Crypticity

I have crunched the weekend cryptic slowly with now only two half-clues remaining. At work, there is a teacher's aide who can do them. But we are completely different in solving style. He is intuitive whereas I am logical. He sees correspondences between meanings very well, and has a large vocabulary (he is good at straight crosswords) but cannot construct words out of clues.

He could solve whereas I couldn't the following clue:

Unlicensed recipient (6)

...which is "fences" (a person who receives stolen goods and on-sells them)

Whereas I could crunch this one (it took a while) which he couldn't even start:

Rams after five changes (6)

...which is "varies" (v + aries)

One of the strange things about cryptics is that you can clues without knowing the words, the weekend crossword I solved the clues for "laird" and "ciceroni" both of which I only learnt today.