Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

No anagram involved.

I'm not sure how much to give away in advance of your setting the next clue; I don't want to give some sneaky type the chance to gazump you.

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

_ _ _ _ _ - _ Y _ _ / _ O _ _ _ _ _

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

Object tense and toothy - as eg Alan Green-eyed monster killer.

(7 , 5)

still can't figure it out though

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

The big wall at Fenway Park is the Green Monster; dick = detective = eye; day = d.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

It's sufficiently abstruse as to be something that, even when explained, I wouldn't expect to get.

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

I don't think it's abstruse as a clue (dick=eye in particular is fairly commonplace), though the Fenway Park fact is a bit obscure.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

I'm not familiar with the dick=detective=eye conjugation (which as a double definition, were it not commonplace might, by some, be deemed unfair)

I might have been able to find out about Fenway Park but I wouldn't connect it to John Henry without a lot of googling.

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

Just google John W Henry.

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

I agree that that aspect of the clue is a bit rough, though, as I say.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

Googling John W Henry doesn't bring up anything about a Green Monster- or even Fenway Park.

But there's no point in getting all huffy- after all, it's just a game.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

An object tense and toothy - as, say, Alan Green-eyed monster killer.

(7, 5)

_ _ C _ _ _ _

_ L _ _ _

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

Gosh. I admit, I can't for the life of me work out how you got "huffy" from anything I've written, even allowing for the usual vagaries of reading for tone online. But since, somehow, you have, please assure yourself that you're mistaken: I'm fine. Though slightly baffled.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

I think your clue was unfair.

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

That's coming across, yeah.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

You've objected when you consider clues unfair. I'm availing myself of the same facility.

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

Indeed. As you're quite entitled to do.

I'm happy to enlarge, if you like, on why I thought it was OK.

[Andy C]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

I must confess, I can't remember encountering (I was going to say "coming across" but realised that the turn of phrase might be unwise, considering my next word) DICK = EYE before. Might this be a common convention in the Graun, which I don't do regularly?

I don't think I'd have got this, because I wouldn't have found it easy to make the leap from one slang term to another, rather than one of the terms being the "formal" name. But I've led a very sheltered life.

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

I don't know if it's a Guardian thing or not; my feeling was that as slang terms, they're synonyms. Happy to accept the consensus on that though.

I thought the reference to Fenway Park was genuinely tricky, and my feeling is we differ a bit, collectively, on how OK that kind of slightly arcane fact is.

All, in all, not the one I've been happiest with, but I found the last answer fairly tough to fit into a clue.

Stuck, incidentally.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

Nefertiti2 wrote:

An object tense and toothy - as, say, Alan Green-eyed monster killer (or dandy)

(7, 5)

_ _ C _ S _ _

_ L _ _ _

[Wyatt Earp]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

Still stuck.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

An object tense and toothy, as, say , Alan Green-eyed monster killer (or dandy)

(7, 5)

_ _ C _ S _ _

_ L _ D _

What kind of clue can I offer which would help you reach at least part of the answer, effectively if inelegantly? Once youv'e got that you should be on the way to a structure to which you can fit the solution.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

And page

[Hofzinser]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

In terms of unfair clues, I think there's a massive difference between a clue that is structurally deficient, and a clue that requires obscure knowledge to solve.

The former can be unsolvable, or close to it, because even if you somehow hit upon the right answer you can't be sure it's right. It can't be tested properly against the clue because the clue doesn't parse precisely to the answer. A clue which only makes vague allusions to the clue, or contains meaningful words that play no part in the solution - among various other possible strucutural problems - comes into this category because if only some of the clue appears to lead to the answer then the solver can't confidently solve it - indeed, that sort of thing actively diminishes confidence.

On the other hand, while obscure knowledge can be unfair - especially if you can't reasonably expect your audience to know it and the clue is unlikely to be solved without the required knowledge - as long as the clue is structurally sound then the solver always has a chance. If you chance upon the right answer, then you can see what the definition is and then see what the cryptic bit must be (or vive versa). You can then test your hypothesis by doing some research on the obscure facts. It may be a difficult solve, but if the right answer is arrived at then the solver can, in principle, parse the clue and be completely confident that their answer is the correct one.

A clue which requires arcane knowledge for both the cryptic bit and the definition bit would be unfair, for my money, because the solver doesn't really have much of a foothold that would enable them to arrive at a tentative answer.

But the key thing with a fair clue is that the solver can be confident that they have the right answer - and that's much more about structuring the clue soundly than it is about the content of the clue.

[Nefertiti2]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

In the most recent case. I could guess the solution to a clue with the word "jealousy" with the letter distribution (5- 4, 7). As letters were added my hunch was confirmed but I was utterly unable of working out how the other material worked even though I knew the answer.

The cryptic element "John W Henry's Great Wall consuming Dick Day

One part was dependent on knowing the name of part of the baseball ground owned by John W Henry- but there could be many ways of parsing that name - say Kings of England or an American Folk hero.

I spent ages trying to make the clue fit the answer. I saw "all-consuming" which could be some other reference to jealousy. I saw bits of green eyed I thought about Henry (V111) being a monster. It relied on two pieces of obscurity. One obscurity of fact-the name of a part of a baseball ground not easily researchable in relation to John W Henry and one obscurity of definition that Dick (made even more tricky by the use of a deliberately inaccurate capital letter) was "not uncommon" amongst crossword mavens as a synonym for eye. I couldn't confidently solve it. Although I had a pretty good idea I knew the answer I couldn't be sure it was right.

[Duncan Gardner]

Friday Cryptic Crossword Game

Where hacksaw blades (9,6,5,3)?