Vane Is Short Of A Penalty

[satprof]

Alphapuzzle cryptic clue for today.

[geevo41]

fin

[emmie]

can you explain fin geevo.

[emmie]

penalty fine i get, but Vane?

[bobbinwales]

same thought here emmie but a vane is listed in my dictionary as a fined device.

[bobbinwales]

Finned not fined . autocorrect

[bobbinwales]

There may be a better answer though

[emmie]

a fined device?

[emmie]

no i'll go with geevo, if he can explain it.

[emmie]

Vane noun – The flattened weblike part of a feather consisting of a series of barbs on either side of the shaft. Weathercock and vane are semantically related in finned device topic. In some cases you can use "Weathercock" instead a noun "Vane".

[geevo41]

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/fin

[emmie]

ok, never heard of fin, as in vane

[bobbinwales]

Cant do better than fin. As I said vane is a finned device. Hopefully Geevo will confirm if your still unsure

[bobbinwales]

Ok too slow. Geevo has confirmed

[emmie]

no will go with it.

[satprof]

A fin is reasonably synonymous with a vane, so I'm sure that 'fin' will work out.

Making it work is a rather different matter. There are five suitable 3-letter possibilities and I'll give it a go.

[emmie]

good luck

[satprof]

The correct position for 'fin' is the only possible 3-letter position that starts with a singleton (i.e. the only occurrence of that letter in the puzzle.)

Many thanks to geevo41 who worked it out so quickly.

[mouseymick]

Fin .. 20,26,25 .. Q is 3 and Y is 7