The Sphinx's Lair

12:10 AM

yikes, missed the hint... not that that theory was going anywhere anyway

7 hours later…

7:29 AM

'One billed' could also be GARNISHEE, which contains SHE. However, the GARNI---E is as yet unexplained...

7:56 AM

The hint was buried among other, unrelated posts without context, so it was easy to miss.

Jafe's attempt above isn't correct and leaves out a lot of the wordplay. It also seems to take the wrong parts of the wordplay literally. :)

8:12 AM

but other than all that it was right on the money!

Sure. :)

oAlt

@MOehm I think I got most of the wordplay. A GRIEVANCE is something that's billed (like a complaint (the formal kind)), and EVA is a female and CE is church... But I can't find a connection between the remaining parts, GRIN and "or"...

@oAlt Some interesing finds, but that's not the answer. (Wouldn't it have to be "something billed"?)

maybe the wrong part taken literally is "or" which is not the letters OR but e.g. GOLD (the colour, from heraldry)

in fact, i bet GOLD+F+IN+CH is a bird of some kind!

@Jafe And you would be right!

8:24 AM

apparrently several, in fact!

oAlt

Yeah that's a better fit. Although I'm glad I don't get to make the next one cuz I have exactly 0 clues stored up :0

that is tricky, took me a long time to see it even though i just used the same trick in a crossword a couple of weeks ago

The c4 clue before had two worms in it, so I tried to continue the theme and do something with "inch", but it turned out to be about early birds, not worms.

hehe

Yeah, the or = gold device usually works the other way round, where gold clues OR.

8:27 AM

Darn, I even considered GOLDFINCH as 'one billed' but couldn't get OR in anywhere - now I've seen it I am genuinely shaking my head at myself! :)

CCCC: Real or false present (7)

1 hour later…

9:40 AM

a REAL is a type of coin, that is sometimes gold. I can't get closer, but I note that CURRENCY is too long but does have the correct dual meaning of money/presentness

2 hours later…

oAlt

12:05 PM

That's RORF and, of course, to "rorf" something means to display it

Oh frick, I didn't realize the answer was seven letters long. I was so close...

Sphinx

12:49 PM

Q: Twisted Timekeeping

Two office workers need to arrive at work at the exact same time. However that's not likely to happen because the only thing they use for telling the time is their watches and their timekeeping is a little bit off... One worker's watch gains 5 minutes every hour and the other's watch loses 5 minu...

mathematics

2 hours later…

3:10 PM

@oAlt I've never heard of rorf?

I guess you have to imagine that "of course" was said with an ironic undertone.

Oh! Haha, I probably should have figured that out

6 hours later…

Gareth McCaughan

9:06 PM

See also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dord

@oAlt Rorf?

@AncientSwordRage There's CURRENT

Oh, though CURRENT isn't CURRENCY

If present = ACTUAL then the answer could be FACTUAL (F+ACTUAL, def=Real)

Ooh

'Actual' does literally mean 'existing now', which is pretty darn close to 'present' after all

> "existing or occurring in a place or thing"

^def for present

Do you think ACTUAL and FACTUAL might be too closely related though?

ACTUAL is closer to REAL

9:20 PM

True, they're pretty close in meaning. But then often we call that clever misdirection!

@Stiv I like it