The Finest Cryptic

For a cryptic crossword fan like myself, crosswords bring pleasure and frustration. The biggest frustration known to crossword solvers would probably be a clue that you have many of the letters (provided by intersecting answers) yet still cannot crack the clue or fit a likely word.

Two such clues have a risen in the last week:

1. Time-worn tea ceremony (5) letters supplied: T _ I _ E

This clue was impregnable to both me and the cryptic magician previously mentioned in this blog. We concluded that it must be a specific technical or archaic word that neither of us knew. It was only when we got the following day's paper that we discovered we were wrong. The answer is a logical and reasonable answer indeed yet we could not crack it.

Just yesterday, there was another:

2. With which the Orientals show agreement (4), letters supplied: E _ E _

This clue I was contemplating many times during an eight hour period where I also got the intersecting letters. The answer, which is actually reasonably obvious in retrospect, came to me intuitively rather than logically when I was tired and frustrated. But getting it brought ecstacy.

These two reflect a fine distillation of crypticity. A real mystery waiting to be cracked. Often clues are far too illustrative of the method by which they are to be solved. These two with their utilitarianism and simplicity show that although frustrating they are the finest cryptic clues.

(the answers will be in the comments page later, clue, they are essentially the same mechanism)

This message is a reconstructed version of a previous D.O.A blog I wrote last night.