The Minute of the Week
It is recorded that on this Sunday the Society of Crossed Words began keeping public minutes, a decision the Committee debated for some years and the Membership Office lost. I am instructed to say that this bulletin will appear weekly, that it will be brief, and that forwarding it to more than one trusted confidante at a time is considered enthusiastic. The kettle in the members' parlour has been descaled in honour of the occasion. Proceedings continue.
Mr Peregrine Fitch, Membership Secretary
The Week in Crossings
The daily ceremony continues each morning in the app: two crossed cryptic clues, sharing a single letter, warmly explained after the solve. This week's crossings ranged from an anagram that behaved itself to a homophone that divided the parlour. The daily crossing is free, forever, on the App Store and Google Play.
Dr Quire's Margin Note: the only secret worth having
New members ask for the trick of cryptic crosswords as though it were kept in a locked drawer. It is not. Here it is, and it fits on a luggage label: almost every clue is two clues in one sentence. One part is an ordinary dictionary definition of the answer, sitting at the beginning or the end, never the middle. The rest is wordplay, a small machine that builds the same answer out of letters. The innocent sentence they appear to make together is called the surface, and its only job is to mislead you. Stop reading the surface. Find the seam. Everything else I shall teach you is merely identifying machines, and I have never once needed the drawer.
W.Q.
The Doorkeeper's Question
One clue, unexplained. The answer appears in next Sunday's Dispatch, and nowhere else before it.
Reread, oddly, one holding this page (6)
Reply with your answer if you wish; the Doorkeeper reads everything and confirms nothing.
Society Notices
The daily crossing: free each morning, in the app, on the App Store and Google Play. The course in print: A Course in Cryptic Crosswords, Volume One, at societyofcrossedwords.com. Proposals for membership: forward this Dispatch to your single most trusted confidante.
You received this because a person of excellent judgement proposed you. Membership is exclusive. Discretion is expected.