Bending the brain a little further
Toss the treadmill. Ditch the dumbbells. The tyro tutorial is done and dusted. Now we move into an agility session for the more advanced solver.
Curlier propositions, trickier posers—these next pages will turn your lobes inside-out, helping your imagination bend to the task of cracking the more evasive puzzles.
‘Neuro-cardio’, our start-up chapter, was your chance to establish a firm toehold in the climbing wall. But if you’ve been around the cryptic block a few times, then you won’t be daunted by a standard anagram or a plain reversal. This coming workout is your invitation to advance your agility, attempting a rundown of rarer clue types, as well as a few insider hints into cryptic arts.
To begin, let’s meet a tongue-tied priest from Oxford and the spoonerism.
WAYNE BRAVE is not a real person. Rather, he’s a spoonerism of BRAINWAVE. Just as CANE BRANDY is no genuine liquor, but a mangle of BRAIN CANDY, those tasty treats that clues can be.
Both makeovers fall into the spoonerism basket. Take a second look to see how they work, if you don’t know the foolery already. Named after Oxford’s don of ethics, Reverend William Spooner, the wordplay relies on the switching of initial consonant(s). The poor old prof, holding tenure from 1867 until 1924, burbled stuff like pear spew when he meant spare pew, or calling Our Loving Shepherd a shoving leopard.
To make jaw yob (sorry, your job) a little easier, every cryptic clue involving this trick will almost always name-check Spooner himself, meaning this formula bears the most obvious flag of them all. As soon as you see the name Spooner, you can identify which words need transforming, and claw year. (Damn—you’re clear.)
The only hitch is that few clues will give you those ‘fodder words’ verbatim. Like the following clue:
Film Spooner’s lee cargo (3,5)
Whether you’ve seen Key Largo from 1948, or you’ve been to Key Largo off Florida—that doesn’t matter. The clue does most of the work for you, telling you which words to finagle. All you have to do is follow the instructions.
Where the recipe gets more testing is when a synonym step is added. Reusing Key Largo as our answer, the revised clue might read:
Film Spooner’s sheltered freight (3,5)
Freltered Shate is not a film, if we were to spoonerise the words presented. Hence you need to summon the right synonyms to enact the spoonerism. Homophone clues demand the same middle step—giving you the synonym of the word you ultimately need to voice.
Before we tackle a few spoonerism examples, mayor in bind (you know what I mean) that sometimes a single word can be the spoonerism’s source—or answer. Dutch town yields TOUCHDOWN, inviting my clue:
Land in Rotterdam, according to Spooner (5,4) = TOUCH DOWN (spoonerising Dutch town)
In a similar vein, a single-word solution may hold spoonerism potential, such as this original:
Track two sea creatures for Spooner? (7) = RAILWAY (spoonerising WHALE/RAY)
Spelling is the other quirk worth observing. In every sample so far, the answers have made slight adjustments to honour the spoonerism’s sound. To be technical, lee cargo makes CEE LARGO, yet that spelling disregards the hard C from cargo—hence KEY LARGO is the sonic outcome. Likewise Dutch town mutates into TOUCHDOWN, not TUTCHDOWN, erring on the side of existing words.
Gear hose!
Spoonerism
1. Spooner to label giant mammal as dainty bird (7) [DA]
2. Tinned sort of offal Spooner delivers in barrow (8) [Hoskins]
3. Not enough tarts for Spooner? Don’t you believe it! (4,2,4) [Crux]
4. Fat cat Spooner’s copies of Playboy? (9) [Arachne]
ANSWERS:
1. WAGTAIL (spoonerising tag whale), 2. HANDCART (canned heart), 3. PACK OF LIES (lack of pies), 4. MONEYBAGS (bunny mags)
As we’ve seen, spoonerisms swap opening consonants, turning better locks into LETTERBOX. This next formula pulls a matching stunt: swapping letters around, or switching letters within a word.
One way to imagine the formula is to picture a street magician switching cups on a table. The cups are opaque and upside-down. One cup hides a pea—the other four are empty. Your job as observer is to follow the pea. Whereas a solver’s job is to try to see which letters are being swapped, turning TIRE out of TIER (switching the sequence of letters)—or TIRING out of TIMING (replacing a letter).
If that sounds brain-bruising, it can be. Manipulations rate among the tougher clues to unravel, their rarity a consolation.
A further consolation is the helpful language, presuming you know how to decode the clue—the clue’s wording will lead you through the operation. Either a letter (or letters) will move within a word—changing rarest into ARREST, say—or an imported letter will arrive as replacement, seeing rarest mutate into RAWEST. Let’s check out two examples, one for each kind of procedure, better known as the Switch and the Swap.
First, let’s meet a sample from the Switch camp:
Waterbirds run, top to bottom (5)
Where’s the signpost? Always ask that question. What’s the clue telling me to do?
Rattle through a checklist if it helps, dismissing the likelihood of anagram (no sign of mixing), homophone (no sign of hearing), container (no sign of inserting, or holding), and so on.
Step by step you’ll scratch most candidates, leaving you with the likely command top to bottom—a favoured expression in manipulations for reasons of seeming seamless.
To obey the command top to bottom, you must move the word’s first letter to the end, move the top to the bottom as it were. Yet which word?
Look at the answer’s length. We’re seeking a five-letter synonym of run, with too many suspects to list easily. But a good crossword sleuth will suspect the word begins with S. Can you see why?
It’s common sense: your solution is likely to be a variety of water bird, and we know most plurals end in S. Hence our run synonym will probably begin with S, the top letter destined to be the bottom, after the manipulation. A theory like this is a leap of logic, not faith. The more puzzles you confront, the more your mind will tease out such ideas.
