The official bored-at-work cryptic crossword pass it on thread.

anagram of angl osing (angel horsing with 'her' taken out)

v good

So I went on holiday and did a ton of these? Here are the clues where even after reading the answer I don't get it, can anyone explain?

go on

Potter's finest work is to encourage Formosan aggression (8,5)

Confined next to a bull (5)

Writer's well after visit - Theo left to think positive (6)

Morbid fear one hates to have (6)

A singularly heavy blow given in embarrassment (4)

WAIT WAIT I just got #3

Another one instead: Pillar of some mark to compositors (7)

Answers in rot13:

rttfuryypuvan
vaare
vaxcbg (guvf vf gur bar V trg abj)
cubovn
bare
boryvfx
(translator here: http://tools.arantius.com/rot13 )

ok let's get to work

(Actually I'm back to not getting the third one, I get the simple definition but the cryptic bit *still* makes no sense)

ettfuryypuvan spells out 'to encourage attack on state not beloved of taiwan' formosan aggression, also a delicate type of pottery

vaare darts term

Confined next to a bull = inner. The inner is the ring next to the bull in archery. Presume also inner = confined, sort of. Inner rage, that sort of thing?

The rest, cannot really explain. Not even the one you worked out. Have horrible explanation for this first, but it's really bad

Xpost, yeah, like what darragh just said

vaxcbg i only get the first part, the simple bit tbh

the first, not this first. There's no way on God's green earth I'd have got it though, rather than just fitting an explanation to an already-solved clue.

'morbid fear one hates to have' is hardly cryptic at all tbh, not a good clue in that overthinking it would put you off imo

singularly heavy blow- CONKERS BABY

"given in embarrassment" though? These are horrible, btw.

Nice work on vaare.

rttfuryypuvan is outstanding work - how is anyone supposed to get that? I kept looking to make 'Peter Rabbit'

boryvfx - term for a piece of kit one kept in the lower half of a compositors type case.

(They're from the Daily Telegraph 1986 fwiw)

What is 'one hates to have' doing, though? I agree it could be nothing.

given the answers, and google, it's quite easy to pick these apart- but if i'd been looking at them all weekend they'd prob have driven me soft.

tho, tbh, i think i would have gotten the first one.

crosaire, btw, is doable online at www.irishtimes.com, the unmatched (imo) king of the art.

Aye, it's a punctuation mark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_(typography)

xposts again

Wow - nice knowledge on boryvfx - I didn't even know what a compositor was.

one hates to have- just clumsy imo, wouldn't kill myself worrying about it once i'd filled in the letters

GOOGLE mayne, google!

Are these all done apart from #3 now?

Haha I used google on formosan aggression, then I still couldn't do it :(

Everyone agrees it's wrong to google when you're actually doing the thing, right?

'given in embarrassment'

quite simply- none of my dictionaries and none of my brain cells and none of my internets can suggest even a single half-plausible explanatino for the remaining piece of this clue

yeah googling is prob frowned upon while doing, tho perfectly acceptable after you've gotten it- else how d'you learn sure?

I really can't make #3 work, I can sort of make bits of the clue bit fit, but not the whole thing, and not convincingly.

i guess you must 'hate' as a necessary condition of 'having' the third one- ?

though i would be much happier with 'fear' over hate, and that's already in the clue so slapdash at best imo

ie you must hate *something* to have a phobia

I have learned the word "emderatology" today though, which is nice.

xpost you can have a phobia without hatred though, so misdefinition just to give a double non-cryptic clue is totally misleading and wrong. There must be more to it than that. Where's the rest of the contributors to this thread when you need them?

i google

araucaria or ximes had a quote about how the solver ought to be permitted 'a reasonable shelf of reference works'. eh. also, you know, sometimes you have PSALMANUGGLE or something and just need to go 'is this really the name of an extinct marsupial or am i wrong'

btw, cryptics are the one thing I miss since I stopped buying print newspapers, but not enough to actually buy a book of puzzles or print any off or whatever, so I do love this thread very much indeed.

i treat it like scrabble rules (at least the scrabble rules at my house)- it goes in, in ink, before you get to check. no further stabs if wrong, and it stands forever as admonition

http://www.irishtimes.com/games/crosswords/

ailsa, no excuses

<3

hmm wait it's asking for a login? never used to.

maybe i can get one.......

ACtually, the one I'm doing is kind of shit. but thanks, is good to get the practice back in.

there's one you can do without logging in

well ok, but there used to be a trove. i think a mate may have a login but mods may have issues with me posting it or not?

Off to bed now - thanks for the help! More tomorrow I fear.

Outstanding clues:

Writer's well after visit - Theo left to think positive (6)
Morbid fear one hates to have (6)
A singularly heavy blow given in embarrassment (4)

Answers:
vaxcbg
cubovn
bare

rot13er: http://www.faqintosh.com/risorse/en/othutil/webapps/rot13/

writer's well- obvious. theo's left to think positive- will work on this bit!

morbid fears- yeah, unsatisfactory answer but i think this is just a bad clue.

bare- the single strike (think conker here for me) is clear- i've also tried linking 'embarrassment' with the 'heavy duty' aspect of the word, but no dice there.

inkpot

theo's left to think positive

th ink eo pot

ok

the o's left to think positive

hmm maybe something there?

i'll just get a pencil shall i? :)