Cryptic Crosswords

[mf]

Folks, I'm here earnestposting today, to talk about one of my hobbies, the cryptic crossword. A staple of every British newspaper (even the local dailies), and popular throughout the commonwealth, the crossword is becoming something of a lost art. I fear that the new generation, with their youtubes and their onlyfans (not sure what this is), may miss out on this most serene and cerebral of pastimes.

Most people are familiar with the regular crossword: you answer straightforward clues and fill in the grid with the answers. So what's special about the cryptic? The clues!

Cryptic clues use wordplay devices to hide the answer, and your job as the solver is to think laterally, enjoy the wordplay, and savour that 'eureka' moment when the answer pops into your head. Whilst the challenge of a regular crossword lies only in trivia knowledge, the cryptic crossword is a battle of wits between setter and solver. In a well-constructed puzzle, answers seem blindingly obvious once you have 'parsed' their clues correctly.

Glossary:

• Definition: The part of the clue that "defines" the answer. In a regular crossword this is the whole clue, for example the definition of ICE might be "Frozen water".
• Wordplay: Literary devices based around the construction of a word or phrase from its constituent letters/parts
  • Indicator: Words that 'indicate' that a particular type of wordplay has been used.
  • Fodder: Words that provide the source of letters for the wordplay.
    • Abbreviations: Words which have common abbreviations are used to mean the letter.
      

      piano => P, loud => F

      love => O

      caught => C

  • Types of wordplay (in most cases, the actual clue will contain synonyms which you have to deduce)
    • Anagram (scramble letters from the fodder)
      

      ...cart horse... => ORCHESTRA

    • Acrostic (first/last/etc letters of each word in the fodder)
      

      ...extremely vicious acts don't easily... => EVADE

    • Letter sequences (odd/even/every third/etc letter in the fodder)
      

      ...can't go up... => ATOP

    • Reversal (read the fodder backwards)
      

      ...stressed... => DESSERTS

    • Hidden word (some letters in the fodder produce the answer)
      

      ...top ten... => OPT

    • Deletion (remove letter(s) from the fodder)
      

      ...wheat... => HEAT

    • Substitute (replace letter(s) in the fodder)
      

      ...tame... => TALE

    • Homophone (one word that is pronounced identically to another)
      

      ...sight... => CITE

    • Charade (join several words/letters together)
      

      ...register investigation... => BOOK CASE => BOOKCASE

    • Container (put one word/letter inside another)
      

      ...aged inside try... => TRAGEDY

    • and more!
• Surface: The naive reading of the whole clue. Great clues have a 'surface' reading that is completely unrelated to the answer; learning how to ignore the surface reading is a key skill in solving a cryptic crossword.
• Connectors: Superficial words that don't mean anything but make the surface read well ('and', 'from', 'of', 'providing', 'leading to' etc).

Types of Clue:
There are a few categories and subcategories of clue and wordplay that you are likely to encounter:

• Definition + Wordplay: The most common clue type. The definition will be at the start or end of the clue, and the wordplay forms the rest, aiming to mislead and distract you from identifying the definition.
  

  Stop getting letters from friends (3)

  The definition in this case is 'Stop'; the indicator is 'getting letters from'; and the fodder is 'friends'. So we're looking for a three-letter word that means 'stop', which is hidden in ('getting letters from') 'friends'... the answer is END
• Cryptic Definition: A bit like a riddle. Phrases the definition in a misleading or tricky way.
  

  International contest won by gifted horse (6,3)

  The surface reading makes you think about some kind of race, right? The answer is TROJAN WAR, which was won by the gift of a wooden horse from the Greeks to the city-state of Troy.
• Double Definition: Two definitions are provided, side by side, for different meanings of the same answer. Again, the best ones completely distract you from the real answer.
  

  Sometimes shed is split?

  The surface reading makes you think about a shed being divided somehow. if you think about the two halves of the clue separately ('sometimes shed' and 'split'), the answer may crystallise: TEAR

It's a very deep subject, and most newcomers can only solve one or two clues in a puzzle before giving up, but practice helps and it can be very rewarding.

