Talk:Cryptic crossword/Archive 1

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Queryable clues

I would like to see some discussion about the surface reading. Many surface messages are just nonsense. That is not surprising I guess as it's hard enough to create a double clue without having the whole thing read clearly and cleverly and appearr to be about something entirely different as well. I really enjoy ones that are clever. One of the best I have heard about (never saw it in the actual crossword) was: H I J K L M N O and the 5 letter word answer is Water (H to O). -- nelliot

I my have been a bit hasty when suggesting that the letter game entry 'cryptogram' may refer to the same type of game as the 'cryptic crossword'. A quick search on Google reveals that the English speaking world does know about cryptograms, but apparently the word means something like a code breaking game in English.

See also http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?cryptogram

I don't think an entry in the international WP should have a Dutch name when English equivalents are available.--branko

There's a lot to say about cryptic crosswords. For instance, the New York Times runs them occasionally on Sundays to accompany their main crossword. A monthly cryptic appears in The Atlantic, and one also appears in Harper's. It might not be amiss to mention certain well-known constructors, such as Stephen Sondheim (yes, the one who writes musicals), Henry Hook, and Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon. Also, if providing external links, http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/puzzclue.htm is an excellent guide to them. --Tahnan, passing through

Is "vocubalary" a clue too subtle for me or a misspelling for "vocabulary"? -- Error

Where is the definition of ROTTEN in "Net torrid? It's completely backward."? The clue suggests "completely", but how does this mean "rotten"? -- Paul G

Try "Net torrid? It's completely backward." HTH Phil 11:39, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)
I got that. That is the "cryptic" part of the clue. But where is the definition of ROTTEN in that clue? -- [[User::Paul G|Paul G]] 12:07, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC)
There isn't a definition of ROTTEN in the clue. It's a bad clue. Also, the 'rid' part of 'torrid' does not serve the clue at all.

It's a rotten clue! This makes it an "&lit", hence really stylish. Nogggs 19:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Here "completely" is the definition, but it might be a Britishism and unsuitable for a worldwide Wikipedia article. It's certainly a colloquialism to use "rotten" this way adverbially (I think of posh girls in private schools in the 1950s saying "She fancied him rotten.". Chambers online gives that example, with adverb, colloq very much; extremely • She fancied him rotten. The more common and interchangeable adverbal phrase something rotten isn't indicated as colloquial in Chambers online.Dynamicimanyd (talk) 10:22, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The clues listed in the "Specialist Vocabulary clues" section are not cryptic - they are straightforward clues. Cryptic clues always contain a definition as well as a "cryptic" part. I'll make necessary changes. — Paul G 08:50, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I removed the following from the article because, as Paul G commented, specialist vocabulary is used in regular crosswords as well, and this therefore isn't necessary:


The clues in the section below are not cryptic. Cryptic clues must include a definition as well as a "cryptic" part. Specialist vocabulary is not unique to cryptic crosswords - so-called "concise" or "quick" crosswords use it too. This section serves little useful purpose as it is - I think it should be edited to fit the definition of cryptic clues or deleted altogether. — Paul G 09:06, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Specialist vocabulary clues

Sometimes the answer to a clues is quite straightforward, but the solver needs to know particular dialects or language. For example:

Glaswegian snacks (6)
Cockney hat (6)
A Roman cat (6)

give, respectively, PIECES which is the Glaswegian dialect for snack, TITFER, and FELINE. Cryptic puzzle solvers might need to know about Greek, Roman, Norse or Celtic myth, science, geography, world history, maths, etc. Sometimes such a clue can mislead. For instance Danish foodstuff (6) is PASTRY.


I also switched the example


Rudely decline copy C of information resource. (12)

gives ENCYCLOPEDIC, which is 'of an information resource' and an anagram of 'decline copy C', indicated by the word 'rudely'.


for one with a more common indicator word than 'rudely'.

Then I added a new section in "types of clue" for homophones and another for deletions.

I also deleted


Other clues, of the types listed below, may be partially cryptic, that is the "definition" part is cryptic.


from the Pure Cryptic section because this is apparent in the next section.

