Sir – The Oxford Times cryptic crossword provides a great deal of intellectual stimulation and enjoyment to many people and I look forward to it every week. May I, however, make a plea for fairer clues?

While most of them are clever, some fiendishly so, they are usually fair. But almost every week there is one that isn’t, for example this week “County girl on the vessel (6)”, the answer to which is Canada, not a county but a country.

Although this one may simply be a misprint, which of course still misleads the solver unfairly, what about the definition of wolfram a fortnight ago as a ‘compound’?

Just about the most fundamental thing one can say about wolfram is that this is precisely what it is not: it’s an element, not a compound. Please, that’s not cricket!

John Kinory, Steeple Aston