The Stickler Weekly 180 Solution

A few weeks ago, while constructing a grid of words for The Stickler Weekly, the phrase “one in a thousand” came up in the list as an option. Over the years my process of choosing words to clue has changed from a general “it looks ok, so use it” to “I must have a clueing idea before including it”. I’ve had too many cases where a word proved hard to clue, slowing me down, and the result was often an inferior clue. By giving just a little consideration to how a word or phrase might be clued, a much better grid results and the clueing process (having been partially done) is much easier. In this case there’s good anagram potential (7 consonants and 7 vowels), so there’s a fallback clueing option if other constructions don’t work out. I can also see a number of words (ON, AT, US, AN, THOU, SAND, AND) that can be used as is or with synonyms, so a container/anagram clue might also be possible. It was while I was thinking about all this that I realised the phrase, when considered cryptically, “created” a word. One (I) in [A + M (Roman numerals for a thousand)] = AIM. By itself, AIM doesn’t define “One in a thousand” (the answer forms the wordplay, rather than the wordplay forming the answer), and even with a suitable definition, AIM needs more wordplay to actually give the solver a chance of unravelling it. I’m happy to use this kind of thing, with wordplay that tells the solver what’s going on, so I added this to the list of possible clueing options and moved on to the definition side of the equation. The phrase must have good coverage across my references (as an international cryptic I want to see it in at least one English, one US, and one Australian reference) and have enough and appropriate synonyms so that there’s choice when trying to seamlessly join with the wordplay. It was at this point I hit a snag. I found the term in Chambers and Macquarie only, and no US references had it. There was plenty of good synonyms available, but just not enough coverage. It was close though. Then a revelation: the term “one in a million” popped up as the more common term (inflation over time, I suppose), and I realised my AIM idea worked for both terms (M = million). Being not unique, I abandoned the AIM idea completely and picked a different word for the grid altogether.