Low-grade President (4)—FORD
“Hmmm,” you might say here. “Ford was a President, but why ‘low-grade’? I mean, he wasn’t considered a great president, but compared to certain clowns who’ve gotten the job in the last twenty-five years…” and then you’d go on an angry tirade and get ejected from the library. Or maybe not, I don’t know your life.
At any rate, the secret to this one is to parse it as both FORD and F OR D. F is a failing grade and D is only a little better. Having seen that, what about this?
Maintain equality in
four-hour firing/hiring search (4)—FISH
Yep, it’s FISH and also “F IS H.” We’re told to “maintain equality” in two pairs of words, and in both pairs, the only difference is between the first letters, which are either F or H. So we declare that F is H, and “fish” can mean “search.” Again, getting repetitive is a way to make extra-tricky clues easier, and since this one was pretty tricky, I felt it was justified.
I think of this sort of clue as an inverted clue, because it’s doing wordplay like you’d get in a transformation clue, but the “before” and “after” parts are in the clue, and the answer is the indicator.
Let’s try a little more variety:
Madame, use Falco song (4,2,7)—
ROCK
ME, AMADEUS
This one’s an inverted-clue anagram—the letters ME AMADEUS “rock” in the answer.
One has to be a bit careful with these, because there a whole heck of a lot of anagram indicators. “Falco song” is fairly specific (“Rock Me Amadeus” was his biggest hit) and ___ ME AMADEUS doesn’t leave much room for doubt. But what about this?
Charity pics for depression or anxiety (11,8)—PSYCHIATRIC
DISORDER
The letters of PSYCHIATRIC, showing disorder. But would PSYCHIATRIC TROUBLES
solve just as well? The crossing words would settle which one it was, but even so, I’d hesitate.
You could also invert homophones…
Electrical noise on Wight (5,5)—WHITE
SOUND
Or do an inverted reversal, weird as that sounds…
Primitive draw (8)—
BACK
WARD
This is as far out on the fringes as I cared to go, and again, only with a very small part of the total clues. But like the other types here, I think it’s worthy of further exploration!