CamelsRmammals 10:12, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've read in several places recently that the main difference between American cryptics and British cryptics is that American cryptics -always- have a definition half and a cryptic half (and if they don't, the whole clue must be both) while British clues may not (as in the "Pure cryptic clues" section of this page). I don't want to add this in myself, as I'm not 100% sure it's right, but if someone more knowledgeable were to confirm this and add it, it may clear up some confusion. (Such as an American reading the "Pure cryptic clues" section and thinking, "Those aren't proper cryptic clues!" like I did.) There really isn't any mention of the American version of these "pure" clues at all. -porcupine

I attempted to clean up the clues for an American audience, and address some of the differences between US and UK cryptics. See what you think. --Mike Selinker (a cryptic designer for Games Magazine)

The references to US cryptic sources seem rather incomplete. You also have Cryptics Monthly (8-9 puzzles per month), one puzzle per issue in the quarterly Verbatim, and a fair number in various Dell and Penny Press magazines. I can understand omitting publications that only run the odd puzle now and again but Cryptics Monthly publishes a much larger number of cryptics than Games, and Dell Crosswords Crosswords, a bimonthly, publishes five per issue. Bob Stigger

I altered the quote "magazines with cultural pretensions such as The Nation, Harper's, and Atlantic Monthly" to omit the "with cultural pretensions" line. This is no place to be making evaluative statements of the cultural relevance (or lack thereof) of various publications.

Indirect anagrams

Unless anyone objects, with evidence, I am going to remove the following from under the "anagrams" heading:

In an American cryptic, only the words given in the clue may be anagrammed; in some British puzzles, the words to be anagrammed may be clued and then anagrammed. So in this British clue:
Chew honeydew fruit (5)
chew is the anagram indicator, honeydew clues melon, which is to be anagrammed, and fruit is the definition for the answer, LEMON.

No British crosswords that I know of (including even the Guardian) allow such indirect anagrams. Grafen 16:32, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Among US cryptic-philes, this is often pointed out as an unfortunate difference between US and British cryptics. If it's not true anymore, then maybe it should described that way, as something that was once allowed but is no longer.--Mike Selinker 17:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Here's one I came across today, from the Guardian Weekly (international tabloid edition of the Guardian), set by Paul: Biggles' friend about to go abroad after land which Nelson turns his back on (8,7). The answer is National Gallery. To me this seems to be an indirect anagram composed of "algernon" (Biggles' friend), "Italy" (land) and "L.A." (for Lord Admiral). While a bit piecewise, none of the anagram appears in the clue itself, you have to get all the parts THEN solve the anagram. Isn't that breaking the rules? It took some solving, I can tell you! Graham 14:54, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
On further thought perhaps my interpretation is a bit off - perhaps it's "nation" being the land, followed by L.A. reversed, but then the reference to Algernon/Algie doesn't fit "gallery" very well... unless someone can see something that I can't. Anyhoo -- I did solve it using Algernon + Italy + LA, which happens to be an anagram of National Gallery - though perhaps this wasn't the compiler's intention! Graham 15:06, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Maybe I'm missing something, but where's the definition half in that clue? Is it possible that "land" means "nation", and "Nelson turns his back" refers to the "AL", so that "land which Nelson turns his back on" is a direct clue for "national"? I don't know how to get "gallery", though. —Bkell (talk) 15:03, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Duh, I think I see it... the National Gallery is in Trafalgar Square, and the statue of Nelson faces away from it... so the LA being "Lord Admiral" is a wrong interpretation. The definition is pretty cryptic itself, but it's there. Graham 15:09, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, more... It's 'Algy', not 'Algie' which leaves to go abroad as 'aller'. That I still don't get. Graham 15:13, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
That's correct. It's NATION + ALG(ALLER)Y. 'Aller' is French for "to go," with "abroad" meaning "said in some country other than England." (I'm not saying I'd write it that way, just that that's how the compiler wrote it.)--Mike Selinker 15:15, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Aha! Thankyou... I see. I didn't know about the 'abroad' hint - I told you I was a bit of a newbie! Turns out the clue is simpler than it looks, as is so often the case, I'm finding. Graham 15:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
That clue was hardly simple. Or good. Who sets NATION as part of an answer containing the word NATIONAL? (Of course, this is me opening the door to anyone who wants to critique my stuff, which is hardly a good idea.)--Mike Selinker 15:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
The clue doesn't contain 'nation', it contains 'land' - is that what you meant? It's hard for me to judge whether it's a good clue or not really - I got it, but obviously by a total misinterpretation! In fact I was only led to national gallery because another clue referred to a painting shown there which I had already solved. It's funny, some GW cryptics I can get easily, others are almost impossible (I usually have a lot of trouble with Auraucaria's). The easiest ones are by Rufus - though I frequently groan at the terrible puns he uses. That's not you is it? ;-) Graham 15:34, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
No. My pseudonym in Games and the New York Times is "Mike Selinker". The complaint I was giving was that it's not really wordplay to clue NATION as part of a clue for NATIONAL. Imagine the clue "Bouncers dance Saturday." I'll save you the trouble: The answer is BALLS (bouncers), but the wordplay is BALL (dance) + S (Saturday). That's horrible.--Mike Selinker 15:39, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
My objection to NATION is that it properly refers to a people rather than a territory (land). Therefore, it is not a synonym for "land". The confusion probably stems from the fact that a lot of everyday sentences will make sense using either "nation" or "land". For example, "throughout our nation" and "throughout our land" mean pretty much the same thing. Monomoit (talk) 13:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I see your point. If you think that's bad then, have a go at the other clue I mentioned. The answer is the name of a famous painting in the National Gallery: Thing wriggling inside fruit stem with head bitten off taking long time before fury shown in the (clue number pointing to National Gallery). Graham 15:47, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Sure, it's The Fighting Temeraire. Or, more accurately, FIG (fruit) + HTING (thing anagram) + TEM (stem - s) + ERA (long time) + IRE (fury). That's a fine clue.--Mike Selinker 15:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, but what about wriggling INSIDE fruit? It's not inside, it's beside or following... or is the use of 'inside' permitted simply to make it seem to make sense as if you were talking about a worm in a fruit? The Temeraire bit I have no problem with, indeed solving it opened up the whole puzzle for me as many clues were about NG paintings. Graham 16:04, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
It's not inside "fruit", it's inside "fruit stem". HTING is between FIG and TEM. ;-) —Bkell (talk) 16:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Gotcha... so doesn't that mean that 'stem' is effectively used twice? Graham 16:09, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Read it like this: (thing wriggling) inside (fruit (stem with head bitten off)) … —Bkell (talk) 16:15, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the only thing wrong with this clue is that the definition is "shown in the National Gallery," which isn't a noun. Parts of speech matter, as noted below.--Mike Selinker 16:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Parts of speech matter? Wow, someone should tell Araucaria. He should never have been allowed to found one of the two major schools of clue setting when he doesn't even know basic rules like that. 68.33.168.195 (talk) 15:03, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
Back to the subject of this heading, I found this passage in the National Puzzlers' League's guide to cryptics which says: "These are some brief additions to and repetitions from the solving article...Indirect anagrams aren’t allowed. In the example given in the solving article, Inebriated freebooters travel about would be an indirect anagram: the solver must find the right synonym for freebooters (pirates) and then anagram that word [into TRAIPSE--Mike]. This construction is considered too difficult." This suggests that at one point, indirect anagrams were allowed as a matter of course, but they've been beaten out of (at least US) puzzles. I know that when I came into the puzzlemaking business in the mid-80s, they weren't OK. But maybe they were on both sides of the Atlantic prior to that. So I'm amending the section to say "Some older puzzles" rather than "Some British puzzles."

