What Rhymes With Cryptic?

When I was child, growing up in rural Ontario, I thought there was a letter “r” at the end of the word “spatula”.
 
Can you guess why?

It’s because that’s how my father, who was born and raised in southern England, pronounced it.

A few weeks ago, when it was announced the Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the CBC’s excellent program Writers and Company replayed an interview with Christopher Ricks. Ricks is a literary scholar who reveres Bob Dylan, describing him as "the greatest living user of the English language,” and he had so many wonderful and insightful things to say about Dylan’s writing. 

One that grabbed my attention was his observation that, because the singer chooses their delivery, song lyrics can rhyme in an imprecise way that written poetry can’t get away with.

​Take the following lines from the song Love Minus Zero / No Limit:
The bridge at midnight trembles. The country doctor rambles.
 
“It both trembles and rambles as a rhyme,” Ricks said in the interview. “It trembles because it’s not quite securely in place. It rambles because it moves off from the sound of ‘trembles’ into ‘rambles’.”

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Not long after I heard that interview, I listened to a beautiful cover of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah". I have heard the song dozens of times but for some reason this time, the following lyric reached out and grabbed me, the last three words of which were rhymed with “Hallelujah”:

Maybe there’s a God above
but all I ever learned from love
was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.

A homophone clue in a cryptic crossword puzzle involves words that sound similar, words that rhyme. But, as Christopher Ricks’ interview made me realize, rhyming is accent-specific. If you think about it, our accents are kind of like melodies with which we can sing almost-rhymes into place.
 
When you speak, does the word “saw” rhyme with the word “soar”? If so, you’re probably English.

If you tell someone this is “not your cheese”, could they mistakenly think you’ve told them it’s “nacho cheese”? If so, you’re probably from the southern U.S.

If you can rhyme "want to" with "croquet", chances are you're Scottish.

And if you rhyme “Heather” with “cheddar”, you may be a French Canadian speaking English.

Can you think of a cryptic crossword homophone clue that has catered to your specific accent? And if you’re up for a challenge: can you write one?
 
- Sarah