Chapotraphouse

See Day 1 here

See Day 2 here

See Day 3 here

@KuroXppi@hexbear.net

Cryptic crosswords are famously difficult to learn because they have their own logic that you kind of need someone to teach you before you can participate. They're kind of like a Rubik's Cube, in that if you don't know anything about how it works it seems totally impossible, but with a little basic instruction most people can participate on some level.

I'm going to use https://www.minutecryptic.com/ puzzles over this week to teach anyone interested how to think about cryptic clues (unless this post sinks like a stone haha). I happen to have had several different friends who would take the time to explain to me how to read clues and then we'd solve them together. I'm going to explain how to read the above clue and let anyone who wants try to guess the answer (you can just follow the link and they'll give you successive hints, it's a good site for learning honestly.) I will spoiler tag any hints.

THE BASICS

THE STRAIGHT CLUE:

Every cryptic clue has a word or string of words at the beginning or end (but never in the middle) of the clue that acts like a regular crossword clue. In the case of this clue we know from the start that we'd normally looking for a with a 4, 2, 3, 5-letter phrase that either means "blue", "blue feathers", "feathers" or "feathers discarded". This part of the clue is ALWAYS unrelated to the 'wordplay' part of the clue:

THE WORDPLAY:

The rest of the clue offers some way to create the answer to the straight clue by chopping up, rearranging and concatenating the other words in the clue (or their synonyms). This section can be much looser and obeys a series of different types of rules.

For example, a clue may ask you to make an anagram of an adjacent word (or words) by using an 'indicator' word like 'mixed up', 'crazy', 'damaged', 'in a storm', etc. (This is often the easiest indicator for beginners, as once you get a sense there may be an anagram indicator, the next step would be to count letters in the words adjacent to the indicator and compare them to the letters in the answer.) Other types of indicators might suggest you remove letters from an adjacent word ('headless' may indicate removing the first letter, 'naked' might suggest removing the outer letters, etc) or put something inside a word ('containing' or 'protects' might suggest the preceding string would surround the following string to create the answer) and so on.

Blue feathers discarded?

While in some ways it is annoying to, by Day 4, already have encountered both exceptions to the typical clue structure outlined above (the other was Day 2 with an &lit clue), the bright side is this is it, the last exception, and this one does show up in most cryptic crosswords even if it rarely shows up on the site. It's called a "dual definition" clue.

In such a clue, the clue is split into two portions and each can be read as an independent "straight clue" with no wordplay of the cryptic type, though the question mark still implies a loose read of one of the aspects of the clue.

So we're looking for a phrase that could both mean either: "blue" and "feathers discarded?" or "blue feathers" and "discarded?". (Remember a ? implies we'll need a loose interpretation of one of them

And like, that's basically it for hints! You can probably think of a word for

If you just want the answer you can click the link above, they supply incremental hints (and in this case an alternative clue), and they supply good explainer videos that explain the reasoning of the puzzle assuming you've already, but if you want to have a go you can have a guess and I can tell you if you're right, but usually once you get the answer you know it's correct because it satisfies both parts of the clue.