How did war-goddess start to spell "aardvark"? (6)
I believe the answer is:
athena
'how did war-goddess start to spell aardvark?' is the definition.
I can't tell whether this defines the answer.
'goddess start to spell aardvark?' is the wordplay.
'goddess' becomes 'Athene' (Greek goddess).
'start' means to remove the last letter (I've seen 'starts' mean this).
'to spell aardvark?' becomes 'a' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'athene' with its last letter taken off is 'athen'.
'athen'+'a'='ATHENA'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for athena that I've seen before include "Greek goddess of wisdom etc." , "wise but fierce goddess" , "Greek goddess of a capital city" , "One-time goddess" .)