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Unusual European jokes about ousting king (6)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

scarce

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'unusual' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'european jokes about ousting king' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'european' could be 'e' (abbreviation e.g. EU) and 'e' is present in the answer.
'about' could be 'ca' (circa) and 'ca' is located in the answer.
'king' could be 'r' (abbreviation for rex, king in Latin) and 'r' is located in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for scarce that I've seen before include "Not enough to meet demand" , "Rarely seen" , "Insufficient to meet demand" , "Deficient in quantity" , "Few and far between" .)

I've seen this clue in The Independent.
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