Asked another way—what’s a four-letter name for a waterbird? Four letters, as its plural form will make five. While GEESE is singular and plural without an S-bottom, those birds are the exception. All the rest pass muster: DUCK, SWAN, TERN, TEAL.
Try each bird out, adding an S to its head, seeing whether the masquerade produces a word meaning run: SDUCK (nup), SSWAN (a pale ship?), STERN (the ship’s bottom?), STEAL (aaah …).
Hang on—does steal mean run? Kinda, sorta, but not really. If you steal my wallet, you might run away, but that’s imprecise, and illegal. Now give it back.
A baseballer may steal a base, running from first to second, but again that’s a stretch, and far less satisfying than scoot—
SCOOT? Try it out. Manipulate the top to the bottom—COOTS—and your bird is in the hand. A lot of fuss and flying feathers on the way, perhaps, but manipulations become smoother with practice.
So much for the switch formula, essentially a subtler means of performing an anagram. But what does the Swap procedure look like, the second style of manipulation? Take a gander:
Lying airhead in clique falls for one (7)
Airhead could be A—the head of air. We learnt that cryptic code in the last section, as part of the deletion game. Meantime one, the final word, is often shorthand for I.
Here in this clue we have an A falling for an I, the first letter succumbing to the second. But in what? Read the clue—it tells you. To make the message clearer, I’ve translated the cryptic-speak to help you see the game at large:
Lying [A] in clique falls for [I] (7)
Know any words meaning clique? Your suspect has seven letters, including an A, just as the clue spells out. As a bonus hint, let’s turn to the master of techno-thrillers, Tom Clancy, who said, ‘The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.’
Manipulation
Two of these clues involve a switch, while two entail a swap, replacing one letter for an import. If you followed our FACTION of COOTS, you’ll intuit which is which.
1. Parasites cling, first to last (5) [Times 10,875]
2. What is replacing a card game? (5) [DA]
3. Prison caused change of heart—that’s the aim (4) [Neo]
4. After sex change, cleavage becomes goal (7) [Donk]
ANSWERS:
1. TICKS (switch first to last in STICK), 2. WHIST (swap IS for the A in WHAT), 3. GOAL (switch inner pair of GAOL), 4. MISSION (swap F of FISSION for M—female for male)
True. Fiction is a fancy word for ‘not true’, the stuff of imagination. In short, lying. And FICTION is also the result of FACTION’s A falling for I.
There’s no question—these are tough clues to read, ten times harder than a Clancy thriller, but the more you grapple with the swapping and switching, the quicker your eye will follow the moving P—so to speak—under the magician’s cups.
Who needs John Le Carré when cryptic crosswords offer all the code-breaking fun you’ll ever need? Codes are clues whose answers are laced in their own wording, requiring you to pluck out selected letters to create the solution. Such clues may read this way:
Starters in race are motivated about doing athletics naturally fast (7)
Ignore the runners implied in the story. By now you should be wise enough to see through the clue and examine the words. Rather than sprinters, starters are initial letters, the seven letters starting the words in the following: race are motivated about doing athletics naturally. Together, what do the letters spell? The final hint is the clue’s finish: fast.
Again, it’s nothing to do with track and field, as the story is trying to suggest, but fast of a different stripe. Usually across May and June a faithful Muslim will observe RAMADAN, a fast of thirty days or so.
Other signposts which imply initial letters include fronts, faces, openers—and initially. When it comes to recognising recipe markers, many of the signposts listed in the Deletions segment can apply here. The difference gets down to process. While code-solvers must handpick letters to spell the answer, the deletion challenge depends on leaving the right leftover, once those letters have been removed.
In the meantime, other signpost variations can point you to letters in different positions, like in this clue from Gila, a compiler for The Independent:
So persuasive is the story, it’s hard to isolate the junction between wordplay and definition, or in this case: definition/wordplay. Almost invisible, the answer’s synonym is standing at the head of the line: too. (Never overlook any word in any clue—remember that.) Going with too as definition then, we can now break the clue this way:
Too / many gluttons ask for seconds (4)
Spot the signpost? Rather than starters this time, Gila is telling you to consider the second letters in many gluttons ask for.
Codes can ALSO focus on the tail-enders, the wooden spooners, the lucky lasts, such as in this clue:
The solemn creed we worshipped lasts through (5)
Just like too in the last sample, through is easy to disregard. But beware—inconspicuous words are given their low profile for a reason, all the better to mislead the rookie. A synonym of through is ENDED, the lasts of the first five words: The solemn creed we worshipped.
Firsts, seconds, lasts—you’ve seen the gamut of the code genre. Now run the gauntlet.
Code
1. Foremost in the arts, painter is never granting audition (6) [DA]
2. Diners out, usually booking table, first of all making reservation (5 [Times 10,774]
3. Truck found behind rental limo over major highway (5) [DA]
4. Bottom line that’s reduced flight fares by thirds (5) [DA]
ANSWERS:
1. TAPING, 2. DOUBT, 3. LORRY, 4. NADIR
A code of sorts, the alternation formula selects every odd or even letter from a clue’s wording. OWL, for example, is nesting in the odd letters of ORWELL, or the even letters of BOSWELL, another English author. That cute fluke helps a setter create a clue like the following.
Hundred Acre Wood character oddly created by Orwell (3)
Evenly and oddly are common signals of the game, though the beacon you’d be wise to remember is regularly—as in the regular pattern of alternate letters, whether they’re the odd or even letters. In a similar vein, regulars is also a regular offender, the very culprit in this sample:
Diehard regulars no more (4)
Bizarre, right? The regular letters of Diehard, the odds in this case, spell DEAD. That irony is right up there with barbarian oddly declaring BRAIN, or blackberry—the produce sold by greengrocers—rendering BAKER.
