[JamieG]

Is it Constable?

[john horscroft]

Is it Constable?

Yes officer!  Your turn..... 

[nik at work]

Can you explain the first clue please John, I'm all at sea.

[john horscroft]

Can you explain the first clue please John, I'm all at sea.

Painter's dislike way to be efficient (9)

Dislike = con as in pros and cons, (not a brilliant synonym I now realise)
way = street, st
efficient = able

so, maybe 7/10 for that one.....   

[JamieG]

I, Constable, am found to be famous (4)

[nik at work]

Insatiable musical icon in Guyana (6)


(forgot a word, doh)

[SA Chris]

bugger, too slow.

[nik at work]

Painter's dislike way to be efficient (9)

Dislike = con as in pros and cons, (not a brilliant synonym I now realise)

efficient = able

I think those two synonyms are a bit of a stretch, but then I'm no expert. I guess you get these looser links as things get trickier. Your second clue seems better to me (but maybe it's just easier ).
Am I the only one offering feedback here? Because I also get the feeling I have probably the least experience of these things so may not be in the best position to offer an opinion (that want stop me offering one mind...)

[tlr]

Feedback - some good clues being put together, but some of them don't seem to me to quite make the given answer (or maybe I'm just bitter because I didn't get them.)

eg. 'to be famous' gives ICONIC, not ICON I'd say?

Likewise with Johns first clue 'Painter's doesn't give an artist due to the apostrophe S. I think John's construction after that is fine though (although able for efficient is a bit of a stretch). Second clue was good.

Years of doing the Torygraph crossword has taught me that every word, letter and piece of puntuation is relevant. Generally very little general knowledge is needed, so Dumas clue was pretty obscure.

The correct answers are being found though, so they must be good enough! Maybe I'm not twisted enough.

[tlr]

Insatiable musical icon in Guyana (6)


(forgot a word, doh)

Think I've got it, I'll think of a clue and you can tell me I'm wrong....

[JamieG]

Feedback - some good clues being put together, but some of them don't seem to me to quite make the given answer (or maybe I'm just bitter because I didn't get them.)

eg. 'to be famous' gives ICONIC, not ICON I'd say?

Fair criticism.

I'd sat at my desk trying to think of a clue for about half an hour before coming up with that . . . and it was lunchtime . . . and I was hungry . . . and . . .

It is really difficult coming up with a clue, plus you have the pressure of everyone else waiting.

[nik at work]

Insatiable musical icon in Guyana (6)


(forgot a word, doh)

Think I've got it, I'll think of a clue and you can tell me I'm wrong....

If you thing you've got it I imagine you have indeed got it. I originally posted the clue without the first word:
Musical icon in Guyana (6)
Which would have been a lot harder I think, but would it still have been a vaild clue in your opinion or is there not enough information in it?

[Duma]

Think I've got it, I'll think of a clue and you can tell me I'm wrong....

me too, the race is on...

[nik at work]

I'm finding that it takes me ages to solve a clue but once I have the solution it only take me a few minutes to think of a clue. I suspect this may be because my clues are rubbish.

[Duma]

Insatiable musical icon in Guyana (6)


(forgot a word, doh)

Think I've got it, I'll think of a clue and you can tell me I'm wrong....

If you thing you've got it I imagine you have indeed got it. I originally posted the clue without the first word:
Musical icon in Guyana (6)
Which would have been a lot harder I think, but would it still have been a vaild clue in your opinion or is there not enough information in it?

If that's valid, I reckon I haven't got it.
It takes me ages  to do either, and my clues are still l(l)ame, so don't fash yourself as ARFK might say.

[tlr]

Oriental revolutionary leaves greedy man drunkenly threadbare. 5

[tlr]

In my opinion without the word insatiable it isn't a valid cryptic crossword clue.

There nearly always has to be a simple synonym in the clue somewhere, usually at the beginning or the end. The rest of the clue confirms the answer and/or helps construct the original synonym.

[Duma]

Well, if I was wrong, at least we were both wrong.

[tlr]

My thinking was: GY short for Guyana (Guyanan websites are .gy) with Reed (for Lou Reed I guess) inside.

[Duma]

Same here, I just wasn't sure about the gy bit being valid without checking.

[nik at work]

You're both spot on, I was thinking of adding something about a website or something to lead to GY but then it became unwieldy and even more obvious.

I had the synonym in my head but for some reason didn't type it. I guess because I thought of the other bit of the clue first then added the synonym in my head if you get what I mean. But having typed it without it still seemed solvable, although it would probably be very hard.
So there always has to be a synonym?
What about those sound-alike clues do they need synonyms? E.g. Numeral has already eaten we hear? (5) could you drop the numeral?

Or what about clues like Duma's where the answer doesn't really have a synonym (Fitzroy)?

Sorry if this is all basic stuff.

[tlr]

‘Eight’ is a numeral, so there is a synonym of sorts.

For Dumas clue I’d say he should have used the word mountain or peak or summit maybe as the ‘synonym’, in the way that John used PAINTER


Wikepedia explains it better than me:

In essence, a cryptic clue leads to its answer as long as you read it in the right way. What the clue appears to say when read normally (the surface reading) is a distraction and usually has nothing to do with the clue answer. The challenge is to find the way of reading the clue that leads to the solution.

A typical clue gives you two ways of getting to the answer, either of which can come first. One part of the clue is a definition, which usually exactly matches the part of speech, tense, and number of the answer. The other part (the subsidiary indication, or wordplay) gives you an alternative route to the answer. (This part would be a second definition in the case of double definition clues.) One of the tasks of the solver is to find the boundary between definition and wordplay and insert a mental pause there when reading the clue cryptically. (Sometimes the two parts are joined with a link word or phrase such as "from" or "could be".)

Because a typical cryptic clue describes its answer in detail and often more than once, the solver can usually have a great deal of confidence in the answer once it has been determined. This is in contrast to non-cryptic crossword clues which often have several possible answers and force the solver to use the crossing letters to distinguish which was intended.

[nik at work]

‘Eight’ is a numeral, so there is a synonym of sorts.

So:

Numeral has already eaten we hear? (5) is fine

Whereas:

Has already eaten we hear? (5) is not valid

I think I'm starting to get a bit more of a handle on it. So the trick isn't coming up with a clue (which is actually pretty easy) but rather coming up with a clue which follows the rules yet is still unobvious and tricky to solve and yields a definite clear solution.

[tlr]

Bingo.

Because in your second version there wouldn't be any confirmation of your answer. Generally in a cryptic crossword you know when you have the right answer.

Try the Saturday Telegraph crossword - its the easiest of the broadsheets I reckon and the only one I regularly finish. The Times is too hard for me and the Guardian is just weird (and so is the crossword....). You don't have to read the rest of the paper if you don't want to.

[nik at work]

Have a wad for services to my cryptic understanding.