I've set a few puzzles for friends and family, here are some easyish clues I picked. See if you can get any of them:

1. King is injured going downhill at speed! (6)
   hint: 'injured' is acting as an anagram indicator
2. Snare girl with love (5)
   hint: 'with' is acting as a charade indicator and there's an abbreviation
3. Slaves paced a bit and moped (5)
   hint: 'a bit' is acting as a hidden word indicator
4. I do it freely for dope (5)
   hint: 'freely' is acting as an anagram indicator
5. Teach alternative after disapproval (5)
   hint: 'after' is acting as a charade indicator meaning one word goes after the other
6. Inside was hot -- fire remains (3)
   hint: 'inside' is acting as a hidden word indicator
7. Rural folk song about marine life? (2,3,4)
   hint: this is a (questionable) cryptic definition
8. Bank features iron surrounded by special forces (5)
   hint: 'surrounded by' acting as a container indicator (and there are two abbreviations!)
9. Send for one during meal (6)
   hint: 'during' is acting as a letter insertion indicator
10. One of three, I suspect (6)
    hint: 'suspect' is acting as an anagram indicator

 

[Martin]

I’ve kinda wanted to get into doing these for a while and have been putting it off—my dad bought me a book about learning to complete ‘em for Christmas last year and I haven’t got around to picking it up yet.

monkfish how long did it take for you yo reach a point where you considered yourself competent at these? Also do you use any particular dictionary that helps you broaden how you think about words? I’ve heard the Chambers Dictionary is pretty good and is popular among cryptic crossword doers, but I’m kinda interested in how helpful/necessary a good dict is for learning.

 

[mf]

i've been doing them for about a year and a half but i wouldn't say that i'm competent yet. i think some people have more of a natural gift at seeing past the surface whereas i am quite a literal thinker so i have to try quite hard to force my brain into lateral thinking patterns. i still struggle to fill in a whole grid unassisted in the guardian/independent/telegraph. local papers tend to be easier, and there is also the daily quiptic on the guardian website which is meant to be for beginners (though often commenters will claim that it was harder than the regular monday puzzle). monday is generally the 'easy' day in the national papers, supposedly. my favourite setter in the guardian is arachne but she doesn't seem to be setting any more :(

i don't have a copy of Chambers, but it is generally accepted to be the canonical reference for definitions, synonyms and abbreviations at least: some puritans will insist that if it's not in Chambers then it's not a valid piece of wordplay. maybe it's super useful and i've been missing out, but i tend to try and solve from the top of my head first. my lack of general knowledge is more of a hinderance, especially in the national papers where they will often feature greek/roman mythology, heraldry, classical music, etc

personally i found this site to be a valuable resource in understanding clue construction. i actually got into crosswords because my grandad enjoys them so i wanted to share a pastime with him. i would definitely recommend trying to set your own puzzle, if your dad is a crossword fan then it would be a great christmas/birthday present to him, it's a nice way to bond. it's also fun to try and solve a puzzle together, taking turns to fill in a clue, and you normally get much further than you would by yourself.

when solving/learning i tend to follow this pattern:

1. load up a guardian [quiptic] puzzle - the archives are vast
2. work through each clue in turn with no help, in order (eg all the across, then all the down); sometimes you can only get part of the answer but it's worth filling in anyway
3. repeat until my pass-through yields no more useful crossing letters
4. if i have a decent number of crossing letters on a given clue, i might use a crossword tool to get some ideas, or if i suspect that one clue is an anagram that i haven't cracked, i'll use an anagram finder
5. use the 'check' functionality on the web app to see if i made any mistakes
6. one by one, use the 'reveal' functionality, and try to figure out how the answer was derived from the clue. i try and pick a clue that has a lot of crossing letters so i can give the crossing words a go myself before having to reveal
7. when the whole grid is revealed, if there were any clues that i didn't understand, i find the puzzle on fifteensquared.net which is a site that explains how the clues work