If not appearing as a whole recipe, the alternation trick can frequently appear to provide a letter-string that forms part of the solution. A case in point:
Polo regulars nibbled meal = PLATE
Or this one from Puck in The Guardian:
Language coming from Jack and Vera, regularly (4)
The mystery language here is also an island that doesn’t speak this language. If that sounds like nonsense, then let’s unpeel the cryptic language. Jack is J, as any cardsharp knows. Next are the words and Vera. (Newcomers would be forgiven for overlooking and, the conjunction next to invisible in common prose.) Select the regular letters of ANDVERA and you make AVA, which, when escorted by J, becomes the computer language JAVA, your solution.
Beyond the regular use of regularly, be cautious of any adverb suggesting now and then, such as sporadically or intermittently. More signpost suspects appear in the box below, as well as these examples here. See how many you can get right.
Alternation
1. Unique all-rounder regularly missed (5) [Vlad]
2. Message in a bottle oddly missing (4) [Times 10,816]
3. Woman using handbag every so often (3) [Times 10,860]
4. Be married, failing intermittently (3) [DA]
5. Pocket needs repairing regularly (4) [Times 10,050]
ANSWERS:
1. ALONE, 2. NOTE, 3. ADA, 4. ARE, 5. EARN
ALTERNATION (a sampling)
at intervals
at odds with
evens out
here and there
intermittent(ly)
not even
now and then
occasionally
oddly
oddly deficient
off and on
periodical
regularly
sporadic
Become a crossword solver—it’s a rewording career!
Zorro was a regular letter-writer.
Stiletto heels are archenemies.
Audiobooks are speaking volumes.
However cornball or twisted, all the samples above might be adopted by a playful setter. (And I don’t mean a frisky puppy.) The first example deliberately tweaks a word into a pun—turning rewarding into rewording—while the others are capricious ways of defining the key word or phrase.
In American-style puzzles, which are separate from the cryptic genre, offering a range of quick and trivia clues, the occasional pun clue is called a daffy definition. My opening wisecracks are in that style, where wordplay acts as a comical description. (And if you recall, we tackled Joon Pahk’s daffy clue back in Part One, where CAROL was Number of holidays.) Check out this trio, drawn from a single New York Times puzzle by veteran stylist Patrick Berry:
It’s played close to the chest = UKULELE
People get off on them = EXIT RAMPS
Chain attached to buckets = KFC
All these clues belong under the same punbrella. Apologies in advance—this section is scattered with a father lode of Dad jokes, from COLDPLAY (the Winter Olympics) to ATHEISTS (non-parishables). Pun clues skew the language to smoke-screen the solution, although they promise a smile once the smoke clears. Indeed, in some British circles, the pun clue is dubbed an oblique or cryptic definition, making your role as solver a matter of realigning the language to match with dictionary-speak. to convert Raspberry producer? (say) into ‘an organ that produces a raspberry effect’, namely TONGUE.
Among cryptic clues, puns are often flagged by a question mark, your signal to uncover the potential mischief of the clue’s wording. Present day? is a fresh way to see CHRISTMAS. Just as TOILET might be the Place to go? Or, Sitting room?
The other pun signpost can be brevity. This stands to reason, since wordplay and definition may be rolled into one. Love handles (the clue) could be fleshed into TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, the answer as payoff, lending sense to the pun. See how you go with this gem from the Sunday Times:
One shy of seven? (7)
Logic dictates the answer is SIX, but the answer’s number of letters doesn’t allow it. And besides, logic needs to step aside when a question mark comes along. Ration the rational—this clue needs more playful brainwork.
If I told you the answer starts with B and ends on L, does that help? Pun clues may rely on a few cross-letters in the grid to steer your thinking. Can you nominate a seven-letter word starting with B that means shy?
Please, don’t be bashful. In fact, get happy with these four ‘daffy definitions’ to prove you’re not sleepy. I’ve even supplied the first and last letters of each answer, rather than the solution’s length, just to stop you getting grumpy.
Pun
1. One who’s been given a court order? (S-D) [Notabilis]
2. Big Brother of Marxism? (G-O) [Araucaria]
3. Leaves home? (T-G) [DA]
4. Happy he wasn’t, but much blessed? (S-Y) [Times 10,029]
ANSWERS:
1. SEED, 2. GROUCHO, 3. TEA BAG, 4. SNEEZY
WHAT IDIOT?
What idiot called them voodoo dolls instead of idol threats?
What idiot called it a second marriage instead of a repair job?
What idiot called them cogs instead of ferrous wheels?
What idiot called it a fold-away tray instead of a periodic table?
What idiot called it a vet instead of a dogtor?
What idiot called it Qatar Airways instead of Air Qatar?
What idiot called it quoits and not game of throwns?
What idiot called them jet-skis versus boatercycles?
What idiot called him a stepdad instead of a faux pa?
What idiot called it a mugshot instead of a cellfie?
Stone motherless—slang for sloshed, or an emphatic way of saying you’re last in a race—might also be depicted this way:
__ __ R B L E
See the reasoning? While WARBLE and BURBLE fit the pattern, so does MARBLE. Or here that’s MARBLE without its MA, a fanciful way of suggesting stone motherless. If you’re still confused, let me translate the GARBLE.
‘Rebus’ is Latin for ‘by means of objects’, as that is how this clue recipe works. Akin to a visual code, the rebus delivers the solution as hieroglyph, a set of symbols you need to decipher. Notably, most rebus clues, such as our opener, don’t accompany a definition, the answer instead being outlined ‘by means of objects’.
