The Stickler Weekly 124 Solution

Writing clues over a long period has pluses and negatives. On the plus side, a mental formula develops that helps get to a reasonable clue in the most efficient way. Basically, you get better at writing them the more you do them. You learn how to achieve wordplay goals through experience, like creating a plural definition from a wordplay that has a singular feel. On the negative side, there are only so many new things out there, so trying to be constantly fresh can be draining. One thing I have learnt though, is that if I choose my grid words smartly, then writing a reasonable clue shouldn’t be very hard, as a cluing approach has already be thought through. Better, if a word does turn out to be difficult to clue, time and effort WILL tease a decent clue loose. In fact, I’d go further to say that EVERY reasonable word or phrase pre-selected in a grid has a really good clue lurking, just waiting to be found, no matter how futile the process can sometimes seem.
In this crossword, the last word to be clued was 12-across: LOUNGE. Selected on the basis of O inside LUNGE and the multiple word forms of LOUNGE, it seemed no different to most of the words in the crossword from a cluing perspective, however, I just couldn’t tie a wordplay with a definition to my satisfaction, no matter how hard I tried. Setters short on time and motivation just butt the two together anyhow, making no effort to disguise the link. Such clues are easy to solve as the definition stands out so much that the wordplay plays a minor, or sometimes, no role.
Experience showed that I could clue LOUNGE well – the clue was there, I just had to find it. I persisted and pored over my references until a breakthrough: LOUNGE = LIE ABOUT – finally a term I could work with, one that has many meanings and a built-in linker. Now for LUNGE. Nothing easy here that goes well with the definition (I wanted something shady to emphasise the “lie” part of the definition) until I read about a move in fencing – ah, that’s illegal in the right context: how can I use it? I worked with “fencing action” and “fencing move” and almost settled there, but added “charge” after further reading of the LUNGE definition. Perfect. Now to put the O in there. Not hard in the end, although it didn’t come to me straight away. So there you have it, a word I found difficult to clue, but with time and effort and the belief that a good clue was there that just needed teasing out, a good outcome was achieved.

Lie about fencing charge, admitting nothing (6)