26th Kiwanis Hunt—Guessing The Indicator

The thing about a cryptic clue is that the setter tries his best to tell a story which is different from his true intention. Thus he may not mean what he says; but he must say what he means. That second portion of the "rule" compels the setter to play fair—that he must give enough hints in the clue to direct the solver to the solution. For example, when the setter wants the letters found in a word to be rearranged to form another word, he must indicate his intention with an indicator, i.e. an anagram indicator. The same is true, for example, for homophones and containers etc. It is too much to expect the solver to conjure up his own indicator.

Q10) Flower or gin mixture which typically lasts less than a day.

A10) MN GLORY

A rare cryptic clue where the "definition" is given twice—once in front and another time at the back. "Flower" hints to the solver that the riddle has something to do with a flower; whereas "typically lasts less than a day" hints to the solver that the kind of flower he's looking for can usually last only for a day.

The word "mixture" in the clue signals to the solver that he's dealing with an anagram operation. It means that he is required to rearrange the letters found in the fodder, "or gin" to form the name of a flower. What the setter has failed to do here is to tell the solver that he needs to combine "or gin" with some more letters found on a signboard before he is able to form the name of the flower. This can simply be done, for example, by adding the word "here" in the clue, thus: "Flower or gin mixture here which...". In this case, the word "here" tells the solver that "or gin" is jumbled up together with letters found on the singboard (here) to form the name of the flower.

Elsewhere, I have discussed about cryptic clues where the indicators were not included. It's been done only in very special circumstances, but I can't see any special reasons why an indicator should be omitted here. Maybe the CoC can argue that he has given enough help in the extra "definition" part of the question, but I don't think that that's a good-enough reason for the violation of the cryptic clueing "rule".