The PG Wodehouse novel which gives clues but no answers. Photograph: Alan Connor

Many thanks for helping to crack – I think – the first of the clues from PG Wodehouse's Something Fishy.

Throughout the novel, Lord Uffenham is struggling with various, presumably fictional, clues from the Times. Cryptic clues are a familiar sight in Wodehouse, but Something Fishy is unusual in that no butler shimmies into view with the answers.

Last time we looked at "So the subordinate professional on trial gets wages in advance not without demur". Simonputtock, EXternalcrosswords, JollySwagman, Richvn, Iammagoo, Unclestaveley and especially RolandDenison wrestled with various forms of the expression PAY UNDER PROTEST, perhaps with a change of tense or even without the PAY/PAID element. "Subordinate" gives us the UNDER part; "professional" the PRO; the "wages in advance" suggests PAY at the top of the clue and the whole thing, in particular "not without demur" serves as a definition of a phrase which research suggests was more commonly used a half-century ago. Bravo to all.

So let's move on to the next one! Lord Uffenham has various family problems to deal with, most pressingly the misguided affection on the part of his niece Jane for the oddball sculptor Stanhope Twine. When he can take it no longer, he warns her that she may have fallen for this artist who lives next door purely because of the disorienting effects of their move to the suburb of Peacehaven:

'I feel it my duty, as an older man than you, to warn yer. Don't dream of marrying that monumental mason just to relieve the monotony of suburban life. If yer do, there'll be a bitter awakening,' said Lord Uffenham, and having delivered this valuable lecture on what a young girl ought to know picked up his Times and bent his fine mind to the solving of the clue 'Naked without a penny has the actor become'.

Again, Wodehouse does not furnish Lord Uffenham or the reader with a letter-count or the answer - so it's up to us again.

Rules

• One piece of wordplay or suggested definition at a time.

• No leaping ahead to the other clues in the story.

• Wild speculation is as welcome as precision.

• Explanations of any out-of-date abbreviations, people or vocabulary very welcome.

So, don't race straight in – help out your fellow solvers piece by piece and let's see what "Naked without a penny has the actor become" might mean.