Contrive to feed out duck to Daniel (5)
I believe the answer is:
defoe
'daniel' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'contrive to feed out duck' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'duck' could be 'o' (resembles zero - 'duck' in cricket) and 'o' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'feed' is 'defe' which is present in the remaining letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
'to' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for defoe that I've seen before include "Daniel ---, wrote Moll Flanders" , "Robinson Crusoe's creator, d. 1731" , "Daniel --, English novelist" , "Daniel . . . . . wrote ''Robinson Crusoe'' (5)" , "18th-century author" .)