The Stickler Weekly 144 Solution

1-across, Convener’s primary problem at talk (8), reminded me of a clue for the same word back in 2005. No my memory isn’t that good, but the clue raised an issue with at least one solver at the time and he posted a question about it on rec.puzzles.crosswords: The clue was Gossip about couple’s cat (8). In order for the solver to arrive at the answer two things have to be understood. First, couple’s has to be interpreted couple is and the possessive nature that it appears to have must be ignored. Second, and more importantly, the reading of the wordplay (that is now about couple is cat) has to be interpreted in a different way to what you would expect. That is, about (around) a word for couple is a word for (or in this case the word itself) cat. It needs to be considered in the same manner you might say “under a table is a cat”, where you can picture a cat under a table. So here cat is about couple. Not difficult once you understand how the clue is to be read, but certainly different from how clues are normally structured. You’ll be pleased to know that I don’t employ this structure very often (it all comes down to what works best in a wordplay/clue), and if I do I’ll let the solver know through the clue hints on this website. The newsgroup posting above explores the validity of this divergence but I think Steve Ball said it best:
“… it doesn’t present a fatal problem for me. After all,
these are crossword clues, and they’re supposed to mislead. I can’t
imagine anyone saying ‘flower’ when they mean ‘river’, but, as long as
there’s a valid, grammatical way to understand what’s written, I think it’s
allowable. It’s when the grammar is *wrong* that I think the stretch is too
far.”