The Stickler Weekly 116 Solution

This week I’m going to be more self-indulgent than I usually am. I’m often asked about repetition and coming up with new ideas. The truth is that in a 15 x 15 cryptic grid, repetition of the grid words is inevitable, especially if you limit yourself to what I would call appropriate words. Not all words in the dictionary are suitable to clue, either technically or demographically, as the crossword must suit the average solver’s knowledge and vocabulary. Over time some words, especially short ones, keep cropping up. The compiling software is partially to blame, as it seeks the best path to grid completion, but the final choice is always mine. When a common word appears, I get a list of the clues I’ve used before, and scan them to see how I’ve tackled the word in the past. Most words provide multiple wordplay paths, but some don’t, and those that don’t I’ll usually pass by. However, sometimes towards the end of the grid build, I’ll have no choice (unless I want to rework an entire section) and I don’t look forward to coming up with something new. This is what happened with the answer to 1 down, DEBATE, last week. I had ten different clues already and couldn’t think of another way to tackle it. There’s BAT/TAB in DEE, BAT/TAB in (DEE)D, BE< in DATE, BED< + ATE, DEB + AT + E with numerous variations: it seemed to me I’d worked most of the angles. One obvious one left was DEB + ATE, but not all combinations work with wordplay and definition, so the fact I hadn’t clued it before meant to me I couldn’t find the right combination. This is where persistence and effort comes in: I looked up everything I could find regarding DEB and ATE, trying to spot different terms and descriptions, anything to convey the right words without watering down the wordplay components too much. Sometimes just one part of a wordplay comes to the party, and the other stubbornly holds true to itself enough to create a mismatch, which is what I thought was going to be the result of this clue. DEB = One who’s coming out was great, but how to link it to ATE and DEBATE? In my time I must have searched for synonyms for EAT and ATE a thousand times, so when I started looking again I didn’t hold out much hope for something suitable. I was prepared to look, be disappointed and start writing the clue a different way, but no, I found a term I hadn’t used before that fitted perfectly: had something. Combined with a definition for DEBATE in verb form and I think I created the perfect clue – One who’s coming out had something to consider (6). Really simple in construction that reads well, with deception and economy. My favourite sort of clue.