Cryptic crossword

Cryptic crosswords are a particular type of crossword which have become widely popular in the UK, and several other Commonwealth nations such as Australia, New Zealand , Canada and India. They are also popular in Israel in a Hebrew form. Each individual clue is a word puzzle in and of itself (often involving anagrams).

Popularity

All the major national newspapers in the UK carry both cryptic and concise (quick) crosswords. Of these, the cryptic crossword in The Times is particularly noted for its difficulty, while that in The Guardian is well-loved for its subtlety, humour and quirkiness.

Many Canadian newspapers, including the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, carry cryptic crosswords.

Cryptic crosswords are uncommon in U.S. publications, though they can be found occasionally in the New York Times and in magazines such as The Nation and Harper's. Other sources of cryptic crosswords in the U.S. (at all difficulty levels) are puzzle books, and GAMES Magazine; and UK or Canadian newspapers that are available in the U.S.

How cryptic clues work

In essence, a cryptic clue describes its answer accurately but only when the clue is read in a very devious way. What the clue appears to say when read normally (the surface reading) is almost never anything to do with the answer and is there as a distraction. The challenge is to find a way of reading the clue that leads to the solution.

In a typical clue, the answer is described in two ways, either of which can come first. One part of the clue is a definition, which must exactly match the part of speech and tense as the answer. The second half (the subsidiary indication) describes the answer in terms of wordplay. (The subsidiary indication can be a second definition in the case of double definition clues.) One of the tasks of the solver is to work out where this boundary occurs and insert a mental pause there when reading the clue cryptically. (Sometimes the two parts are joined with a link word or phrase.)

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. 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 Aug 6 2002, set by "Shed"):

15D: Very sad unfinished story about rising smoke (8)

is a clue for TRAGICAL. This breaks down as follows:

15D: indicates location and direction (down) of clue in grid
"Very sad" is the definition.
"Unfinished story" gives "Tal" ("tale" with one letter missing, ie "unfinished")
"rising smoke" gives "ragic" (a "cigar" is a smoke and this is a down clue and so "rising" indicates that "cigar" should be written going up the page i.e. backwards)
"about" means that the letters of "tal" should be put either side of "ragic", giving "tragical"
"(8)" says that the answer is a single word of eight letters.

There are many "code words" or "indicators" which have special meaning within the cryptic crossword context (in the example above, "about", "unfinished" and "rising" all fall into this category) and learning these, or being able to spot them, is a useful and necessary part of becoming a skilled cryptic crossword solver.

Regional variation

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, which may be either praised or vilified depending on which side of the Atlantic a solver is from. 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.

Compilers or setters (or cruciverbalists as many term themselves) often use slang terms and abbreviations, generally without indication, so familiarity with these can be useful. Also words that can mean more than one thing are common, often the meaning the solver must use is completely different to the one it appears to have in the clue. Some examples are:

Bloomer - often means flower (a thing that blooms).
Flower - often means river (a thing that flows).
Lead - could be the metal, or the verb.
Novel - could be a book, or a word for new, or a code-word indicating an anagram.
Permit - could be a noun (meaning licence) or a verb (meaning allow).

Types of clue

Pure cryptic

The original cryptic clue, more commonly known as a double entendre or cryptic definition. Clues of this sort appeared in "straight" crosswords before cryptic crosswords existed. Here the clue appears to say one thing, but with a slight shift of viewpoint it says another. For example:

A word of praise? (8)

would give the answer ALLELUIA, a word used by Christians to praise God, but not what first springs to mind on reading the clue. Notice the question mark - this is often (though by no means always) used by compilers to indicate this sort of clue is one where you need to interpret the words in a different fashion. The way that a clue reads as an ordinary sentence is called its surface reading and is often used to disguise the need for a different interpretation of the clue's component words.

Another one might be:

The flower of London? (6)

which gives THAMES, a flow-er of London. Here, the surface reading suggests a flower, which disguises the fact that the name of a river is required.

This type of clue rarely appears in American cryptics, but is common in British and Canadian cryptics.

