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Monday 2 June: For the clue "Confront Bill with fine" I had the answer 'Face' because of the 'confront' but cannot work out how the rest of the clue relates to the answer. Can someone please help. According to today's paper the answer was correct!

Hi Enid. Puzzling, eh?
How about bill with outstanding! = fine! = ACE for the last bit.

What about the F? If the clue was Old Bill that would give us F = franc = bill (old).

Then we'd have F + ACE.

Anyone else explain the F (maybe it's an old clue reused?)

No one on the Times Discussion site is happy with it either - one very tentative parse is that 'Ace' can be a Dollar Bill + F (Fine).

Not good is it?

Hi, Enid and Jolan! I too had 'face' for my answer yesterday. I parsed it as confront=face (definition); Ac from Bill, and F from fine. but couldn't account for the 'E'.
There was a discussion about this on my thread yesterday - wrongly entitled "Times Quick Cryptic 611" which you may like to look up'. Ginge and Rusty put up a good argument for the answer being 'fact' interesting. Have a look!

But the Times have given the answer as 'Face'.

Yes, I know that, mamya, but it was still interesting! Read their reasoning, I certainly couldn't argue with it, even though I stuck to 'face' as MY answer!
BTW, what is the Times Discussion site" that you mentioned, please?"

I agree Mamya. Not great at all!

It certainly wouldn't be the first time a poor clue (I agree) has lead to possible multiple solutions. The "official" parse would be most interesting.

http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/

Mmm........ I didn't know that someone put up all the results online - today's are there, too -already?! - they were the first answers I caught sight of; good job I'd already finished the crossword !!