As a little diversion, here's an alphabet jigsaw I knocked up while bored earlier. Solve the clues and then fit solutions into the grid. In each case the letter is the first of the solution, the grid is numbered only for convenience. Good luck!
A Accursed (8)
B Billiard table covering (5)
C Pepper (7)
D Greatful Dead fan (4,4)
E Online auction site (1-3)
F Icy desert (6,5)
G Leave (2,5)
H Unbeliever (7)
I Infectious disease (9)
J Non-fat eater in nursery rhyme (4,9)
K Leg protector (4,3)
L Humbert's girlfriend (6)
M Repair (4,4)
N Brandname painkiller (7)
O Motorcycle escort (8)
P Talking bird (6)
Q Leave (4)
R Aide memoire (8)
S Musical compilation (7)
T Animal-like (8)
U Ascending (6)
V Student sports event (7)
W Danger sign (7)
X Horizontal scale on graph (1-4)
Y Surely not? (3,4,4)
Z Musical instrument (6)
No, I don't think so. I find it very tough, indeed often basically impossible, when something's synonym-ed and then anagrammed; could that be what you mean? I've never minded the two happening separately to different parts of the answer, and indeed that's very commonplace.
Have you got the wordplay straight, it occurs to me? "As" = "for" and "ribena drunk" = "ebrain"?
I find it very tough, indeed often basically impossible, when something's synonym-ed and then anagrammed
yeah, that's a definite no-no, and I'm pretty sure you won't find it used as a device in even the toughest of cryptics that get published in the newspapers, as it not so much difficult as downright unfair. (And the same goes for removal - you can use a synonym to indicate the removal of a word if that word appears unaltered within another word or phrase, but you can't really use a synonym to indicate the removal of letters that are scattered across a word or phrase but which can come together to form a word - as ad hoc did in his last clue, as it goes, but "enjoyment" led to "fun" easily enough, and the directions for the setter were clear enough, that it was still solvable.)
Comment