5)
... a double definition of TROLL hidden in some angling imagery, by coincidence also used by Enigmatist in a Guardian prize puzzle...
13ac Fishcause trouble for surfers (5)
... for which the annotated solution is now available. Last month we had a look at the regrettable shift in meaning of the social-media sense of TROLL; it's cheering to see how well it meshes with the older, fishier context. In his Nimrod guise, Enigmatist also constructed a touching hidden tribute in Tuesday's Independent, which you can read about at solvers' blog Fifteen Squared.
The news in clues
Perhaps topical only in the Daily Express, Tyrus evoked memories of one of Tabloidworld's troll-like figures in his Independent prize puzzle:
1d 8 and 24 to die if caught (he claimed) (4,7)
Since 8ac was BUTLER and 24ac ROCK (also hinted at by A HARD PLACE at 22ac), and with "caught" indicating a soundalike clue, we're looking for a butler and rock to "Di" – the irrepressible PAUL BURRELL.
Latter patter
In his FT prize puzzle, Dogberry – known locally as Shed– was circumspect in his definition …
16d OutréEnglishbird not quiteembracing (say) compiler (9)
...of EGREGIOUS, an archetype of the category "words that have flipped meaning". Oxford lists a 16th-century sense at entry two, "Remarkable in a good sense", followed by "Remarkable in a bad sense", noting:
This sense does not belong to Latin egregius or to Italian egregio; probably it arose from an ironical use of 2, though our earliest quotations afford no evidence of this.
While meaning-flipping is what crosswords are all about, the possibility of causing annoyance by using one sense or another means that EGREGIOUS is probably best avoided outside of puzzles for the moment, unless you're drawing attention to its potential for confusion, as when Ross in The League of Gentleman bamboozles Pauline by asking: "Would you say you're a fairly egregious person? Are you an egregious person? Do you have an egregious personality?"
When others use the word, by contrast, it's not too tricky to work out what they mean. When, earlier this year, a JP Morgan chief exec described the loss of $2bn as "one we put in the egregious category", we can be confident he didn't mean "remarkable in a good sense". Surely.
A much-loved example of a meaning-flipper is the one which in the 14th century meant "foolish, silly, simple" and is this week's challenge. Reader, how would you clue NICE?
Cluing competition
Thanks for your clues for TOYS R US. Of the Toy Story-related clues, the most elegant was drawfull's "Original US story featuring Woody and Buzz Lightyear?" and it was lovely to see how well Tolstoy lent himself to cluing, as in steveran's "Fun and games at Tolstoy's Russian hideaway".
ebba169 even managed the reverse-R with "A place of childhood merriment in Tolstoy's Яussia" and much respect to Insidian for cluing it with its proper name "ya", in: "Little dogs, ya?" Posh son's Xmas list and then some."
The runners-up are the irresistible surface reading of ThePointlessForest's "Just for fun, place donut over geyser's core" and Asinjon's Cyclops-like "Boris, finally shafting Tory party, has extreme urges at place where playthings can be bought"; the winner is WoodSmoke's familiar-sounding "Store tomorrow's old yard-sale rubbish under stairs initially". Kudos to WoodSmoke – please leave this week's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the week
A sly cryptic definition in Thursday's Telegraph…
5d Revolutionary device for disposing of nuts? (10)
… for GUILLOTINE. Chop chop!