Parts of speech

The article doesn't currently mention the requirement that the parts of speech in the clue and those in the answer must match, e.g. if the answer is the plural of the definition, the clue should indicate this by using a plural. At least, I'm assuming this is a rule - and maybe it's one too obvious to mention? (As a relative newbie at cryptics, I may be wrong, but so far it appears to be the case). Graham 12:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

That's absolutely a rule. A lot of inexperienced constructors will make a clue like "Likes to purr, act crazy" where CAT is defined as "likes to purr." Just adding the "It" on the front makes it grammatically correct.--Mike Selinker 15:22, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, I thought that was the case - so shouldn't this have a mention in the article? Graham 14:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Done.--Mike Selinker 15:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Although this rule appears only to be absolute in US cryptics; observe the Paul clue above where it is happily ignored, and Paul is a very well respected setter in the UK. 68.33.168.195 (talk) 14:53, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Limits for clues

I'm trying to write a cryptic crossword, and I don't like some of my clues. But I don't know if the clues actually have problems or if I'm being too picky. For example, here's a clue that might contain up to three problems:

You are trapped in sandstorm in African country (5)

I think the problems are all minor enough to make the clue solvable, but I don't know if I'm breaking "stylistic" guidelines. —Bkell (talk) 16:43, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's solvable, but the rule breakages are significant. First up is "You." Unless you're MC Hammer, you doesn't equal U. Next is "are." The U, like all other wordplay bits, is a singular noun, which means it takes "is." And the single-word "sandstorm" will dissatisfy some people not just because there's no break, but because "storm" isn't that great an anagram indicator. Maybe try it as "Sand whirls around you, ending in African country."--Mike Selinker 19:42, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Quote: Not seeing window covering (5) would have the answer BLIND, because both "not seeing" and "window covering" can mean blind. Note that since these definitions come from the same root word, an American magazine might not allow this clue.

