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Anuttama Sheela Mohan

Solving a cryptic crossword puzzle requires a momentary suspension of judgment, a second of not jumping to the obvious conclusions.

A good cryptic crossword clue is like a whodunit — it takes you by the hand and leads you down a seemingly straight path, which suddenly twists in a completely different direction. Solving it requires a momentary suspension of judgment, a second of not jumping to the obvious conclusions.

A cryptic crossword clue can generally be broken into two parts: the definition, which gives the meaning of the word or phrase, and the indirect clue, which usually involves some form of word play. This part of the clue must simultaneously mislead and help the solver and requires some sort of ingenuity or lateral thinking to work out.

One of the pioneers of cryptic crosswords, Afrit, laid down this pithy rule for the clue-writer: "You need not mean what you say, but you must say what you mean". This underlines the paradoxical nature of cryptic crossword clues.

The simplest kind of crossword clue is probably the anagram. It consists of a direct clue, an anagram indicator (which can take many forms) and a part to be anagrammed. Once the anagram indicator has been recognised, such clues are often very easy to solve.

Let us consider the clue: Ethereal but confusing year (4). We can see that this is an anagram clue because of the use of `confusing' which is a very common anagram indicator and also because the number of letters in the answer corresponds to the number of letters in the word `year'.

Let us try scrambling the letters of year to get a word that means ethereal: the most likely permutation appears to be `Aery' — a quick check in the dictionary confirms that, besides its most common meaning of an eagle's nest, Aery is another word for ethereal. This is an example of a cryptic crossword clue being easier to solve than a straight one. It is unlikely that if only the clue `Ethereal (4)' was given, one would immediately think of aery.

Even easier to spot is the hidden word clue, where the answer will be contained within part of the clue. For example, the clue: Drink enjoyed in a convivial environment (3) requires only a few seconds of thought before the answer pops out - Drink enjoyed in a convivi(al e)nvironment or `ale'. Perhaps because of the ease with which they can be cracked, good crossword constructors limit the use of container clues.

Another kind of simple clue is the double definition clue. Here, two definitions are provided for the same word. This sounds almost too easy but the ingenuity of the crossword setter can often disguise the definitions in some other form.

An example is Fastens curls (5). At first glance this clue appears to be asking you for some sort of hair fastening device. Actually the answer is `locks', which, as a verb, means the same as fastens and as a noun is a synonym for curls.

The popular party game dumb charades is the inspiration for another form of crossword clue. Here the word or phrase is broken up into several parts each of which is clued separately.

Let us think about this from the perspective of the clue-setter: suppose you had the word `history' to clue. This could be broken down into `his' and `tory'. Now you need clues for each of them.

`Tory' is another term for conservative, so we use that. Let's leave `his' alone because it's difficult to clue without using such giveaways as male pronoun. We also need a definition — past fits the bill nicely giving us: His conservative past (7) as the final clue, which reads quite well.

Often it is easier to split up a word into two parts such that one goes inside the other. For example, the word `monitor' could be split up into `moor' and `nit', `palace' could be split as `pace' and `la' and `paltry' could be formed from `pry' and `alt'.

Indicators for this kind of clue can be of two kinds: those that indicate that one part surrounds the other, such as about, around, embraces, without (in the sense of within and without) and, yes, even surrounds, and those that indicate that one part should be inside the other such as inside, within and in. The choice of indicator is decided on the basis of which makes the clue as a whole, sound the most plausible and read well.

Often the crossword maker has to use bits and pieces to make the word complete. Many abbreviations of words are used and require no indicator. For example, doctor could be `Dr'; CA might indicate California and so on.

The letter `O' is often suggested by love, ring or circle. I remember my incredulity when I learnt that soft in a crossword clue could be read as pianissimo (which is a direction to play the music as softly as possible) and hence indicates the letter `P'.

The word `one' can mean the letter `I' and queen can stand for Elizabeth Regina or `ER'. Common foreign words may be used as well. French article, for instance, or the French might indicate `le' or `la.

Many other kinds of word play are found in cryptic crosswords such as homophones and reversals. Homophonic clues are "sound alike" clues. Example: Puts together commercials, we hear (4). In this clue, `we hear' indicates that we are searching for a word that sounds the same as ads (commercials) and means puts together — `adds'.

Reversal clues have a word or phrase that is clued in the reverse direction. Reversal indicators include backwards, back, reversed and raised (for a down clue). An example of such a clue is: A mass uprising in the North East (5). Here uprising is the reversal indicator, so we get A + SSAM to get `Assam', which is in the North East.

In the beginning, cryptic crosswords can seem intimidating, with their variety of tricks and traps. Happy solving!

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

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