{"id":770,"date":"2017-04-09T15:38:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-09T14:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/?p=770"},"modified":"2018-12-12T10:17:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T10:17:09","slug":"foul-play-definite-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/09\/foul-play-definite-maybe\/","title":{"rendered":"Foul Play? A Definite Maybe…"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent\u00a0Azed puzzle featured a clue\u00a0along the lines of\u00a0this one:<\/p>\n

Half the fans received stick\u00a0(5)<\/span><\/p>\n

for\u00a0FAGOT (FA(ns) + GOT).<\/p>\n

But surely ‘Half the fans’ is THE plus half of the letter F (whatever that might look like)?<\/p>\n

I can accept<\/p>\n

Half the Italian fans beginning to fuel row\u00a0(4)<\/span><\/p>\n

for TIFF (TIF(osi) + F(uel))<\/p>\n

since what\u00a0the clue requires us\u00a0to take half of does not explicitly appear in the clue, so the parsing process can reasonably be<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. ‘the Italian fans’ \u21d2 TIFOSI<\/li>\n
  2. ‘Half TIFOSI’ \u21d2 TIF<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But in the first example, we are being asked to\u00a0mentally vault straight over\u00a0the definite article\u00a0to the words ‘fans’. As far as I’m concerned, when the letters appearing in the clue are themselves to be manipulated, superfluous articles cannot be acceptable when they appear in the middle of\u00a0a cryptic element.\u00a0I certainly wouldn’t be impressed by:<\/p>\n

    Restrain\u00a0a chap holding measure (4)<\/span><\/p>\n

    as a ‘hidden’ for\u00a0INCH ((restra)IN (a)<\/strong> CH(ap)),<\/p>\n

    Lively conflict before start of the match\u00a0\u00a0(4)<\/span><\/p>\n

    for\u00a0WARM (WAR + (the)<\/strong> M(atch)), or<\/p>\n

    See a chap cooking fruit\u00a0(7)<\/span><\/p>\n

    for\u00a0PEACHES ((SEE (a)<\/strong> CHAP)*).<\/p>\n

    The referee\u2019s response? Where letters in the \u00a0clue itself<\/em> are to be selected or rearranged, there should be no misleading verbiage between the selection\/rearrangement indicator and the target word(s), including the definite or indefinite articles.\u00a0Replays may prove me wrong, but\u00a0I reckon it’s\u00a0a straight red…and we’ll have no dissent when leaving the pitch, if you\u00a0please.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Or am I being unreasonable?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Should we allow superfluous articles within an element of a cryptic wordplay, for instance the word ‘the’ in ‘middle of the day’ for A?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foul-play"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}