News items though hot replaced by the papers? (7)
I believe the answer is:
tidings
'news' is the definition.
(I know that news can be written as tidings)
'replaced by the papers?' is the wordplay.
'replaced' becomes 'ings' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'by' says to put letters next to each other.
'the' becomes 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects).
'papers?' becomes 'ID' (identification papers).
't'+'id'='tid'
'ings' put after 'tid' is 'TIDINGS'.
'items though hot' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tidings that I've seen before include "News, information" , "News, reports" , "Information about recent events" , "News (arch.)" , "News (obs.)" .)