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

I'll give one a (maybe farfetched) shot:

Organists' group reject help, loudspeaker systems activated. (8)

not at all bad

Thanks, this is really fun, I've never attempted to think up my own. I'd never heard of diapason. Rules-wise, could 'with' be added before loudspeaker to improve the surface reading?

sure, with works in the 'put these together' sense.

I can't come up with anything for those other two, though.

Pious fakery! Roxy Music singer entangled in a clump of trees. (10)

You'll have to explain that one...

Ate one half portion of cous-cous, digested at the same time (10)

FERRY + A TUFT, entangled = TARTUFFERY

maybe it's nitpicking but that 'entangled' reads to me as only applying to ferry, then put it inside a tuft (unentangled). 'entangled with' would work, although not as well on the surface.

also never come across 'tuft' used for trees before!

Confused Roxy Music singer entangled with a clump of trees... enh, it's still not that good.

Word of the day, down clue:

Sick coming up in a to-go container to make a mess of things. (6)

Hip-hop's great comeback getting into fight leads to ruin (wotd, 6)

v much not loving wotd stuff, so there ilxwordians

it's all a load of bollix if you ask me

Not loving the words themselves, our attempts to set them, the whole concept?

thread was dead before so <shrugs>

yeah I'm not really worried, couldn't resist a terrible pun though. Happy to keep up the word of the day thing, I've learnt some new words!

the attempts are ok, but only ok, tbh i'm not able to keep great track of what wotd is a lot of the time which is more the issue

practice makes perfect.

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday
http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day

right-click, bookmark this link.

i am once again reminded how much of a 2nd class ilxor i am while surfing on my shitty nokia ;_;

Jesus H Christ on a (numerical spoiler) I thought today's Graun was a bastard.

Crossword: http://www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/cryptic/25746
The answers explained: http://fifteensquared.net/2012/09/20/guardian-cryptic-25746-crucible/

And yes I do see that most of the commenters on the second site declare it "easy"! I do not know what stimulants they had to ingest to get 13A.

(Admittedly I was never very good at these and am quite out of practice)

Yeah we had to cheat with 13a and a handful of others.

Goblin takes letter to underworld visitor (wotd, 6)

nonononono

Goblin takes letter referring to underworld visitor (wotd,6)

tinkering...

Goblin clutches letter concerning visitor to the underworld

(ha, watched the film yesterday...)

'a letter' isn't specific enough, i don't think. needs to specify that it's greek.

idk, it *is* a letter, and greek ones are common enough in crosswords. overspecifying it would give the game away too much imo.

would go for "... letter in greek ..." if necessary tho.

mystical? or sounding stupid? (6 wotd)

Probably pretty easy, wotd:

To begin with, kitten starting school is tacky (6)

:) quite like it tho

Ooh, just got it

Today's wotd, keeping with my feline theme!

Hypothesis, for the sake of argument: needle the kitten takes energy (11)

Dammit, that's not what I wanted.

Assumption, for the sake of argument: needle the kitten takes energy

It's a verb so I'd change that to 'Assume'.

All suggestions for improvement welcome:

One furiously torn by anger without any conclusion - put these together?! (wotd, 11)

Fun quiz, can you guess what in this clue I'm not entirely happy with?

Southern parvenu finally getting in with the stars (wotd, 7)

(yesterday's wotd was 'interrobang' wtf!?)

'the stars' suggests a noun, where you want the adjective?

you unhappy with 'with the stars' as an indicator for the key adjective? I don't think it's bad.

^ correct, i mean really ideally it should be 'from' or 'of', right? not sure that substituting other random prepositions is entirely acceptable.

ikwym, but first def in chambers is 'belonging to the stars' and I think that gives you a bit of room for prepositional drift.

After Tuesday regret being faithful (wotd, 4)

nice.

i never know the wotd, feel like i'm drifting away from this thread ;_;

so TRUE, funny how it seems...

hmm maybe i should ignore wotd and just guess as normal i spose. neat clue.

of course they're normal clues, the wotd thing is just a handy resource for getting new words to clue, and it means people (yourself excepted, it's sad you have a shitty nokia) can look up the answer instead of bumping the thread with 'more letters please' which was always tedious and unproductive.

otm, i *do* have a shitty nokia ;_;

granted case-by-case? (10)