How To Do the Cryptic Crossword

What the title says. (Also, happy completely unrelated Canada Day!)

Why do I want to write a blog post on doing the cryptic crossword? Well, I always used to avoid cryptics whenever I saw them. They seemed like weird artifacts written by people who didn’t  understand how crosswords were supposed to go,  i.e. that the clues were supposed to make sense. But then I stumbled across one in a puzzle book that included a how-to guide. Once I understood the basics, I got the hang of solving the darn things. And they’re really fun. *cue heartwarming music*

So.

Step one: Find a cryptic crossword. You will know which is the cryptic because it will have cryptic clues. Only, the crossword people don’t seem to mean the same thing by “cryptic” as the rest of us. For instance, imagine the following conversation:

YOU: Hey, do you know where our boss was yesterday?
COWORKER: Lidless eyes give the answer to your question.
YOU: Er… okay, but can’t you tell me instead?
COWORKER: Liver-oil fish goes up a rocky cliff to find a man with a degree.

The crossword people would like you to believe that your coworker is being “cryptic” here. You can probably think of several more fitting words.

Step two: Half of each clue is the regular definition, and the other half is the cryptic clue. Figuring out which is which is half the battle.

One of the tricky things cryptic clues will do is put a word with more than one meaning into a syntax or punctuation that suggests a particular meaning. For example, the clue might be “Sulphur is next to group of stores for minute.” In the clue, “minute” seems to mean “sixty seconds”; it is actually being used as a definition for the answer, “small”. (S=[chemical symbol for sulphur] + mall [= another word for “group of stores”]. I’ll get to this part later.)

Step three: Figure out what the other half of the clue means.

This is, naturally, one of the more difficult steps. Sometimes, you wind up reversing the order of steps two and three when you “know” what the answer is but can’t figure out how it fits with the definition in the clue. There’s a standard set of cryptic tricks that most crossword authors follow. Each author, however, has his or her own “style” — a favoured set of acronyms, short forms, and so forth to which frequent readers become accustomed.

Anyway.

ANAGRAMS. Cryptic clues are usually followed by parentheses indicating the number of letters in the answer.

e.g. Help clone – use it to call 911 (4, 5) means the answer to the clue is a two-word phrase where the first word has four letters and the latter has five.

If you notice a word or phrase, possibly awkwardly worded — like “help clone” — that has the same number of letters as the answer, you may be looking at an anagram.

Help clone = cell phone = something you can use to call 911

Sometimes, the author will indicate an anagram with a word like “scrambled”, “re-directed”, “made up” or other obscure terms that might passive-aggressively suggest the concept of re-ordering. To tell you the truth, half the time, I spot these only after I’ve done the anagram. (“Oh, so that’s what ‘untied’ was supposed to mean…’”)

Maybe I should make this a mini-section with its own numbering. Nah, too late.

HIDDEN WORDS. These drive me nuts. I used to have “hidden word” puzzle books, and they drove me nuts, too. ‘Cause, theoretically it should be easy, right? Just ignore the spaces and the punctuation and find the string of letters that corresponds to the category or definition you’ve been given. Cryptic clues will often hint at the existence of a hidden word with flags like “inside” or “holds.”

e.g.  Mother Mitford holds a lonely man (6)

The answer is hermit = a lonely man, “held” by MotHER MITford. Sometimes, the hidden word may be hidden backwards.

… I can tell you love cryptics already.

CHARADES. Charades clues “act” the answer out piece by piece. This is by far the most diverse and fun category of cryptic clues. It’s also the hardest to get the hang of and the most idiosyncratic in terms of how much the individual puzzle writer’s style affects the end product. Buckle up!

e.g. Feline sits next to a rooster’s crown in a den of bones (8)

The answer is CATACOMB: CAT (= feline) + A COMB (= a rooster’s crown) Usually, in a charades clue, there will be two or more shorter words that you have to rearrange to make the answer. Simple enough, right?

Wrong!

Plain one-word-next-to-the-other-word is just the beginning. Cryptic crossword writers will want you to manipulate the answers even more: omit certain letters, mix two words together, reverse the order, substitute one letter for another, only pay attention to every other letter, only use part of a word…

For instance, in some variations (reversals, containers, beheadings or curtailings), the author will use phrases like “swallows,” “goes up,” “almost,” etc. to signal how to put these words together to make the answer.

e.g.
Feline [CAT] sits next to a rooster’s crown [A COMB] can mean “put the two phrases side by side to get “CATACOMB””

That woman [HER] swallows bite [EAT] can mean the word “EAT” goes inside the word “HER” to make “HEATER”” (A container! Variations include “embraces,” “eats,” etc.)

A sun [STAR] goes up can mean “reverse the order of the letters in “STAR” to get “RATS”” (A reversal! Variations  include “rises,” “ascends,” etc.)

Odd tartan [PLAID] can mean “take only the odd-numbered letters of “PLAID” to get “PAD”” (You might see the same idea with “even.”)

Almost aircraft [PLANE] can mean “drop a letter or two off the end of “PLANE” to get “PLAN”” (A curtailing! Variations include “nearly” and more direct phrases like “cut off” etc.)

Headless spirit [GHOST] can mean “drop the first letter of “GHOST” to get “HOST”” (A beheading! Variations include “top off,” “lidless,” etc.)

And, of course, all these can be combined: you may be asked to reverse the letters in one word, THEN “wrap it around” the other, THEN “put it beside” a third.

DOUBLE DEFINITION. As implied, this time both halves of the clue are the definition of the answer. For example, remember that minute (time)/minute (size) thing that happened above? If your clue is:

Small number of seconds (6)

the answer is MINUTE. “Minute” can mean “small” as well as a “number of seconds.” However, when double definitions devolve into puns, they get tricky. For instance,

Diversion: man who vacations in Florida? (7)

gives the answer TANGENT. A tangent is a diversion, and a man who vacations in Florida is a tan gent. Get it? ‘Coz he gets a tan because it’s so sunny in Florida? Ho ho ho. Incidentally, crossword-puzzle writers use “?” at the end of clues as a signal that the answer will make you roll your eyes when you finally figure it out.

Of course, there are lots of kinds of clues in the cryptic, but these tend to be the basics. If you use them as starting points rather than an exclusive list of what you’re likely to find, you’ll be all right.

Step four: Get really frustrated and wonder whether there are better ways to spend an hour after lunch on Saturday.

Just kidding. I love the cryptic, and now you will too! Enjoy!