Perhaps the most clichéd example of a cryptic rebus is GSGE, or scrambled eggs, a few steps ahead of the other clue people like to cite as cryptic thinking:
H I J K L M N O (5)
I’m presuming you know the gag already. This rebus is older than Pliny the Elder, producing WATER, or H to O.
Strictly speaking, however, clues like these last two are unlikely to appear in mainstream crosswords, as the rebus recipe is deemed a little too playful for most mastheads. Chances are, if a rebus does bob up, the symbol play will adjoin the answer’s definition as well, such as this innovative gem from The Times:
Aim cryptically for something quite special = ONE IN A MILLION
Even with the solution, can you unlock the clue’s deception? What if I rejigged the example to isolate the trick?
AIM, expressed cryptically, means something quite special
Million, the word, is usually abbreviated to M in newspaper headlines and articles. Therefore aim is one in a million, if you view the word through a cryptic lens.
A pure rebus might only offer aim as the clue—and nothing else. Or sometimes capital letters are used to bring the encoded word or cluster into sharper focus. This same play can go towards compensating for the definition’s absence, as can occur in the rebus mode, although that scorns the rulebook in the eyes of most editors.
Nonetheless, a good rebus will oblige your brain to think outside the box. That last phrase in fact—THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX—was the solution for Tramp’s ingenious rebus from a Guardian puzzle in 2011:
MUST’VE (5,7,3,3)
Get the cunning? It’s hard to dismantle, but once you spot TV—or, the box—lodged inside MUSE, another word for think, the brilliance strikes you.
More typically, the rebus escorts a definition, unless the trick can extract both rabbits, such as this oldie from my own drawing board:
HERO? (4,4)
Yes, that darker font is deliberate. Why? Because BOLD TYPE, your answer, describes the typography as much as the personality of the fearless protagonist.
If the recipe feels a little flaky, then rest assured it’s rare. Indeed, you’re more likely to encounter the ruse in a cryptic answer, as seen here:
Haters the result of such sad cases? = BROKEN HEARTS
Follow the logic this time? The wording implies the rebus-logic of haters deriving from HEARTS when broken. It’s a basic anagram when all is said and done, but a lot more evasive when your brain needs to infer the missing step. Keeping things on a cardiac theme, here’s another rebus-flavoured clue:
Lover suggesting wee? (10)
So babe, know another word for lover? Or darling, what term of endearment could double as a cryptic indicator for WEE?
SWEETHEART is the missing label, hotcakes. Watch out for this inverted brand of rebus, which often uses words like suggest or result, and almost always carries a question mark. Like this one, from Times puzzle 11,123:
Al suggesting this department for customer service? (4,6)
If the crossword was quick, you’d be searching for a customer-service department. But since it’s cryptic, you also can deduce that AL is the lateral outcome of the missing phrase, the middle of the four-letter word in fact. Indeed, AL is the centre of CALL, which is to say CALL CENTRE, a place for customer service: your answer.
Without resorting to customer service, or the help desk, see how you fare with these rebus samples. Before you begin, notice how no clue carries any upper-case words or clusters, a quirk more common to the solo rebus, with no accompanying definition. (This also suggests, as tough as these four samples are, that there is a definition escorting each rebus ruse.) Did I say tough? I’d rate the last two as difficult, extremely difficult when you have no cross-letters to assist.
Rebus
1. As cryptically suggested by this conflicted region (6,4) [Times 10,853]
2. Hear Ted is distraught? (6-7) [Sunday Times 1004]
3. Take in? (4-4) [Times 10,638]
4. How eagle’s made descent (7) [Donk]
ANSWERS:
1. MIDDLE EAST, 2. BROKEN-HEARTED (and I even warned you about this!), 3. HALF-INCH, 4. L/IN/EAGE
Now’s the time to shelve the recipe book to issue a general warning. To paraphrase Star Trek, the cryptic crossword uses punctuation, but not as we know it. Be alert when it comes to hyphens, dots and squiggles on the puzzle page. Just as no word is wasted, no punctuation is either.
But rather than scare you with random caveats, let’s take a peek at the various roles of punctuation in a cryptic habitat, just to see what you need to anticipate.
Telling the story
The surface sense is how smoothly a clue reads. The best clues tell their lie well, sucking you into the story while concealing the deeper truth.
Notice the comma in that last sentence? That’s there because I extended my remark with an additional clause, enlisting a comma to annex the principal remark. It’s simple enough, since that’s how punctuation works in the real world. Compare that to Hazard’s clue from The Guardian:
New woman, right? No way! (5)
There are three punctuation marks in one small bundle: comma, question mark, exclamation mark. Together the devices capture the clue’s cadence, as if a flabbergasted speaker is responsible for the words, not a compiler. Say the clue aloud and you can almost imagine a person denying rumours of a new girlfriend in his life. Hazard is wanting you to think that way—to fall for the fiction—when really you can ignore the three bits of punctuation and read it as:
New woman right no way
To decrypt the clue, and get to the charade, you might even swap those marks you’ve dumped for symbols of a different kind:
New + woman + right = no way
New as in New Testament, or New South Wales, is often reduced to N, the letter. As for woman, who’s the first female to spring to mind? There must be scores of girls’ names of adequate length for this clue, yet the original suspect deserves to be EVE.
You know what comes next, right?
Wait, let’s alter that punctuation to better reflect my meaning.
You know what comes next: right.
That’s right, as in N+EVE+R = no way. Hazard’s hazards are easier to surmount once you fleece the clue of its punctuation, converting the story into a cold equation.