Double definition

A clue may, rather than having a definition part and a wordplay part, have two definition parts. Thus

Not seeing window covering (5)

would have the answer BLIND, because both "not seeing" and "window covering" can mean blind. Note that since these definitions come from the same root word, an American magazine might not allow this clue. American double definitions tend to require both parts to come from different roots, like in this clue:

Eastern European buff (6)

This takes advantage of the two very different meanings (and pronunciations) of POLISH, the one with the long "o" sound meaning "someone from Poland" and the one with the short "o" sound meaning "make shiny."

These clues tend to be short; in particular, two-word clues are almost always double definition clues.

Hidden words

This is when the answer appears in the clue, but it is hidden within one or more words. For example:

Found ermine, deer hides damaged (10)

gives UNDERMINED, which means (cryptically at least) "damaged" and can be found as part of "Found ermine deer". The word "hides" is used to mean "contains," but in the surface sense suggests "pelts".

Possible indicators of a hidden clue are "in part", "partially", "in", "within", "hides", "conceals", "some", and "held by".

Another example:

Introduction to do-gooder canine (3)

gives DOG, which is the first part of, or "introduction to", the word "do-gooder", and means "canine".

Reversals

A word that gets turned around to make another is a reversal. For example:

Returned beer fit for a king (5)

The answer is REGAL. "Lager" (i.e., "beer") is "returned" to make regal.

Other indicator words include "receding", "in the mirror", "going the wrong way", "to the left" or "left" (for across clues), and "rising", "overturned" or "mounted" (for down clues).

Hidden backwards

Sometimes the above two clue types are combined. A word may be hidden backwards, such as in the clue:

Cruel to turn part of internet torrid (6)

The answer to this clue is ROTTEN. The phrase "to turn" indicates "to reverse," and "part of" suggests a piece of "internet torrid".

"Charade" clues

Here the answer is formed by joining individually clued words to make a larger word (namely, the answer).

For example:

Outlaw leader managing money (7)

The answer is BANKING formed by BAN for "outlaw" and KING for "leader". The definition is "managing money". With this example, the words go next to each other in the clue as they do in the answer - it isn't specifically indicated. However, where the parts go in relation to others is sometimes indicated with words like "against", "after", "with" or (in a down clue) "above".

Containers

A container clue puts one set of letters inside another. So:

Perfume cloth seen in European nation (9)

gives FRAGRANCE, placing "rag" ("cloth") inside "France" ("European nation").

Other container indicators are "around," "clutching," "enters," and the like.

Anagrams

An anagram is a rearrangement of a certain section of the clue to form the answer. This is usually indicated by words such as 'strange', 'bizarre', 'muddled', 'wild', 'drunk', or any other term indicating change. One example might be:

Chaperone shredded corset (6)

gives ESCORT, which means chaperone and is an anagram of corset, indicated by the word shredded.

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 in order to work out the answer. Indicators come either before or after the letters to be anagrammed. 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 honeydew fruit (5)

chew is the anagram indicator, honeydew clues melon, which is to be anagrammed, and fruit is the definition for the answer, LEMON.

Other possible anagram indicators, among the thousands possible: abstract, absurd, alien, alternative, awkward, bad, barmy, blend, break, careless, chaotic, clumsy, contrived, convert, corrupt, develop, doctor, eccentric, fabricate, fake, fix, fudge, ground, hammer, hybrid, jostle, knead, loose, maybe, messy, mix, mutant, new, novel, odd, order, outrageous, peculiar, poor, questionable, remodel, resort, rough, sort, style, troubled, twist, unconventional, unsound, vary.

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. For example:

Lap-dancing friend (3)

uses dancing as the indicator as it fits cohesively with lap to give the solution, PAL.

Homophones

Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings, such as "night" and "knight". Homophone clues always have an indicator word or phrase that has to do with phonetics, such as "reportedly", "they say", "vocal", "to the audience", "by the sound of it", and "is heard".

An example of a homophone clue is

We hear twins shave (4)

which is a clue for PARE, which means "shave" and is a homophone of pair, or "twins". The homophone is indicated by "we hear".

If the words are the same length, the homophone indicator is always adjacent to the word that is not the answer; therefore, in the previous example, "we hear" was adjacent to "twins" and the answer was pare rather than pair. The indicator could come between the words if they were of different lengths and the enumeration was given, such as in the case of "right" and "rite".

