Harder to get jokes about renouncing king and queen (7)
I believe the answer is:
scarcer
'harder' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are comparative adjectives. Maybe you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'jokes about renouncing king and queen' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'about' could be 'ca' (circa) and 'ca' is found in the answer.
'king' could be 'er' (abbreviation for Edward Rex, various English kings) and 'er' is found within the answer.
'queen' could be 'r' (abbreviation for regina, e.g. in ER ) and 'r' is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'to get' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for scarcer that I've seen before include "More rare" , "Less common" , "More unusual" .)