When solving crosswords, you have to un-rut your brain that way, looking beyond your typical reading behaviour to expose the logic underneath. You may recall the words of linguist Debra Aarons, the academic we met in the chapter ‘Dis/Connect’: ‘Once we view language, especially written language, as a string of elements, the play and puzzle possibilities are endless.’
To solve a cryptic puzzle, warn your neurons in advance. Instead of rational sentences, the stuff of essays and rental agreements, your grey matter will be dealing with deceptions, the sort that often rely on punctuation as their camouflage.
Symbol-minded
Then again, never ignore punctuation marks either. While trimming a clue to its bare bones may be useful, you’re equally wise to question how each squiggle may contribute to the solution. Here’s a clue I made a few years back:
Resembling: nudist camp? (6)
The question mark makes sense, lending an inquisitive lilt to the clue’s story, but what is that colon doing?
If nothing is wasted, including punctuation, then what function does the colon fulfil? That question is pivotal.
Put it this way: if something resembling mist is misty, and something resembling fog is foggy, what word describes something colon-like? Ask Adam or Eve in their nudist COLONY.
Not only is the colon central to the clue, but the question mark is also meaningful, suggesting the wordplay has a playful result, combining the double-meaning formula with something of a pun.
And should nudity offend, here’s one of Paul’s clues from The Guardian that relies on clothing, and a vital piece of punctuation:
Style in T-shirt and Y-fronts, perhaps? (4)
Again, treat that question mark as a whimsy-warning. Pry deep into Paul’s wardrobe for the joke to work. Here the recipe is the double definition, where a word for style is stitched within both garments.
What else do T-shirts and Y-fronts have in common? To the same list you can add a G-suit, a two-piece, a muu-muu and a ten-gallon hat. Spot the shenanigans now?
The answer is DASH, a synonym of style, as well as the punctuation mark. And should you quibble that the apparel names use a hyphen rather than a dash, keep in mind the question mark warns you of a looser interpretation.
Inner space
Part of the punctuation racket is the art of managing a clue’s spacing. You can see that principle in action here:
‘Partied awfully close,’ I said (10)
Awfully is a common anagrind, or anagram indicator. Scramble those adjoining ten letters—CLOSEISAID—and you’ll make a match for partied.
In this instance you should overlook the punctuation marks, as their main mission is camouflage—a bid to disguise the anagram fodder (closeisaid) by marking out space with the literary custom of quotation marks and the necessary comma. Strip it down, and closeisaid, when awfully handled, turns into SOCIALISED, or partied.
In this next example, you’ll see how punctuation can arrange space in a different way. This gem is a dastardly construction from Philistine, another Guardian regular:
Booklet: What to do next (7)
Which path do you take here? Do you factor in the colon or give it the flick? If that dilemma was already dancing in your brain, then congratulations: you are one step closer to the inner cryptic circle.
Philistine’s stealth lies in his use of compression, taking two words—book and let—and fusing them into a single entity. Of course you’d read booklet as booklet, rather than book (the definition) and let (the wordplay’s first word). Why wouldn’t you? That’s what your brain is trained to do.
Yet cryptic language is a different beast, more novel than any novel. After years of hoovering up traditional prose, your frontal lobe needs to readjust, the better to prepare for this sort of trap, where setters can skip spacing or misleadingly add punctuation or chunk two elements into one misleading compound.
The answer to the clue is RESERVE. Can you see why? What if I added a bonus piece of punctuation to help out: RE-SERVE.
Tennis players will know the rigmarole of serving a let. That’s where your service brushes the net-cord and drops to the other side. Presuming your ball lands in the service court, you get to serve again, or re-serve. Get it? Booklet is not booklet, but book (a verb meaning to reserve), and let, an invitation to serve twice.
To prove that kind of fusion can be a repeat offence, are you awake to Paul’s chicanery from 2012?
Stimulating postcard? (8)
The obvious merger is postcard. So split the compound and reread the clue:
Stimulating post card? (8)
Note how that surface detracts from the original’s fluency? This should help you see how a good compiler will exploit space—selecting or rejecting punctuation to make their trapdoor harder to detect.
Post has several meanings, from mail to job to mast. Another post found aboard a ship is the sail’s strut, or spar. As for card, pick one from the deck. By this stage I’m hoping the answer is SPARKING your hippo campus. Sorry, hippocampus. This fusion fashion is all the rage.
Upcasing
Polish the European language is not to be confused with polish the shoe gunk. Well, it will be confused if the gunk—that is, the polish—starts a sentence and so appears as Polish. Crossword makers cherish that confusion. Pole the post and Pole the resident of Krakow are identical on the page if they’re the first word of the clue.
The fancy tag for such words are capitonyms, an august band of rebels that includes turkey and August, tangier and May. Jack could be a candlestick-jumper, or a card, or a tyre-changing tool, just as a tyre could support a Ford, which happens to be a river-crossing when down-cased, while Tyre with a big T is an ancient port in Lebanon. You get the gist …
This next clue, courtesy of The Guardian’s Vlad, will test whether you have:
Robin and Batman initially arrested—crazy! (9)
The exclamation mark is trying to sell the scandal of the clue’s surface. Ignore it. Hoick the dash too—that’s just more headline hype. Distil the clue to its essence, and look twice at Robin. Because it’s coupled with Batman, you think superhero, right? An obvious conclusion, but remember that the laws of Cryptopia don’t always mimic the real world’s regulations. Pairing Robin with Batman is just your brain making a lazy union, leading your thoughts down the wrong pathway. Rather than the name, think the word. Think a bird, in fact.
Batman initially is B. The next word—arrested—has eight letters. Make that nine when B joins the party. Now get crazy with that fodder, as the clue is urging, and see who or what flies out.
