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Seblings? (5,8).

This is a cryptic crossword clue. An easy one for me to start. What is the answer to it?

EDIT: Oof! Clearly not the way to post a question. I'm not sure what else I could say, though. It's a cryptic crossword clue, and if you were doing a cryptic crossword, all you would be given would be "Seblings? (5,8)."

For those of you not familiar with this, the clue is the word "seblings", the question mark shows you what kind of clue it is, and the 5 and 8 show that you the answer is two words, the first word five letters long, and the second is eight.

If this isn't enough, just let me know, and I'll try to present it another way.

Jezcentral
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    Welcome to Puzzling StackExchange! What is exactly your question? – rhsquared Aug 17 '16 at 09:45
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    @RadoslavHristov Is it not obvious what he's asking? He's posted a cryptic crossword clue. He's asking the stack to answer it. – LeppyR64 Aug 17 '16 at 10:17
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    @LeppyR64 The question is far from perfect and, of course, it's obvious that he's after the answer to the clue. I was just 'pushing' him to format it better. – rhsquared Aug 17 '16 at 10:39
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    @RadoslavHristov You need to use all of your words in your comment. Your question simply implied that you did not know what the question was. If what you actually implied was what you posted in your second comment, then your second comment should have been your first. Have a good day! – LeppyR64 Aug 17 '16 at 10:45
  • @LeppyR64 Just don't tell me that this was a good, well formatted question. Putting a question mark in the title and posting a single liner in bad English is far from perfect question. – rhsquared Aug 17 '16 at 10:48
  • @RadoslavHristov Not contesting that at all. Simply that your first comment was not useful. Thank you for trying to help improve the question! – LeppyR64 Aug 17 '16 at 10:52
  • @Radoslav Hristov, I'd appreciate a comment telling me how it should be formatted. I genuinely don't know. – Jezcentral Aug 17 '16 at 14:42
  • Single cryptic clues can be posted, but in gereral it is preferred to collect several cryptic clues and make them into a larger puzzle, which doesn't have to be a crossword. – M Oehm Aug 17 '16 at 16:24
  • @MOehm et al: just curious. Over on Stack Overflow (and most other sister sites, I think), the preference is for one question to be asked (or more if they are tightly related). That seems to go against the suggestion to collect multiple clues into a single post for answering, since the only relationship is likely to be that they are cryptic clues. Is that (multi-clue-per-question) approach the preferred one here? – paxdiablo Dec 29 '22 at 22:26
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    @paxdiablo: Different SE sites have different policies, I guess. SO is a technical Q&A site for programmers and it makes sense to ask questions about one specific topic. PSE is different. Most questions are not seeking advice on some technical issue; they are recreational puzzles to be solved. PSE has hijacked the SO system for that purpose, but often it isn't a good fit. For example, an [tag:enigmatic puzzle] does not have a clear question. The solver has to investigate and find out what the actual question is. – M Oehm Dec 30 '22 at 08:37
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    I don't think there is a clear rule here, and in hindsight I probably shouldn't have commented, but I see it like this: The puzzles that are values most by most "regulars" are multi-step puzzles, for example a crossword where after filling in the answers there is a pattern or a list of cryptic clues where all answers have something in common that you can use to find a "meta answer". I find such puzzles enjoyable, but they take skill and time to create. In comparison, a single clue is low effort, even if it is ingenious. – M Oehm Dec 30 '22 at 08:44
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    As I said, I don't think there are hard rules to decide what is proper and what not. Occasionally, someone requests help with explaining a cryptic clue from a newspaper crossword, and I think that's okay. And for stand-alone cryptic clues, there's the "Cryptic Clue Chat Chain" in The Sphinx's Lair, although that has gone quite meta recently too. Finally, the PSE folk have various opinions and try to form coherent guidelines on PSE Meta. It is complicated. :) – M Oehm Dec 30 '22 at 08:50

3 Answers3

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I think the intended answer is probably

Mixed blessing

because

well, seblings is blessing, mixed (anagrammed). Though this doesn't fit the standard format for a cryptic clue.

Dan Russell
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The answer is

MIXED BLESSING

Why?

SEBLINGS is an anagram of BLESSING.

How did I find it?

Because the SE robot placed the "Gegs (9, 4)" question in the Related section in the sidebar.

Is this a fair cryptic clue?

Hmmm, not sure. A question mark can mark a cryptic definition or a definition by example. Here, it is used to mean "This could be a cryptic clue for ...". More importantly, the clue has no definition, only wordplay. A normal cryptic clue would read something like "Double-edged sword could be clue to seblings", which has the drawback that seblings isn't really a word. So the whole thing looks more like a one-trick pony that doesn't even pull off its single trick particularly well.

M Oehm
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Partial answer:

"Seblings" is a misspelling of "siblings". An 8-letter word for "siblings" is BROTHERS, and so the solution would be something like BLOOD BROTHERS or COHEN BROTHERS.

The question mark suggests that the setter is being tricky, and that something clever and underhand is going on with the clue. We need to do something with the substitution of E for I in "siblings", but it's not clear to me what.

A quick glance over the results for a search on ????? BROTHERS at onelook.com doesn't suggest anything obvious.

paolo
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