Minute Cryptic hands you a single cryptic crossword clue every day, and while the name suggests you'll be done in sixty seconds, that's a minute in the same way a quick pint is one drink. If today's clue has you staring at the screen, we've got gentle hints first, then the answer, and then a breakdown of how the wordplay fits together so tomorrow's feels a little less like witchcraft.

Every Minute Cryptic clue has two halves, a straight definition at one end and some wordplay at the other, and the trick is working out where one stops and the other starts. Play along on the official Minute Cryptic site, and scroll slowly if you only want a nudge.

Today's Minute Cryptic clue (November 9)

Polar bears turned up in fashion, very cool (and hot!) (7)

Minute Cryptic hints for today

Minute Cryptic answer today

The answer to today's Minute Cryptic is REFEREE.

GREED gets its outer letters stripped away by “exposed”, leaving REE. Then “destruction of” tells us to break apart REEF and rearrange its letters into EFER.

Now, “surrounding” comes into play: REE wraps around EFER, with the R at the beginning and EE at the end. Put them together and you get R-EFER-EE, or REFEREE!

Yesterday's Minute Cryptic answer

The answer to November 7's clue, "Beat dry heat! (7)"", was HYDRATE.

How to play Minute Cryptic

Minute Cryptic is a free daily puzzle with one cryptic clue a day, written by a rotating set of setters, and the site has three short courses (Letterplay, Wordplay and Weirdplay) if you want to learn how cryptic clues actually work. Each clue comes with hints that start with the definition and build up to the full workings, so you can take as much help as you need without going straight to the answer.

It's properly popular, too, with more than 230,000 people solving each day's clue according to the game's own homepage, so you're in good company if you're stuck.

When is the next Minute Cryptic clue?

A new clue goes up every day, and we'll have the hints and answer here as soon as it does.

Well, that's today's clue cracked. Bookmark this page and come back tomorrow, and if you've got room for another daily puzzle, our Wordle answer today and Connections answers pages are updated every morning too.