11: Ten Ways to Raise Your Game
“Reporters observed Mrs Attlee’s eccentric driving as the Prime Minister busied himself with crosswords in the back of his car.”
Kevin Jeffrey, Finest and Darkest Hours
We will now look at methods that you might consider for improving your crossword-solving skills.
1. Practice, practice, practice!
This is the number one recommendation for improvement. There are many verbal tricks and conventions that are more easily recognized after you have done lots of crosswords. That still leaves room for setters to provide new ones, so have no fear that boredom will set in! You may like to practise by trying some of the clues and puzzles later in the book.
2. Solve with a friend
People often tell me that they enjoy doing all or part of the puzzle with a family member or work colleague. This can be face-to-face or by the many electronic ways available but whichever is used, there seems to be a significant solving improvement. Incidentally, after one of my workshops, the participants formed an internet-based group to help each other solve their daily crossword and this has spread to University of the Third Age (aka U3A, a thriving organisation for retired folk), some of which have more than one crossword group.
3. Join an online crossword club
The best of these are run by The Times, Daily Telegraph and Guardian (includes the Observer), the Irish Times and there is a flourishing Australian Crossword Club.
Most of these understandably require a small annual payment in return for which archived puzzles as well as current crosswords are available for practice.
In addition there is the very first crossword club run since inception by Brian Head based in Awbridge, Hampshire providing a monthly mainly online magazine of puzzles, clue writing contests and other goodies.
If good old-fashioned books are what you prefer, then one of the large number available may appeal. There are books for many of the puzzles mentioned in this book.
5. Enjoy a fun workshop
Strictly non-competitive, open to all of any age and whatever existing skills, a crossword workshop is a proven way to improve skills and experience. Details of those coming up in your area are available on various websites, including the author’s at www.timmoorey.info. The first of these has run at the very successful and friendly Marlborough College Summer School in Wiltshire since 2006 and takes place on weekday mornings in July.
Residential
Marlborough: www.mcsummerschool.org.uk Somerset: www.dillington.com
Non-residential
London: www.howtoacademy.com
6. Try the Monday crossword
True or not, many solvers tell me that Monday crosswords are the easiest of the week. If so, it’s not by design, I suspect but the belief could give newcomers a confidence boost!
7. Study the published solutions
Though explanations are not published, it can be highly productive to study the solutions published and to work backwards for any clues you have not managed to crack. I believe many would like to see annotated solutions but space limitations prevail.
8. Study the blogs
These are covered in Chapter 12.
9. Study the website www.andlit.org.uk
Maintained by John Tozer, this site is a treasure trove of prize-winning clues from the Observer’s Azed competition which began in 1972. Whilst the Azed crossword is of the barred type not covered here, hundreds of clues should make for a stimulating read and the commentary by Azed and indeed Ximenes himself in their “slips” will give many further insights into best practice principles.
WHAT DISTINGUISHES THE LIBERTARIAN SCHOOL FROM THE XIMENEAN ONE?
It would take a lot of space to comment on this and I suspect many readers would not want to stay with me. A few examples will suffice. Libertarian clues may require the solver to split words like indeed into in and deed where, say, part is to be inserted to make the answer departed. You may also be required to stretch normal word meanings, as in an imaginative definition of composer Vivaldi. He has been clued as a ‘seasonal barman’. This seems slightly degrading for the Red Priest but amusing nonetheless. Wagner has been similarly clued in a single word without further wordplay as ‘Ringmaster (6)’.
Slight stretching of homophones for comic effect will be found.
For example:
To make cheese, how do you milk a Welsh hedgehog? (10) Answer: Caerphilly
Hidden clues may have superfluous words and disregard reality:
Most Richard Tauber records contain this bird (7)
Answer: ostrich
Single word clues may need splitting as here:
Ascribe? (8,5)
Answer: articled clerk
Indicators may be missing as in the reversal needed here:
Announcement to put into a French resort (6)
Answer: notice
Rules of grammar are usually obeyed but not always:
A nut go into this (6)
Answer: nougat
To make it worse for Ximeneans, this clue also lacks a proper anagram indicator according to the precepts explained earlier.
Where would you find this type of clueing? Principally from some but by no means all setters in the Guardian where all the above clues appeared. However Guardian readers know what to expect and clearly greatly enjoy this Anything Goes school of clue-writing. They may well agree with the sentiment expressed by one solver to me that crosswords need to develop and should not be bound by a stickler classics master of over 50 years ago.
10. Enjoy Cracking the Cryptic on YouTube
Mark Goodliffe (also see here) and Simon Anthony demonstrate their real time solving of a cryptic. Well worth watching!
SPEED SOLVING CHAMPION’S TIPS
Mark Goodliffe, who typically solves three Times puzzles in 20 minutes, has won the Times championship 11 times. Here are his tips (as provided for a BBC Radio 4 programme):
1 Some of the words in the clue may only be there to provide their letters, not their meaning.
2 Each puzzle will contain a variety of wordplay: a few anagrams, and then a mix of definitions, reversals, hidden words or homophones. Try and find the ones you prefer.
3 There are THREE ways to get a solution: definition, wordplay and letters already in the grid.
4 Learn the valid single letter abbreviations.
5 Anything in the clue might mislead: the apparent surface meaning, punctuation, even how a word appears to sound eg flower meaning something that flows.
6 Get used to some of the very standard crossword usages eg initially (first letter), regularly (every other letter of), and anagram indicators.
7 There are one or two exceptions to the clue types: cryptic definition (misleading definitions) and & lit clues where the whole clue acts as both wordplay and definition.
NB. ”& lit” known as “all-in-one” in this book.