REDBREAST is the solution, beautifully disguised in the clue’s syntax, promoting robin to the opening to make a crime-fighter out of the creature. Vlad’s tweak could also act as a warning bell—usually it’s Batman and Robin, but in this clue they’re switched in order to upcase, ensuring the bird (robin) appeared as the caped crusader with his capital-R.
Not that syntax is the only means of introducing capitals. Sometimes a setter will ‘upcase’ a word within a clue just in the name of subterfuge. Take this example from Times puzzle 10,776:
The spirit of March and November (5)
Radio operators rely on the phonetic alphabet, where cops might read a partial numberplate SPF as Sierra Papa Foxtrot and Romeo and Juliet are often cryptic dialect for R and J.
Back to the Times clue, November is radio-speak for N, your answer’s final letter, as that’s the last detail supplied. So where can we find those other four letters to spell a spirit? Focus on March, but don’t think the calendar. Downcase the M to make a parade of those 31 days, and the spirit may surface.
The march in question is a DEMO, which mutates into the spirit DEMON with November at its tail: a diabolical example of arbitrary upcasing.
Setters are shameless on this front. The classical setter Ximenes, deemed by many to have written the cryptic rulebook, addressed this in his 1966 bible, Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword: ‘May one use a capital, where it isn’t necessary, in order to deceive? May one abolish one, where it is, strictly speaking, needed, in order to deceive?’
What can I say? The man loved commas as much as rhetorical questions. But he did get around to answering his own moral dilemmas, his resolution no less punctuation-heavy:
‘My answer to the first question is: Yes, at a pinch; but try, if you can, to put the word first in the clue or after a full stop in the course of it. My answer to the second question is: No! If you do abolish it, you aren’t saying what you mean.’
Downcasing is therefore not a thing, not really. Don’t expect to meet Hanks (the actor) appearing as hanks (the wool) within a clue. But the opposite is likely, where the balls of yarn are disguised as the Forrest Gump star, whether that word is opening the clue or not.
These are grounds, I hope, to be cautious of any clue’s punctuation. Either you need to dismiss it entirely, or study it carefully, which sounds like Mad Hatter advice. Said another way: to crack the case, you need to look twice at letter-case, as well as dashes, brackets, colons and every other squiggle on the page, including …
Beginners often pale at the sight of an open-ended clue, where a cluster of three dots seems to leave a clue in limbo. Like so:
A key part of cathedral … (5)
What’s going on? What’s the point behind the ellipsis, as those three dots are called? Ellipsis, in fact, stems from Greek, where ‘elleipsis’ translates as ‘omission’. Which invites the question: what has been omitted from the clue above?
In this case, nothing, because the clue is supposed to be viewed in tandem with its immediate successor, the next Across clue that reads like so:
… partly collapsed (4)
Huh? How can an ellipsis open a clue? The whole thing seems cruel and unusual. The quirk often serves to terrify rookies, but I need everyone to breathe easy. On the puzzle page the ellipsis has one of four functions, five if we count the standard literary function of ending a sentence in breathless suspense.
In cryptic clues, the first function of the ellipsis is to join two adjacent clues, like the examples above, which is a mode otherwise called a …
Compilers can be sneaky ratbags—and frugal too. Why waste ink giving the same definition twice when you can fuse two clues? That way the definition can be passed from one to the other like a relay baton. Let’s browse those earlier examples again, this time reading them as a single unit:
A key part of cathedral … (5)
… partly collapsed (4)
Part of cathedral is the mutual definition, the so-called straight clue that satisfies either answer. That’s why the phrase occupies the end of the first clue, the baton ready for the next clue to carry. Both your answers then will reveal two cathedral segments, but which ones?
The second clue is easier, thanks to the hidden signpost partly: tucked away in collapsed is APSE, a cathedral’s recess.
So what about the first clue? Which piece of St Peters is implicated there? This time, instead of a hidden, the formula is a charade. Key is your key, a word that means many things, though here it is the geographical sense that comes to the rescue. Florida Keys, for one, is an archipelago of small islands, or isles, including Key Largo. Heeding the charade, A + ISLE = AISLE, another cathedral zone.
So there was nothing too hard about either clue, was there? The only thing to spook the rookie were those nasty dots. Unstitched, the two clues can be viewed like so:
A key part of cathedral (5)
Part of cathedral partly collapsed (4)
It’s a piece of cake when you know how to interpret the ellipses. Here the overlap was a mutual definition, dovetailing two clues by virtue of their semantic coincidence. Which leads us to meet the punctuation’s second function, where ellipses ask the solver to recycle an element of wordplay.
When a definition is mutual, the two paired clues will deliver related answers—the AISLE and APSE sort of duo. But when two clues share their wordplay element, the answers may be poles apart. Rather than shared semantics, the overlap may highlight a parallel piece of wordplay, a formula fluke that’s signalled by the ellipses. Check out this pair:
Drop wrench … (4)
… and shout a great deal? (8)
The first clue calls on a double meaning, as two-word clues often will. Though of course, when the dots arrive, a solver can’t be sure of either clue’s precise length until both clues are parsed, and the overlap’s been delineated. But by way of relief, here those two words—drop wrench—are the only words you need to pinpoint the answer.
Do you know a word that means both drop and wrench? As a friendly nudge, consider melancholia and agony: just your typical response to a crossword.
Saddened, your drop is prone to be a tear. Pronounced another way, a tear can also mean a painful sprain or wrench, making TEAR the first clue’s answer.
But, just because the first clue enlists a double definition, doesn’t mean its sibling will match that formula. Instead the second clue picks up wrench like a relay baton and uses the word as a signpost. Can you see how? Wrench, as you may already suspect, is a ready-made anagram pointer.
