Cryptic crosswords do not commonly appear in U. In April , The New Yorker published the first of a new weekly series of cryptic puzzles. The latter puzzle, after a long and distinguished run, appeared solely on The Atlantic ' s website for several years, and ended with the October issue. A similar puzzle by the same authors now appears monthly in The Wall Street Journal. Cryptic crosswords are very popular in Australia. Most Australian newspapers will have at least one cryptic crossword, if not two. The Australian puzzle publishers "Lovatts" regularly puts out cryptic crossword puzzle books.
In essence, a cryptic clue leads to its answer as long as it is read in the right way. What the clue appears to say when read normally the surface reading is a distraction and usually has nothing to do with the clue answer. The challenge is to find the way of reading the clue that leads to the solution.
A typical clue consists of two parts, the definition and the wordplay.
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It provides two ways of getting to the answer. The definition, which usually exactly matches the part of speech , tense , and number of the answer, is in essence the same as any 'straight' crossword clue, a synonym for the answer. It usually appears at the start or the end of a clue. The other part the subsidiary indication , or wordplay provides an alternative route to the answer this part would be a second definition in the case of double definition clues.
One of the tasks of the solver is to find the boundary between definition and wordplay and insert a mental pause there when reading the clue cryptically. This wordplay gives the solver some instructions on how to get to the answer another way. Sometimes the two parts are joined with a link word or phrase such as "from", "gives" or "could be". There are many sorts of wordplay, such as anagrams and double definitions, but they all conform to rules.
The crossword setters do their best to stick to these rules when writing their clues, and solvers can use these rules and conventions to help them solve the clues. Noted cryptic setter Derrick Somerset Macnutt who wrote cryptics under the pseudonym of Ximenes discusses the importance and art of fair cluemanship in his seminal book on cryptic crosswords, Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword , reprinted Because a typical cryptic clue describes its answer in detail and often more than once, the solver can usually have a great deal of confidence in the answer once it has been determined.
The clues are 'self-checking'.
This is in contrast to non-cryptic crossword clues which often have several possible answers and force the solver to use the crossing letters to distinguish which was intended. Here is an example taken from The Guardian crossword of 6 August , set by "Shed". There are many "code words" or "indicators" that have a special meaning in the cryptic crossword context.
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In the example above, "about", "unfinished" and "rising" all fall into this category. Learning these, or being able to spot them, is a useful and necessary part of becoming a skilled cryptic crossword solver. Compilers or setters often use slang terms and abbreviations, generally without indication, so familiarity with these is important for the solver. Of these examples, "flower" is an invented meaning by back-formation from the -er suffix, which cannot be confirmed in a standard dictionary. A similar trick is played in the old clue "A wicked thing" for CANDLE, where the -ed suffix must be understood in its "equipped with a Sometimes "compiler", or the name or codename of the compiler if visible by the crossword , codes for some form of the pronoun "I, me, my, mine".
Unlike typical American crosswords , in which every square is almost always checked that is, each square provides a letter for both an across and a down answer , only about half of the squares in a cryptic crossword are checked.
In most daily newspaper cryptic crosswords, grid designs are restricted to a set of stock grids. In the past this was because hot metal typesetting meant that new grids were expensive. Some papers have additional grid rules. In The Times , for example, all words have at least half the letters checked, and although words can have two unchecked squares in succession, they cannot be the first two or last two letters of a word. The grid shown here breaks one Times grid rule: The Independent allows setters to use their own grid designs. Word boundaries are denoted by thick lines called "bars".
In these variety puzzles, one or more clues may require modification to fit into the grid, such as dropping or adding a letter, or being anagrammed to fit other, unmodified clues; unclued spaces may spell out a secret message appropriate for the puzzle theme once the puzzle is fully solved. The solver also may need to determine where answers fit into the grid. A July "Puzzlecraft" section in Games magazine on cryptic crossword construction noted that for cryptic crosswords to be readily solvable, no fewer than half the letters for every word should be checked by another word for a standard cryptic crossword, while nearly every letter should be checked for a variety cryptic crossword.
In most UK "advanced cryptics" 'variety cryptic' , at least three-quarters of the letters in each word are checked.
How does it work?
