A recent puzzle here by Brendan had this splendid clue: 19a Start of spectrum initially rearranged for rave-up (4) wordplay : jumble (“rearranged”) of first four letters of ROYGBIV (“spectrum initially”) definition : rave-up We take the first letters of “red”, “orange’, “yellow” and “green” and jumble them for the answer: a riotous or drunken revel, an ORGY. Unusually for a clue using an anagram, the letters O, R, G and Y are not in front of the solver’s nose, there in the clue. An anagram’s “fodder” is almost always offered directly, not hinted at ambiguously, because no solver wants to spend valuable solving time jumbling, say, the letters of every fruit with a four-letter name that comes to mind before seeing that the answer is, say, MILE.
In this case, there is no ambiguity as the colours of the rainbow are immutable ( at least at the end we are interested in ) and well known. The clue reminded me that I have been meaning for some years to attempt to describe which types of clue give you the letters of the answer and which don’t tend to, to see whether we agree. So, let’s.
Anagram The letters are there in the clue : almost always, although they might be separated by some “and”s or “with”s if that helps make the entire clue an interesting sentence. The letters are in something hinted at : almost never, although we should remember that the Herald’s Wee Stinker felt at liberty to use clues such as “Work out colour (5)” for CH.
