Crossword Genius

Humiliation? Mostly pretence (4)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

sham

'pretence' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)

'humiliation? mostly' is the wordplay.
'humiliation?' becomes 'shame' (humiliation is a kind of shame).
'mostly' means to remove the last letter.
'shame' with its last letter taken away is 'SHAM'.

(Other definitions for sham that I've seen before include "Pretence, hoax" , "imitation" , "'Fake, pseudo (4)'" , "Pretence; bogus, false" , "Phoney kind of hams" .)

I've seen this clue in The Telegraph.
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