There are notable differences between British and North American including Canadian cryptics. American cryptics are thought of as holding to a more rigid set of construction rules than British ones. American cryptics usually require all words in a clue to be used in service of the wordplay or definition, whereas British ones allow for more extraneous or supporting words. In American cryptics, a clue is only allowed to have one subsidiary indication, but in British cryptics the occasional clue may have more than one; e.
How to solve cryptic crosswords
In Poland similar crosswords are called " Hetman crosswords". In Finnish , this type of crossword puzzle is known as piilosana literally "hidden word" , while krypto refers to a crossword puzzle where the letters have been coded as numbers. In India the Telugu publication Sakshi carries a "Tenglish" Telugu-English, bilingual cryptic crossword; [10] the Prajavani crossword Kannada also employs cryptic wordplay. In Chinese something similar is the riddle of Chinese characters, where partial characters instead of substrings are clued and combined.
Clues given to the solver are based on various forms of wordplay. Nearly every clue has two non-overlapping parts to it: Most cryptic crosswords provide the number of letters in the answer, or in the case of phrases, a series of numbers to denote the letters in each word: More advanced puzzles may drop this portion of the clue. An anagram is a rearrangement of a certain section of the clue to form the answer.
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This is usually indicated by words such as "strange", "bizarre", "muddled", "wild", "drunk", or any other term indicating change. Anagram clues are characterized by an indicator word adjacent to a phrase that has the same number of letters as the answer. The indicator tells the solver that there is an anagram they need to solve to work out the answer. Indicators come either before or after the letters to be anagrammed.
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In an American cryptic, only the words given in the clue may be anagrammed; in some older puzzles, the words to be anagrammed may be clued and then anagrammed. So in this clue:. Chew is the anagram indicator; honeydew clues melon , which is to be anagrammed; and fruit is the definition for the answer, LEMON. This kind of clue is called an indirect anagram , which in the vast majority of cryptic crosswords are not used, ever since they were criticised by 'Ximenes' in his book On the Art of the Crossword. Anagram indicators, among the thousands possible, include: It is common for the setter to use a juxtaposition of anagram indicator and anagram that form a common phrase to make the clue appear as much like a 'normal' sentence or phrase as possible.
Here the answer is formed by joining individually clued words to make a larger word namely, the answer. The definition is "managing money". With this example, the words appear in the same order in the clue as they do in the answer, and no special words are needed to indicate this. However, the order of the parts is sometimes indicated with words such as "against", "after", "on", "with" or "above" in a down clue.
Other container indicators are "inside", "over", "around", "about", "clutching", "enters", and the like. Deletions consist of beheadments , curtailments , and internal deletions. In down clues, reversals might be hinted by something along the lines of "up", like this from Osmosis in a recent Telegraph Toughie:. I thought something similar was going on with Math in yesterday's i Finally, a couple of Times Jumbo examples where there's some work to do before or after finding what's hidden.
This one offers a sort of salty cousin of the hidden And this one expects you to assemble by yourself the phrase where the answer is hidden:. How does it work? Some examples Here's a letter example from the Times Jumbo: Quite often, it's "some", as used by Puck in yesterday's Guardian: Here's "some" again, in the Times Jumbo: Other phrases to look out for are ones that ask you to look inside another part of the clue, like this from the Sunday Telegraph: Here he is in a solution published last week: It's not always that simple For each trick we look at, we'll see that there's the basic device, and variants - those established and those yet to be devised by pioneering setters.
With hiddens, the answer might be in backwards, like this from Dac in yesterday's Independent: Not entirely 5 "Not entirely" is our way in - we're looking for part of "stee red ir responsibly". Both are rammed together in this Sunday Telegraph clue: In down clues, reversals might be hinted by something along the lines of "up", like this from Osmosis in a recent Telegraph Toughie: And this one expects you to assemble by yourself the phrase where the answer is hidden: Over to you So.
Needs an internet connection. This way we can keep the wordlist up to date at all time without updates. I have been using this app for my enjoyment of crossword puzzles. I previously used an app I had on my iphone for puzzles. The brain that designed this app is Amazing! The latest update drastically limits clue searches. This is happening more and more. The last two days have seen no clues. Otherwise, I love this app when it works.