Deletions

Deletions consist of beheadments, curtailments, and internal deletions. In beheadments, a word loses its first letter. In curtailments, it loses its last letter, and internal deletions remove an inner letter, such as the middle one.

An example of a beheadment:

Beheaded celebrity is sailor (3)

The answer would be TAR, another word for "sailor", which is a "celebrity", or star, without the first letter.

Other indicator words of beheadment include "don't start", "topless", and "after the first".

An example of curtailment:

Shout, "Read!" endlessly (3)

The answer is BOO. If you ignore the punctuation, a book is a "read", and book "endlessly" is boo, a "shout".

Other indicators include "nearly" and "unfinished".

An example of internal deletion:

Challenging sweetheart heartlessly (6)

The answer is DARING, which means "challenging", and is darling without its middle letter, or "heartlessly".

Combination clues

A clue may employ more than one method of wordplay. For example:

Illustrious baron returns in pit (9)

The answer is HONORABLE. "Baron" "returns", or is reversed, and put inside "pit" or hole, to make honorable, or "illustrious".

"& lit."

A rare clue type is the "& lit." clue, standing for "and literally so". In this case, both the wordplay and the definition halves are the same. In some publications this is always indicated by an exclamation point at the end of the clue. For example:

God incarnate, essentially! (4)

The answer is ODIN. The Norse god Odin is hidden in "god incarnate," as clued by "essentially," but the definition of Odin is also the whole clue, as Odin is essentially a God incarnate.

This satisfies the "& lit." clue definition, but as read is clearly a cryptic clue. Another example:

Spoil vote! (4)

would give the answer VETO as a perfectly passable clue in a concise crossword; in a cryptic puzzle, however, spoil works as an anagram indicator for vote, while the whole clue is, with a certain amount of license allowed to crossword setters, the definition.

Abbreviations in clues

Abbreviations are popular with crossword compilers for clueing individual letters or short sections of the answer.

Consider the following clue:

About to come between little Desmond and worker for discourse (7)

There are two abbreviations used here. "About" is abbreviated "c" (for "circa") and "little Desmond" indicates the diminutive of Desmond, namely DES, is required. The "c" is "to come between" DES and ANT (a worker - note that compilers also use "worker" to stand for BEE or HAND), giving DESCANT, which means "discourse".

Compilers make use of a large number of these crossword abbreviations.

History and development

The first crossword puzzles were purely definitional, but from the 1920s began to include cryptic material: not cryptic clues in the modern sense, but anagrams, classical allusions, incomplete quotations, and other references and wordplay. Torquemada (Edward Powys Mathers, 1892–1939), who set for The Saturday Westminster from 1925 and for The Observer from 1926 until his death, was the first setter to use cryptic clues exclusively, and is often credited as the inventor of the cryptic crossword.

Cryptics were gradually taken up by other newspapers, appearing in The Manchester Guardian from 1929 and in The Times and The Listener from 1930.

Torquemada's puzzles are extremely obscure and difficult, and later setters reacted against this tendency by developing a standard for fair clues, ones that can be solved, at least in principle, by deduction, without needing leaps of faith or insights into the setter's thought processes.

The principle of fairness was set out by Listener setter Afrit (Alistair Ferguson Ritchie) in his book Armchair Crosswords (1946), where he credits it to the fictional Book of the Crossword:

We must expect the composer to play tricks, but we shall insist that he play fair. The Book of the Crossword lays this injunction upon him: "You need not mean what you say, but you must say what you mean." This is a superior way of saying that he can't have it both ways. He may attempt to mislead by employing a form of words which can be taken in more than one way, and it is your fault if you take it the wrong way, but it is his fault if you can't logically take it the right way.

An example of a clue which cannot logically be taken the right way:

Hat could be dry (5)

Here the composer intends the answer to be "derby", with "hat" the definition, "could be" the anagram indicator, and "be dry" the anagram fodder. But "be" is doing double duty, and this means that any attempt to read the clue cryptically in the form "[definition] [anagram indicator] [fodder]" fails: if "be" is part of the anagram indicator, then the fodder is too short, but if it is part of the fodder, there is no anagram indicator.

