Thanks for your help solving the clue which stumped PG Wodehouse.
By the 1940s, Wodehouse was falling out of love with the Times puzzle. In 1934, he had written to the paper begging for the more frequent inclusion of old-chestnut answers:
In conclusion may I commend your public spirit in putting the good old emu back into circulation again as you did a few days ago? We of canaille know that the Sun-God Ra has apparently retired from active work – are intensely grateful for the occasional emu.
But the puzzle was changing and had not yet settled into its late-20th-century form where the solver could reasonably expect a definition and some wordplay in each clue. When Wodehouse managed to get a copy of the Times during his years in occupied Europe, he was frequently baffled:
Already things are much better in Paris as regards reading, as we now get the London papers a day after publication, and I have been able to resume my Times crossword puzzles. (What is 'Exclaim when the twine gives out' in ten letters?)
As it turned out, the wrong answers suggested by many of you were more satisfying than the one printed in the Times. Truth101 offered GET KNOTTED and Ixioned STUTTERING; Kerfufflepuff tried BALDERDASH and Bodger76 DISSERTING.
All very plausible, but the truth was revealed by TCRIslington:
By the simple expedient of cheating I can tell you that the answer, according to the Times, 8 Feb 1945, was STRINGENDO. A pretty awful clue – no definition part whatever, surely? Adding ", hurrying" or some such at the end of the clue would be a step in the right direction.
Just in case you've momentarily forgotten, Collins gives:
stringendo
adjective, adverb
(music) to be performed with increasing speed
So when there's no more twine, you might yell "String end O!" Hmm. On the face of it, an annoying piece of wordplay which the solver could only see once he or she had solved the clue, though a charitable JollySwagman thinks there may be a little more to it:
I think it's an &lit with exclaim as a kind of homophone indicator. Although stringendo means "getting faster" in music, in ordinary Italian it means tightening – ie that's what makes the twine give out (ie break).
Even with that it mind, it seems unlikely to feature as one of the Century's Best Clues when the nation celebrates 100 years of crosswording in December. Next time, we'll gather our thoughts and see how we did with Wodehouse's fictional clues. Meanwhile, Benmoreassynt raises an interesting question: how should STRINGENDO be clued? He offers "Increase tempo and grind notes badly (10)" – perhaps you have other ideas?
