I’d like to talk this week about choices made by setters when writing a clue. We’ve established before that setters can take the construction of a clue like 15-across in this puzzle: Upstanding people accepted by retired gentility (10). [FINE + MEN inside RET giving REFINEMENT] This clue could be Upstanding men accepted by retired gentility (10) or simply Fine men accepted by retired gentility (10). Very little effort is needed to make it easy, moderate or hard by just replacing a few words. The clue ultimately used reflects the choice of the setter, that is, whether a setter wants that particular clue to be easy, moderate or hard. This choice may be made to keep the whole crossword consistent in difficulty or possibly to present a balanced grid (that is, some may be hard, others easy and some somewhere in between).
I’d like to show you a recent clue published in an Australian paper that, as a setter, confuses me. Organised religion’s discontented worshipper (8). When I solve, I look for key words that could indicate what’s going on. I pick the obvious one first, try and solve based on that, and move on to another if that doesn’t work out. Here ORGANISED and DISCONTENTED stand out as possible anagram indicators, with DISCONTENTED potentially being an indicator of removing the entire contents of a word leaving the first and last letters (it should have a ? if used this way). Either way, that leaves WORSHIPPER the likely definition. Taking this approach, I tried a few things but nothing worked, so I tried another approach: A word for DISCONTENTED + a word for WORSHIPPER meaning “organised religion”. No joy. I realised if this was the path, ORGANISED would be largely redundant, so I went back to my original approach, this time looking for any words that could be made from the letters of RELIGIONS. I eventually came up with LIONISER, which means DISCONTENTED is used to remove the middle letter G. That certainly left me discontented! The question here, though, is why the setter chose to use DISCONTENTED (which employs a made-up use of the word anyway) to remove just one letter of the contents, when they could have easily used DISHEARTENED (still made up, but potentially much more accurate and recognisable)? It could be argued, of course, that the contents is G and the containers are RELI and IONS, but that makes DISCONTENTED a variable indicator, with multiple options. Great for a setter, but a nightmare for solvers. But why use it when something better is available? There’s only one explanation, as both provide a reasonable surface reading: DISHEARTENED is too easy and obvious and the setter wasn’t happy with that, and was prepared to sacrifice accuracy and, for me, fairness, to make the clue more difficult. I’ll leave you to judge whether such a decision is one that is to the benefit of the solver.
Across | Answers and Clues | Explanations |
1 | DOWN-TO-EARTH | |
Practical town organised nothing in famine (4-2-5) | (Anagram of TOWN + O) inside DEARTH | |
9 | HEDGERS | |
They maintain natural barriers with hard cutting tools (7) | H + EDGERS | |
10 | OFFENCE | |
Wrong type of bean ultimately used in brewed coffee (7) | BEA(N) inside Anagram of COFFEE | |
11 | LACKEY | |
Servant trimmed material with a fret pattern (6) | (LAC)E + KEY | |
12 | TOP ENDER | |
Northern Australian’s operation handled by volunteer (3,5) | OP inside TENDER | |
14 | ROTI | |
Crumble one type of bread (4) | ROT + I | |
15 | REFINEMENT | |
Upstanding people accepted by retired gentility (10) | (FINE + MEN) inside RET | |
18 | INDONESIAN | |
Asian one is briefly adopted by another? (10) | ONES inside INDIAN | |
19 | SPAT | |
Small blue gaiter (4) | Double Definition | |
22 | CASE-LOAD | |
Bag young man carrying round doctor’s work (4-4) | CASE + (LAD outside O) | |
24 | GROUND | |
Put the first coat of paint on anchor (6) | Double Definition | |
26 | ERRATIC | |
Variable, one excluded from adjusted criteria (7) | Anagram of CRITERIA minus I | |
27 | WOULD-BE | |
Aspiring bridge player misused double (5-2) | W + anagram of DOUBLE | |
28 | SHEET ANCHOR | |
A notch roughly cut into very steep chief support (5,6) | Anagram of A NOTCH inside SHEER | |
Down | Answers and Clues | Explanations |
1 | DEDICATED | |
Committed cadet died in an bad way (9) | Anagram of CADET DIED | |
2 | WEEDER | |
Small rose, say, set back gardener (6) | WEE + (RED reversed) | |
3 | TEST | |
Sample is taken from back of ball (4) | TESTIS minus IS | |
4 | ECONOMICAL | |
Inexpensive ecstasy active in entertaining (10) | E + (ON inside COMICAL) | |
5 | REFLEXES | |
Whistleblower, left with old friends, turns back (8) | REF + L + EXES | |
6 | HONED | |
Pieces of jarrah on edges should be polished (5) | jarraH ON EDges | |
7 | WHALER | |
World record broken by sound Japanese “research” vessel? (6) | WR outside HALE | |
8 | LEARNT | |
Found out fast about a leader of rebellion (6) | LENT outside [A + (R)EBELLION] | |
13 | PERSIAN CAT | |
Pussy lump injected with mixture of arsenic (7,3) | PAT outside anagram of ARSENIC | |
16 | EXPOUNDER | |
Show subordinate to interpreter (9) | EXPO + UNDER | |
17 | UNCLOTHE | |
Uncle trimmed round the strip (8) | (UNCL)E + O + THE | |
18 | INCHES | |
Popular board game largely moves slowly (6) | IN + (CHES)s | |
20 | TIDIES | |
Orders papers wearing formal clothing (6) | ID inside TIES | |
21 | GROUCH | |
Whinger’s gross exclamation of pain (6) | GR + OUCH | |
23 | SORES | |
Cuts formed by mouth ulcers, say (5) | Sounds like SAWS | |
25 | TWIN | |
Endless yarn is very like another (4) | (TWIN)E |
David, I would have been totally at sea with the discontented, if I had ever arrived at the solution you got. I would have taken the entire contents out leaving only the first and last letter thus rs or wr, or maybe even rn The clue is definitely discontented religion’s.
Did the clue come from the current crop in our daily newspapers?
On a positive note your “upstanding people” gave me grief because of the way I read the clue. I was looking for and found “nem” but the rest did not parse. In desperation, I sounded the clue out word by word and the light bulb exploded. That to me is a great clue.
Like Richard, I suffered withdrawal symptoms, returning to the blog page to see whether anybody had posted recently. What a tragic!
Worse things to be ‘tragic’ about Arthur……………
To say nothing of being good Mind Medication in every sense,
also a very welcome departure.
& yes totally At Sea & Discontented about Discontented……