SAMPLE WORKINGS |
I have taken this batch of examples from a real crossword, which appeared in the Radio Times for 12-18 Jan, 2002. The closing date for the competition was 24th Jan, so it is too late now... I’m probably breaking copyright in quoting them, but as they are getting a free advertisement, compliments plus possibly a batch of new readers for their crossword, I don’t really see why they should complain! The Radio Times’ puzzle is a fairly typical example of a “middle-brow” crossword from a specialist publication. Some of the clues require some specialised knowledge related to the subject matter of the publication in question - in this case entertainment and television. I say “middle-brow” because it is not the most difficult and does not use the very obscure vocabulary found sometimes in, say, the Times or Guardian crosswords. It is, in fact, pretty nicely judged to be accessible to and solvable by the majority of the magazine’s potential readership, provided, of course, that they know how to do cryptic crosswords. Homer Simpson would get nowhere with it, but his wife or daughter might well get halfway through it before Bart sets fire to it... The RT example also contains a puzzle within a puzzle: some of the letter lights are coloured differently, and the letters which fill these when the crossword is solved may then be re-arranged to make up the name of a television programme. That does not concern us here. Like a lot of puzzles found in specialist papers, it does contain some references to its specialism - in this case the world of television and radio entertainment - either in the clues or in the answers. Another fairly typical feature is that the crossword comes with two sets of clues - “Prize Crossword Clues”, which are the cryptic ones, and “Easy Crossword Clues”, which are straightforward, non-cryptic clues. Note, however, that these are for two quite different crosswords that happen to fit the same blank. You may not mix and match them: they indicate quite a different set of words... O.K. - enough preamble:
Any ideas yet? It looks at first glance as if it is a double definition. We try to think of a word that is both the name of a region of Spain and also either an Italian word meaning “girl” or an Italian name for a girl. We fail. It is, in fact, a definition followed by a spelling clue which consists of two more definitions. The “as well as” is entirely misleading, as it is a clue definition, not a means of joining two definitions together. You’ll probably do as I did, and work through the regions of Spain mentally until you find one with nine letters in it. “Canaries”? Nope - not enough letters. “Extremadura”? Nope - too many letters. Then you find the right one, and the rest of the clue suddenly not only makes sense, but makes you groan! The actual answer is “ANDALUCIA”. Break this into “AND A LUCIA” and the clue makes full sense. “Lucia” (loo-cheer) is an Italian girl’s name, known from various songs and opera names - so “an Italian Girl” is “A Lucia”. “And” means “as well as”. I can’t actually think of any other region of Spain with the right number of letters, but even if there were one, you would not be in doubt about the correct answer. If, for example, there were such a place as “Galiciana”, the rest of the clue would make no sense at all. That’s the beauty of cryptic clues - when you finally get the answer you are usually in not much doubt about its correctness. But solving the damn things so that you can admire that precision and beauty is another thing entirely... As proof that the “easy” clues indicate a completely different set of words from the “cryptic clues”, the example above was number 1 on the grid. The corresponding number one clue in the easy set was:
The answer to that is, of course, not AND ALUCIA but IAN HISLOP. It’s a single definition with no extra confirmation. If the captain of the other team were Leo Spotty (and not Paul Merton), then there would be simply no way of telling whether the answer was to be Ian Hislop or Leo Spotty. And if you simply don’t know what the answer is here, there is nothing you can use to reconstruct the real answer, as sometimes happens in cryptic crosswords when you can understand bits of the clue. (We see examples of this happening below.) O.K., back to the “real thing”:
That one had me guessing for a while. I decided that it was either “caper” as definition plus other stuff in the rest, or else that “ocean” was the definition. There were other ways of parsing it, of course, but those two struck me as most likely. Starting with “caper” as definition got me nowhere. The problem is that although it proves to be adequate and fair as a definition when the solution is known, it is not a good starting point. If you start thinking of other words meaning “caper”, it could take you quite a while to come up with the proper answer. After wasting a little time on that, I started with “ocean”. Not that many possibles here. Pacific, Indian, Arctic, Atlantic.... Ah! ANTIC! it fits with “caper” and it is more than half the spelling of “Atlantic”. This is, in fact, an example of the starting with a bit of the clue and finding the answer I mentioned above. I had started with the wrong bit, but found the answer and was completely certain of it then.
Definition possibilities here were “bullfighter” or “selection”, I thought. Once I started to run through different words for bullfighter, the whole thing very soon fell into place - with a definite “ouch!”. Matador - torero - toreador - picador - Pick a door - yerk!!! The “say” had already alerted me to the probability that a homophone factor was involved. To pick a door is certainly to select an entrance. Groan! But a hundred percent certainty about the accuracy of the answer. It is certainly not always as straightforward. In the case of the next example, the answer I have is frankly a guess, but is a pretty good guess and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the right answer. (Do correct me if I am wrong though.) The clue was:
Examining that got me nowhere initially. Who’s Exeter? A lord of some kind, and this is his stately home? A character in some drama I have not seen? (And ditto for his domicile.) I’m a republican by nature, and not particularly interested in the homes of the nobility. I was stumped. I hoped that “Exeter’s home” wasn’t, in fact, the definition section of the clue, but could come up with no alternatives. I suspected that the second word might be “house”, and as I progressed with the crossword some letters fell into place from other words which made that almost certain. I got an O and an S in exactly the right positions. So far so good, but what house? After a while, more letters fell into place. I got an absolutely certain U (from Andalucia, as a matter of fact) fairly early on, followed by a very probable G. I suspected that I had identified an L as well, but I really needed confirmation from this particular crossing of words that the word that supplied the L was in fact correct in itself. Eventually I got other crosses with this L word which made it a certainty. So I had:
And with fair confidence in “house”, that gave me:
So now I had just the UGL bit to sort out. “Sturdy-sounding” - something that sounds like a word that means “sturdy”, perhaps? None of the words that you would apply to a building and mean “sturdy” made any sense. Widen the net - “sturdy” words for things other than buildings. “Burly”!!!! Vague memories stirred of a house name that sounded like that, but I thought it was spelled “Burleigh”, which clearly wouldn’t fit (though I think that G might have done some cross-pollenation mentally somewhere). After some mental gymnastics, I came up with BURGHLEY, which looked right and sounded right. I could, no doubt, look it up in some form of reference book. I do know some people surround themselves with reference books - or even electronic aids - when doing cross-words. To me that spoils the essential purity of the mental exercise. It may not be the right answer, folks, but it’s what I am going with.
Hymn-book for each season inside (7) This is, frankly, a quite elegant and beautiful clue. I found say I found it particularly difficult - probably because I already had an S as the second letter and a highly probable L as the fourth letter.
Now, “Hymn-book” can be one of these letter-supplying wheezes - there is a very famous hymn book called “Hymns Ancient and Modern” which is usually abbreviated as “A&M” - giving A and M as a letter element clue. If that were the case here, as it is at the start of the clue, I would expect the word to start with the letters AM... which was clearly impossible here. I had indeed thought along those lines earlier, when I scanned the clues briefly looking for the ones that stuck out as being easier. At that point I had attempted briefly to find a word beginning AM that mean “inside” - without any joy. That analysis had to be dispensed with now, obviously. Season? