Cryptic Crosswords for the Rest of Us

The thing nobody tells beginners about cryptic crosswords is that they are not harder than ordinary crosswords. They are differently hard, and the difference is entirely front-loaded: once you know the rules, cryptics are often more solvable than a Saturday American puzzle, because the clue contains its own proof.

The rules take about ten minutes to learn. What takes longer is trusting them.

The one structural fact

Every cryptic clue has two parts: a definition and some wordplay, and both point at the same answer. The definition sits at the start or the end of the clue, never in the middle. Everything else is instructions.

This is the whole system. When you read a cryptic clue, your first move is always to find the split - where does the definition stop and the instruction begin - and there are only two candidate places to look.

A cryptic clue tells you the answer twice: once plainly, once as a recipe. If your answer does not satisfy both, it is wrong.

The six devices

Anagram

The most common, and the easiest to spot because it must be signalled. Indicator words suggest disorder: confused, broken, wild, cooked, out, strangely, drunk.

Broken cage produces a huge open space (5) - the definition is huge open space, and CAGE broken is an anagram, but that is only four letters. Add the indicator convention that produces can be a link word and you need a five-letter source. This is where beginners learn to count letters first, always.

Container

One string goes inside another. Signalled by: in, holding, around, swallowing, eating, outside.

Rodent in the road is enormous (5) - RAT inside a two-letter word, or a word wrapped around RAT. Counting again tells you which.

Hidden word

The answer sits inside the clue text, spanning word boundaries. Signalled by: some, part of, in, held by, a little.

Some of the fabric ottoman hides a small animal (3) - read across fabric ottoman and the answer is sitting there in plain sight. These are gifts and worth hunting for early.

Homophone

Sounds like another word. Signalled by: we hear, reportedly, on the radio, said, aloud.

Regional accents make these contentious, which is why good setters restrict them to unambiguous cases.

Charade

The answer is assembled from pieces defined separately, in order. Often unsignalled, which makes charades the hardest to spot and the most satisfying to crack.

Double definition

Two definitions, no wordplay, usually a very short clue. Light beam (3) is a classic shape. When a cryptic clue is suspiciously brief, this is almost always why.

The abbreviations you have to memorise

There is a small standard vocabulary, and it is the only rote learning cryptics require. A handful of examples: learner is L, sailor is AB or TAR, queen is ER or R, doctor is DR or MO, quiet is P, loud is F, about is RE or CA, note is any of A to G.

The full list runs to a couple of hundred items and you will absorb most of it in a month of solving. Do not try to memorise it in advance; learn each one the first time it beats you.

How to start

Three pieces of advice, in order.

1. Count the letters before anything else. The enumeration in brackets is the most useful information in the clue and beginners consistently ignore it.
2. Find the definition first. Test the first word or two as a definition, then the last word or two. One of them almost always works.
3. Solve with the answers available. There is no shame in checking. A cryptic clue you could not solve but can understand once explained has still taught you the device, and that is the entire learning mechanism.

Where to practise

Start with a daily paper's easier cryptic rather than a barred-grid advanced puzzle. The Guardian's cryptic archive is free and includes setters who deliberately pitch at beginners, and the Wikipedia article on cryptic crosswords is an unusually good reference for the device taxonomy and its regional variations.

For a smaller daily habit, a single-clue cryptic is an ideal training format - one clue, one answer, no grid to abandon - and the worked explanations at Minute Cryptic Answers show the parsing rather than just the solution, which is the part that actually teaches. When a clue turns on an anagram you cannot unscramble, a scrambled-word tool like the daily Jumble archive is decent practice for the same skill.

Give it a fortnight. Almost everyone who quits cryptics quits in the first week, before the rules have had a chance to become instincts.