  • It is not true that the definitions are for the same word. The first meaning of blind is an adjective that is for a person that cannot see, and the second is a noun for a window covering. Paul_P Aug 2006
    • Yes, I know. But they come from the same Middle English root word ("blind"), and thus cannot be used as both halves of a double definition clue in the U.S.--Mike Selinker 16:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

English-speaking world and British bias criticisms: I've added some coverage of newspaper/mag puzzles outside the UK, but the simple fact is that cryptic crosswords are a mainly English-language activity, and in the E-speaking world, mainly confined to the British-influenced rather than American-influenced parts. --PeterBiddlecombe 07:52, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

  • I came to the talk page to make precisely this point, so I'll second it instead. —Brunellus 19:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Crosswords in newspapers section: Includes various puzzles in magazines rather than papers. Maybe we should divide it into: Newspapers, Magazines, and Magazines specialising in puzzles. --85.211.220.196 23:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Grids

The section on grids includes information about 'Variety cryptics' which relates to the puzzle rather than the grid. I'd suggest that all information about variety cryptics (for which "advanced cryptics" is the usual name in the UK) is moved into a section about these puzzles, rather than having "but in variety puzzles ..." stuff scattered through the article.

Like the 'crosswords' article, the grid picture is distorted. I tried to fix this but failed. PeterBiddlecombe 16:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Amended the stuff about Times grid rules. Double unches ARE allowed at the Times, except at the beginning of a word. By virtue of 180-degree rotational symmetry they can't be at the end either. My statement about "seven checked letters" in two 15-letter answers in the sample grid was correct, as long as you don't think "checked" means "unchecked"! I've restored this but changed it to state the number of unches as that's what people are likely to count in this context. Having at least half the answers not start with an unch: I don't think this is specifically a rule at the Times, but the fact that they don't use any grids based on even rows and even columns probably means it's always true. PeterBiddlecombe 14:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Clue type

"double entendre" as name for cryptic definition clues: I've never heard of this. Can someone give a source for it? If not, I'd suggest removing it. PeterBiddlecombe 16:56, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

non-English languages

It would be really good to get some accurate information to confirm exactly how close Ducth 'cryptogrammen' and Polish 'hetman crosswords' are to cryptics. But we'd need bilingual cryptic xwd solvers to get a good answer. The German paper Die Zeit has a Sunday puzzle that looks (with my very poor German) roughly like an old-fashioned British advanced cryptic, and I've heard claims for cryptics in Welsh and one or two Indian languages. PeterBiddlecombe 17:26, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I can vouch that the Hebrew language cryptics that are pretty common in Israeli weekend papers are of a consistency and standard similar to UK daily cryptics (most of the same conventions apply with a couple of extras that leverage specific syntactical features of Hebrew, as well as respecting the tabloid vs. broadsheet spectrum!). I'm a far poorer Hebrew solver so there's perhaps even more there, though I don't think they run to the advanced cryptic level of Azed and company. Ilan Caron 22:17, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that cryptic crosswords are very common in Germany, but there are, for decades, a few newspapers and TV magazines (that I know of) featuring crossword puzzles (typically once per week) that resemble very much the definition of a "cryptic crossword" given by this article. Is it possible that the belief that cryptic puzzles are mainly an English-language phenomenon stems from the fact that it's mostly English-speaking people who contribute to this article - or is there any particular reason to think it is "typically English"? 62.152.162.31 (talk) 22:56, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

  • There's only one country in the world where the dominant form of crossword is the cryptic, and that's the UK. So much of the definition of the form comes from the constructors there, and later the constructors in the US. So while there are now other countries where these can be found in numbers, they are certainly behind the UK, US, and Canada in acceptance among the population.--Mike Selinker (talk) 11:28, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I must admit that my foreign language skills aren't up to confirming whether or not a particular puzzle really matches "cryptic crossword" as recognised in English-speaking countries. My feeling based on seeing one or two German puzzles, was that they shared some features but not quite enough to count. I'd add Australia and New Zealand to the list of countries from Mike S, and possibly S Africa though I don't think I've seen any SA puzzles.

--PeterBiddlecombe (talk) 11:37, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Sources

Six days a week, the New York Post reprints the puzzle from The Times of London, another Murdoch paper. As a reprint, maybe it doesn't count a "source", but in the northeastern U.S., the Post is even easier to find than the Financial Times. Monomoit (talk) 12:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

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