If that’s the case, what needs wrenching? Your instincts should direct your gaze to the adjoining bunch of letters—eight in total, agreeing with the answer’s length. Wrench ANDSHOUT, and you make a great deal.
The question mark warns you to take care—that maybe the definition is a little loose, a bit playful. And indeed a THOUSAND may amount to a great deal for some, but will be modest in other settings. Nonetheless, you’ve just met two clues that have shared a word (wrench), without sharing any parallels in their definition.
But just because they overlap in wordplay doesn’t mean the clues own matching recipes. That’s crucial to remember: when it comes to this style of splicing, the two clues can either belong to the same wordplay category or use a shared word—or words—in a different wordplay mode.
Did I mention the ellipsis can flag one of four cryptic modes? So far we’ve considered two, both of which mingle to make a third variety …
Alloy ellipsis
The name alone sounds alien, not a phrase you meet every day, nor will you meet too many alloy ellipses in your solving life either. As rare as nisil (an alloy of nickel and silver apparently), these clues fuse a wordplay element in one clue, with a definition element in the next—or vice versa.
So rare, we hardly need to spend a page on the oddity. But on the off-chance you bump into such an amalgam, and feel cheated that I never warned you, here we go:
Trusted new alloy … (5)
… to nick, we hear (5)
Alloy is the linchpin, the shared component fastening the clues together. In the first case, the word acts as anagram fodder. Treat those five letters anew and LOYAL arises, a synonym of trusted.
Moving on to clue 2, alloy deputises as the definition, ensuring this second clue is all wordplay. Here the formula is homophone, asking you to vocalise a word meaning nick. Pick the right synonym and you’ll forge an alloy. Are you there yet? Or do you need a coffee to steel the nerves?
As I say, the combo is uncommon, but worth recording. An alloy ellipsis will operate like the last pairing, seeing a wordplay piece transpose into definition, or the opposite role-switching will occur, where one clue’s definition mutates into an adjacent clue’s mischief.
Three ellipses down—one to go. You’ll be relieved to learn the last variety is more in keeping with language as you know it …
DISCOVERY can be split into DISCO VERY, inviting a charade clue that may read this way:
Finding nightclub quite (9)
See the snag? As a clue that works, but as a story it sucks. Worse, the sentence is incomplete. ‘Quite what … ?’ you may well ask. The narrative is truncated.
Either a setter needs to recast her clue to fashion a smoother surface, or she can deploy the dots to spill her partial sentence into a rounder grammatical whole by linking it with the succeeding clue.
To illustrate this example, let’s imagine the next clue’s answer is EXAMPLE. Again the charade formula beckons, as EX-AMPLE offers neat possibilities. With a flick of the wrist, and a sprinkling of dots, one deficient clue can meld with another to read completely and coherently:
Finding nightclub quite … (9)
… old and spacious in illustration (7)
EX (old) and AMPLE (spacious) combine to make a word for illustration, bearing no relation to nightclubs except by virtue of sharing an ellipsis with its immediate neighbour, the two clues merging to build a stronger deception.
So the next time you encounter dots on the page, don’t implode. The tool is a means of joining adjacent clues, depending on (a) their shared definition, (b) their shared wordplay element, or (c) the need to conjure a sleeker story. And that’s that, unless …
I can’t blame you for thinking the term &lit is some kind of rebus. What word opens with an ampersand anyway? If GRANDSTAND can be ‘rebussed’ into GR&ST&, then what might &lit represent?
The answer is the best clue possible. The duck’s nuts. The cat’s meow. The anchovy’s elbows. Can you tell I’m excited? I love these clues. The term is short for ‘and literally’, and the &lit clue offers wordplay that defines the answer as well.
It seems a tall order, to combine both parts into one tidy clue, but that makes the joy all the more joyous whenever you can make the alchemy happen. Believe me, whenever I manage to pull off an &lit, I go do H&ST&& in the B&ST&.
Engineered just right, &lit clues can exploit any recipe we’ve met so far: charades, deletions, you name it. Anagrams are often implicated, such as this beauty:
Process promises a moth! (13)
The answer is a processed version of promises a moth. Rearrange those thirteen letters and you get METAMORPHOSIS—not just the upshot of the wordplay, but a concept the wordplay literally defines.
Keeping in that anagram groove, a compiler like Anax (alias Dean Mayer) devised this nifty &lit:
As ringtone that’s swirling around?! (10)
You already know the formula involved. But which letters need mixing, and what will your answer mean? Being &lit, the clue is painting a complete picture, repurposing the wordplay to outline the solution.
Note the punctuation too—that comic-book coupling of ?!—with which &lit clues often end. Our first specimen didn’t, of course, but most &lit clues do. A godsend in many ways, since this clue style can catch you off-guard, stirring two ingredients into one concoction.
As for the Anax clue, swirl around those ten opening letters—as ringtone—and you’ll arrive at a word the entirety describes. I’d suggest you isolate the –ING suffix, keeping in line with the &lit’s own case: swirling around.
We all know the scenario: stuck in a bus or trying to read in the library, general peace prevails until some bugger’s mobile starts RESONATING throughout the space, as ringtones are wont to do.
The pure &lit avoids excess baggage, as seen in our initial samples. Every word has a role in both capacities, serving the definition as faithfully as the wordplay. However, there is a less pristine version, a modified &lit that may own a few excess frills for reasons of grammar or clarity. Elgar for The Telegraph composed one such clue:
Who has real relish in chaos? (4-6)
There’s no exclamation mark this time, but you still need to bring your anagram A-game. The challenge here is to throw real relish into chaos to unmask someone who revels in bedlam. To soothe your brow I can tell you that’s a HELL-RAISER.
