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Diabolically Arcane

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Vile Wile

20 May, 2016

Came across an intriguing recipe in a recent Times clue. The trick relied on splitting a certain letter, reducing W to its familiar half-brother in V. Here's the clue:

Great enthusiasm - not so many half-hearted, by the look of it (5)

The answer is FEVER, a 'half-hearted' adaptation of FEWER (not so many). A neat novelty, and the trigger for today's folly. But instead of crafting cryptic clues, let's get feverish in one of two ways:

[1] Split one word's Ws into a single V, and clue the pair as an entity. Hideous trick, say, would be VILE WILE, while inferior darling is a LOWER LOVER.

Or [2] - split one word's W into a single V, so creating a new word altogether, complete with definition. SPARROV could be a Soviet boxer, say. Just as VINSOME means tipsy on shiraz

Don't forget to tag your first approach with byline and number, as below. And have a vonderful time, as I'm vayfaring in Sydney at this year's Fest.

DA1 - Actor Danny's scowls

DA2 - Bigger litterbug

DA3 - More exposed party animal

DA4 - Cut drain

DA5 - Gallery melee?

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Riddledom Rave

If you missed my riddle chat with Richard Fidler, then feel free to slurp the podcast at http://ab.co/1I9t1x5

Text-speak is creeping into Scrabble. Where do you sit?
OBVS I'm fine with it
Entrenched stuff - like LOL and OMG - but no more.
Words With Friends, maybe. Scrabble, no
Let the 'real' dictionaries decide first
Just the handy stuff, like FAQ and EUW
I mean, WTF?! No way
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