Crossword roundup: covert spies and cats' whiskers

The news in clues

Spies and setters; setters and spies. From Bletchley to 007 via D-Day, these two types of intelligence have swapped notes for the last century. So the solver is forgiven a little speculation.

For example, a recent Independent puzzle by Punk (read our Q&A with him here) appeared to be themeless until ... if you want to find out for yourself, solve the puzzle now.

There was a theme, and it was in neither the clues nor their answers. Hidden around the edge of the completed grid could be seen some familiar names: BURGESS, MACLEAN, PHILBY and BLUNT. And for a few days, it seemed that this might be all there was to it: a little bonus that might help the solver by giving him or her some free letters if they spotted the spies mid-solve.

Then, with the ink barely dry, a recording seeped into the public domain: one of those perimetric agents telling the Stasi in 1981 how he had managed to remain hidden because he had been “born into the British governing class”.

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Coincidence? Ah, surely we know by now that in crosswords and in espionage, there are no coincidences. If I were Smiley, I’d have a look through the recent Guardian puzzle set by Punk under another of his codenames and ask myself just why it begins with so many colourful entries ...

Latter patter

Our Cryptics for Beginners series has a collection of excellent double definitions; here’s another one, seamlessly presented, by Dante (Q&A) in the FT:

17ac The best parts of old wireless sets (4,8)

Both halves of the clue yield the CAT’S WHISKERS, originally a fine adjustable wire of copper or gold, later an expression for the acme of excellence. The latter sense has been used by Wodehouse, but it was inspired by an expression preferred by Dorothy L Sayers: the CAT’S PYJAMAS. And it wasn’t Sayers who coined it, but the sports cartoonist “Tad” Dorgan. In his excellent book Language!: Five Hundred Years of the Vulgar Tongue, Jonathon Green describes Dorgan as someone ...

to whom slang coinages are (mis-)attributed just as one-liners are to Wilde or Dorothy Parker

... but Britannica is confident in giving him the credit for “hard-boiled” (in the noirish sense) and “for crying out loud”. (They also give him “hot dog”, but the cat seems better justified than the dog.) And Oxford tentatively associates Dorgan with another word: a fictitious place name that became a synonym for humbug and the subject of our next challenge. Reader, how would you clue MALARKEY?

Clueing competition

Thanks for your clues for BEELZEBUB. A tricky set of letters and a wide range of devices, such as harlobarlo’s wicked spoonerism: “Spooner’s insect will stand in for devil”, and of surfaces, such as DameSweeneyEggblast taking us fiendishly back to the bad old days of the Britpop wars with: “He hated Beetlebum – featuring Blur’s first jazz ending – but without finding them heartless”.

In a closely fought battle, the audacity award goes to cmiall for the diabolical “Progressively add KY data? Fiendish!”

The runners-up are schroduck’s devilish acrostic: “Chiefly because entrepreneur Evgeny Lebedev’s zillions evaporated, bamboozler’s unemployed? Boo!” and ixioned’s heinous “A gentle wind runs forward, changing direction, boy it’s hot in his place!”. The winner? Of harlobarlo’s longer and shorter versions of a clue, I preferred the way that “Member of Hell’s Angels?” wickedly condenses one of the biggest stories ever told into four words.

Kudos to Harlo; please leave this fortnight’s entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.

Clue of the fortnight

A medley of different terms and a spot of ecclesiastical lingo in Osmosis’s Telegraph Toughie clue ...

8d Two private rooms churchman’s done up for singer (4,6)
[ (American) word for a loo (one �private room’) + a word for a study (another �private room’) + reversed (�up’) abbreviation for a churchman ]
[ JOHN + DEN + VER ]

... for JOHN DENVER. Here’s to Deutschendorf Jr!