Elgar’s clue is elegant, though purists will argue it falls short of perfection since the wordplay (real relish in chaos) is accompanied by surplus words to mould the &lit trick into a question. Still lovely, but not as sumptuous as Paul’s &lit, again banking on an anagram:
Order magnified with carbs?! (3,3,3,5)
Order is the ideal signpost, implying both a diner’s request, as well as an edict to rearrange, so the wordplay is also the definition. Ordering magnified carbs will spell BIG MAC AND FRIES—no letter frittered!
Leaving anagrams alone, the &lit can resort to any recipe on the shelf, so long as the wordplay and definition are one and the same, the two elements bundled into one inseparable whole. Here’s a glimpse of three charade formulas that reach &lit heights:
Wait, rear on jet, here? [Times 10,032] = BIDE+T
A choice of extremes in perversion?! [Paul] = P+OR+N
Oblivious to four notes? [Times 9793] = D+E+A+F
Even hiddens can join the party. This treat comes from Gaff in the Financial Times:
Sad is malcontent (6)
It’s strange that a clue for DISMAL can be so delightful, noting how content can be both the emotion, and the cargo (so denoting the hidden formula). That’s the rare bliss of &lit clues, where fate and finesse combine to forge one versatile unit: a piece of language that both defines and defiles its solution.
Knowing that any formula might lie under the &lit umbrella, see how many of these beautiful creatures you can decipher below.
&lit
1. Inclusion in ‘Librettos’ catalogue! (5) [Henry Hook}
2. Spot on head of India? (5) [Times 10,876]
3. A person gone idle? Nonsense! (3-3,9) [DA]
4. Outer part of some bud? (5) [Times 10,929]
5. Do this at risk of injury?! (3,3,2) [DA]
6. Who’d have role in alternative energy (5,5) [Nestor]
ANSWERS:
1. TOSCA, 2. BIND+I, 3. OLDAGEPENSIONER*, 4. SE+PAL, 5. ASKFORIT*, 6. GREEN PARTY
[As you may recall, the asterisk marks the anagram mode.]
A Labrador and a poodle gives you a labradoodle. Floor and wardrobe create the mayhem of a floordrobe. Burqa plus bikini fashions a burkini.
Blends are the new black, from fusion cuisine to Googlegangers. (And don’t pretend you haven’t looked. Everybody does, which is why egosurfing is in the dictionary—another blend.)
So why should crossword clues be any different? If dog breeds can’t keep their pedigree, then why must containers and reversals? Charades and homophones?
Whenever I’m encouraging wordy kids to try their luck at cryptic crosswords, I tend to sidestep the hybrid clue. Adult beginners get the same sympathy. The prospect of dealing with blended clues can prove overwhelming—a mongrel too wild to handle, despite the formulas being familiar in isolation.
By now, having reached this point in the book, you already know the nuts and bolts. You know how anagrams behave, how containers swaddle and spoonerisms spoonerise. A blended duet should be no scarier. All you need to do is identify each trick in succession, and the clue will crack.
It’s more brainwork, true, but also more buzz when the answer arrives. Let’s consider an example, if only to realise that a hybrid mongrel can be one cute labradoodle. This Arachne clue combines anagram and charade:
Fallen plumes arranged end to end (7)
Arranged should trigger a siren in your mind—a primary anagram indicator. Plumes, the abutting word, accounts for six letters, with one letter needed to reach the bracketed total of seven. What’s that letter? And where does it come from?
End to end appears the likely phrase, a sly expression to imply the letter D, or the end to end. Attach that D onto rearranged plumes, and SLUMPE+D is your reward, or fallen.
Keeping with feathers, let’s look at a Falcon clue from the Financial Times, this time the cocktail entailing deletion and anagram:
Follow dancing queens? Not initially (5)
Once again, the definition is embodied by the opening word, follow. Once more a common anagram signpost is planted in the clue’s next segment, dancing this time. Yet before those queens kick up their heels, something needs removing, as suggested by the final deletion component: Not initially.
Lose the Q and dance with the remaining five—ueens. Do you follow all this? If you do, then endorphins ENSUE.
Congratulations. You have now reached the final bunch of example clues—ten this time, to encompass the breadth of hybrid combos (which I’ve identified in brackets beside each specimen). Cover those ingredients if you’d rather decode each clue as it comes.
Please don’t agonise if you barely solve a handful of the ten—or none, for that matter. Only experience—untold hours of mental gymnastics—will turn these tigons (ferocious tiger–lion hybrids) into so many adorable kitties.
Hybrid clues
1. Shrewd like trustee, every now and then (6) [Dac—charade/ alternation]
2. Aim always, say, to try hard (9) [Rufus—charade/homophone]
3. Lying bum flogged modern houses (9) [Picaroon—anagram/container]
4. Performed reflected melody with punch (7) [Henry Hook—charade/ reversal]
5. Klutz upended flagon regularly (3) [DA—alternation/reversal]
6. Explain cryptic clue, I see (9) [Puck—anagram/charade]
7. Banks leaving Barbados to move overseas (6) [Arachne—deletion/ anagram]
8. Working across part of garden without a pick (6) [Anglio—container/ deletion]
9. Large within and without, turning smooth (4) [Times 10,762—container/ reversal]
10. Village People’s original backing hits now remastered (8) [SK—charade/anagram]
ANSWERS:
1. AS+TUTE, 2. END+‘EAVOUR’, 3. REC[UMB*]ENT, 4. SANG+RIA<, 5. OAF<, 6. ELUC*+I+DATE, 7. ABROAD*, 8. O[P/a/TIO]N, 9. G[L]IB<, 10. TOWNSHI*+P