Top ten tips for solving success

Gym junkies know the rush that a workout brings. Yoga fans speak of feel-good chemicals flushing the system, loosening the knots that stress inflicts on the body. But maybe these last two chapters have had the opposite effect? Is your brain still giddy from the cryptic knots you’ve tried to loosen, a vague sense of panic growing in your stomach?

That’s natural. Your neurons have been through a lot. After so many wordplay styles, a primer in punctuation and then a mess of hybrids, you’re likely feeling concussed. Even if you managed to navigate the examples, solve your share, and learn a few traps, your cortex is bound to seem like Semtex, ready to explode.

Your working memory may well resemble something like a cybercatalogue—a sketchy archive of signposts and recipes afloat in the medial lobe. Thus it will stay, fading over time, unless you return to the contest. Sure, you may be hip to rebuses right now, or have the knack to pinpoint a homophone, but will you twig to the same categories in a month? A year?

The answer is yes, so long as you practise, and practise, and practise a little more. That’s what Part Three is for, your chance to convert the data into second nature. It sounds like drudgery, but not once that light floods your skull, the bliss of cracking your first clue in that first crossword.

Ask any solver: they all remember their first conquered clue, that triumph of a first completed grid. Solving begets solving, the aha pleasures never diminishing. And solving improves solving, the sketchy archive morphing into declarative memory, the long-term kind that etches a skill-set for life.

All that awaits you in the puzzles to come, both here in this book and beyond the covers. Before we leave this how-to section, however, here are a few tips for the road.

More hints than rules, a list to clear your path to solving success, the tips will ensure that next crossword will slowly unravel with the right amount of brainpower.

Give the list a read, and give it heed. There’s no point in knowing the formulas only to be discouraged when first trying to spot them in the wild. Those tricks are coming in spades. But first, take time to save time.

1. PICK THE RIGHT LEVEL. Crosswords vary from quick to un-quick, from start-up puzzles with obvious deceits to the opaque hellhouse of British themers, the likes of The Listener’s barred diagrams that presume a working knowledge of Wagnerian maidens or pre-war exchequers. But most of all: be kind to yourself. Seek the puzzles that share their secrets at an encouraging rate, rewarding your solving at regular intervals. Don’t expect your brain to recognise the tough stuff if you’re only new to the genre. Find that happy place as a solver and evolve from there.

2. SEEK OUT TWO-SPEED CLUES, like the pair of puzzles that lie ahead. This is where two sets of clues—one quick, one cryptic—lead to the same set of answers. This style of puzzle is a major help, enabling your brain to switch from overt to covert language, giving you an insight as to where the definition sits in each cryptic clue. (As I write, an excellent example of this twin-clue format appears in The Big Issue—one more reason to buy the biweekly magazine that supports the disadvantaged.)

3. CHEAT. That’s what I said—cheat. Peek at the answer if the clue seems impossible. At least that way you can work backwards, knowing that CHAMELEON is hiding in CLEAN HOME, since the lizard is the confirmed answer. And if this seems the low road to you, then call it reverse-engineering, a euphemism guaranteed to make you sleep more soundly. Besides, peeking proves you at least have the necessary curiosity, if not the willpower. Cheating, let’s be honest, is a cocktail of teaching, and the more answers you swipe (fairly or grubbily), the quicker you’ll expose the next clue’s skulduggery.

4. SHORT IS SWEET in the realm of Cryptopia. Two-worded clues (with no question mark to suggest a pun) are almost always a double definition, such as ‘Quality bore (7)’. While the answer may not leap out, there should be some ease in knowing the particular formula you face. In this case, you know you seek a word that means quality, and one that means bore. How speedily you arrive at CALIBRE depends on your brainpower and your experience.

5. 1-ACROSS IS JUST A SUGGESTION. In a perfect world, you’d solve 1-across, and then 1-down, and then 2-across and so on, the whole crossword collapsing like a house of cards. But as the hint above suggests, the shrewd solver will ‘case the puzzle’ before deciding where to break into the grid, sussing several clues to expose the easiest entry point.

6. FIRST OR LAST—that’s the mantra to recite when parsing any clue. Because if most cryptic clues are made up of two parts—the wordplay and the definition, or vice versa—then it stands to reason that the answer’s definition resides in either the clue’s first word (or words), or the last. Try each extreme in turn, drumming up synonyms or possible responses to the word/s you find, and measure them against what the grid expects.

7. PRIMING THE BRAIN boosts your chances. Say you’re tackling a puzzle’s corner with one answer still to come. Don’t just look at the corresponding clue cold. Instead, take a moment to consider what words might fit the pattern. If the cross-running letters give you C_R_E, then keep your feelers poised for any allusions to sculpture (CARVE), or radium (CURIE), or possibly an arc (CURVE). That way you’ll be less likely to curse, should the clue seem bamboozling.

8. OVERLOOK NOTHING, including a clue’s most inconspicuous word. Setters can’t afford to add redundant language. Each word plays its part in a clue and no word is wasted. That’s why it pays to read a clue aloud, slowly and methodically, knowing every word has a reason for being there. Now and then that word could link the two parts, or provide a finer detail to the definition, but the rest can’t afford to be skimmed. Each word is up to something. This includes words parading in one sense (squash—the drink, say) in the clue’s surface meaning, only to mutate into squash the verb, or the veggie or perhaps the court game. In short: be suspicious. Words can be treacherous. If each clue is a gang of words, then every member’s implicated.

9. TAKE A WALK. Make a cuppa. Get back to ‘real’ work. And by the time you resume the puzzle, your brain will deliver those solutions you couldn’t reach in the first sitting. It happens every time, and the chapter ‘Aha’ tells us why. The knack depends on ‘owning the problem’ in the first place, giving the teaser enough think-time to register on the internal hard-drive. Take that vital break, and your gamma waves will lose their frenzy, allowing the eerie mode of subconscious thought to take sway—otherwise known as thinking when you don’t seem to be thinking. An hour ago, let’s say, you kept gazing at ‘Spot of reckless drinking (7)’, failing to see beyond the clue’s boozy picture. After taking a spell, feeding the goldfish and writing an email, your brain is now able to see of reckless plainly drinking FRECKLE, which is a spot, and your solution. That’s the power of the so-called idle mind.

10. FIND A FRIEND, a lover, a workmate, a rellie. Sit down and solve with them. Side-by-side, the speculations will flow, for lots of reasons. Two brains are better than one, of course. But equally the rhythms of co-solving are ideal for isolating a clue’s language—often by reciting the clues between each other, which converts the clues to audio, a mode better suited to free association. Even better, read the clue very slowly and deliberately, word by word. Make the language an identity parade, where the suspect term steps forward. Finally, deny it all you like, but solving as a duo will also elicit the age-old spur of competition, lending each eureka bonus kudos.

AND HAVE FUN, if I can add Tip 11, though that’s akin to telling a horse to drink. Cryptic clues aim to frustrate and elate in equal measure. Their mission is to mislead, while your mission is to look past the lie, and thereby see where the answer’s lying. That’s the game of it. False trails are part of the treasure hunt. Even the sharpest solvers are fooled, which only goes to deepen the rush once the right trail is found.

Hence you want a puzzle that misleads just the right amount, to paraphrase Goldilocks. Too easy and you’ll fill the grid in a trance. Too hard and the ahas will evaporate. But find the right level of evasiveness, and the pleasures are guaranteed.

Fingers crossed, you find that pleasure lurking in the puzzles to come, where every degree of difficulty awaits, from the garden variety to the OMG. I suggest you sharpen those wits and pencils and pounce on the final collection at leisure. Trust me: your brain will thank you.