Torquemada's successor at The Observer was Ximenes (Derrick Somerset Macnutt, 1902–1971), and in his influential work, Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword Puzzle (1966), he set out guidelines for setting fair cryptic clues, now known as the "Ximenean principles". The most important of them are tersely summed up by Ximenes' successor Azed (Jonathan Crowther, born 1942):

A good cryptic clue contains three elements:

a precise definition
a fair subsidiary indication
nothing else

The Ximenean principles are adhered to most strictly in the subgenre of "advanced cryptics" — difficult puzzles using barred grids and a large vocabulary. Easier puzzles often have more relaxed standards, permitting a wider array of clue types, and allowing a little flexibility. The popular Guardian setter Araucaria (John Galbraith Graham, born 1921) is a noted non-Ximenean, celebrated for his witty, if occasionally unorthodox, clues.

Compilers

In Britain it is traditional -- dating from the crossword pioneer Edward (Bill) Powys Mathers (1892-1939), who called himself Torquemada in honour of the great inquisitor -- for compilers to use a single evocative pseudonym. Crispa, named from the latin for "curly-headed", who set crosswords for the Guardian from 1954 until her retirement in 2004, legally changed her surname to Crisp after divorcing in the 1970s.

The Times

Adrian Bell was the first to set The Times Crossword from 1930 and was one of those responsible for establishing its distinctive cryptic style. The Times came late to the crossword party - most other national papers already had one by 1930 - the Telegraph started in 1925, for instance.

Nowadays, the Times has a team of regular setters, many of whom set puzzles for other papers.

The Sunday Times

The main compiler for The Sunday Times is Barbara Hall (who also compiles the simpler dictionary crossword) and has been Puzzles Editor for thirty two years. The beneficial effect of crosswords' mental stimulation can be seen from Barbara's record - her first crossword was published in 1937 and she is still going strong after nearly seventy years of compilating. The Sunday Times is also home to the fiendish Mephisto puzzle set for the last 10 years by Chris Feetenby, Mike Laws and Tim Moorey

The Guardian

The Guardian newspaper has featured cryptic crosswords set by the following compilers, among others.

Arachne
Araucaria
Audreus
Auster
Brendan
Brummie
Bunthorne
Chifonie
Enigmatist
Gordius
Janus
Logodaedalus
Orlando
Pasquale
Paul
Quantum
Rover
Rufus
Shed
Taupi

The Independent

Dac
Eimi
Empire
Glow-worm
Hypnos
Mass
Math
Merlin
Monk
Mordred
Nestor
Nimrod
Obtrox
Phi
Punk
Quixote
Scorpion
Tees
Virgilius

The Financial Times

Bradman
Cincinnus
Cinephile (see Araucaria)
Crux
Dante (another pseudonym for Rufus)
Falcon
Highlander
Monk
Mudd
Neo
Satori
Sleuth

New York Magazine

Stephen Sondheim

The Atlantic Monthly (available only online)

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

The Nation

Frank W. Lewis

Harper's

Richard E. Maltby Jr.

The Toronto Star

Caroline Andrews

The Ottawa Citizen

Susannah Sears

The Globe and Mail

Fraser Simpson
Roger Squires (cryptics) uses Rufus, Dante, Hodge in UK

Games Magazine

Patrick Berry
Mike Selinker
Bob Stigger
Ron Sweet "Kegler's Kryptics"

Private Eye

In the early 1970s the satirical magazine's crossword was set by the Labour MP Tom Driberg, under the pseudonym of "Tiresias" (supposedly "a distinguished academic churchman"). It is currently set by Eddie James under the name "Cyclops". The crossword is frequently pornographic and, by all measures, usually intensely offensive. The prize for the first correct solution opened, £100, is unusually high for a crossword and attracts many entrants.

The Daily Telegraph

Roger Squires
Ann Tait
Jeremy Mutch
Don Manley
Peter Chamberlain

External links

Cryptics Monthly
The Crossword Centre
A great British obsession (article from The Guardian, extracted from a book by Sandy Balfour)
Description of cryptic crossword clues, guide to solving and examples
Ximenean clueing
Daily Cryptic Crossword

Template:Link FA