The Stickler Weekly 87 Solution

You may have heard of the term “crosswordese” which is the stuff that is only used in crosswords (normal and cryptic). It ranges from the use of a question mark to indicate “word abuse” to terms like “perhaps” which gets used as an anagram indicator. A subset of crosswordese is “cryptic cliches” which comprises terms that are almost always instantly recognisable for what they represent. Some examples: “Learner” = L; “revolutionary” = CHE; “(religious) book(s)” = OT/NT etc. In some ways they are boring, but totally necessary. The hardest part of solving a cryptic is at the start where there’s no/minimal help from crossing answers. Cryptic cliches help solvers get starts in clues, and I have no doubt solvers look for, and to some extent, rely on, these cryptic keywords. Of course setters should be aware of this and can control how much help they provide across the entire crossword by judicious use of these footholds.
New and lazy setters may default to constructing clues with multiple cryptic cliches – it’s the easy way out just to build a clue from basic, common pieces. Here’s an example:

Ear specialist love to look at soldier’s bone? (9)   O + TO + LO + GIS + T

There are no fewer than four cryptic cliches used in this clue! “love” = O (tennis); “look at” = LO (archaic); “soldier’s” = GI’S (American soldier) and “bone” = T (T-bone). While all of these get used regularly by some setters I no longer use LO due to its limited present-day use and close association with “look” and T isn’t a bone IMO. Note three other things about this clue: it’s grammatically incorrect (should be “loves”) there’s a “?” (indicating what?) and it’s easy to solve. Ultimately this last quality may be the main driver for how the clue is constructed and what makes it acceptable to the solving public.

Note that cryptic cliches can also be used to trick solvers, as they are almost always words/terms that have multiple meanings. So beware.