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Go wild and gamble it all away without bit of prudence (4, 3, 4)

LOSE THE PLOT

The parsing depends on 'bit of prudence' meaning the first letter of prudence.

Even if this is a common device, I don't like it. Is it me? (As Terry Wogan used to say). I don't think it ever appears in the Mon.-Sat. Times.

I’ve seen similar indicators a few times in the Guardian. I recall “a drop of Drambuie” appeared in the Everyman to indicate the ‘d’. I don’t particularly like it either and it raised a few eyebrows on the Everyman thread at the time!
“A bit of” is particularly vague as there’s no indication of which “bit” to take

Azed this week had:

Angler’s bait, last bit cut from lump of meat (4)


for CHUM(p). At least it says which "bit" to cut. But, in the over-used "not half!" device, it never says which half to cut, either. So all in all I don't mind "bit". Chambers thesaurus equates bit and drop so "drop of Drambuie" would have to be OK in my book as well (and who can resist the alliteration?).

Interesting point. "A bit/drop/dash/hint of" is accepted in Ximenean circles (e.g. Azed) to mean, by convention, the first letter of a word. It does seem a little incongruous, considering that "by convention" usually isn't enough to justify something to Ximeneans (of which I am one!) unless the grammar/logic supports it (that's why Gateshead = G is right out, even though it fools nobody).

By contrast, I remember that Araucaria, especially in his later puzzles, often used "a bit of" to mean ANY letter, or sequence of letters, in a word. E.g. "a bit of pumpernickel" could be P, U, ML, ICKE etc. I'll leave it to the mathematicians to work out the number of possible combinations!

Correction, MP not ML in penultimate sentence.

What bothers me more about paulh's example is equating "losing the pot" and "gambling it all away". Unless you have gone all in, you can lose the pot and still have plenty of chips in front of you to play the next hand.

Unless that's a "bit" of British slang I have not heard before.

“Gamble it all away” equates to “lose the lot” I think Buddy.

Oops, I mixed up the P & L! Never mind

My 90 year old mother-in-law still tackles the dreadful Sunday Express skeleton crossword. A month or so ago it had "outskirts of London" to indicate an L.

I would have taken it to mean the L and the N.