The Week 1259
Wounding remark by short girl, one like Rihanna (9) B?R?A?I?N My first instinct, given the known letters, was BARBARIAN, justified as :- Barb (wounding remark) +(M)arian (short girl) but, not knowing that Rihanna comes from Barbados, it left me rather shocked that the setter was effectively saying that Rihanna was "someone without taste or refinement" or "a somewhat uncivilised person" (Chambers).
Now that I've learnt Rihanna comes from Barbados, I am relieved that the inoffensive answer is going to be BARBADIAN, but I have a problem with the parsing given by Dannyk13 :- "Barb (wounding remark) + a + dian(a). Where does the middle "a" come from? The clue could easily have read "by a short girl", but it didn't.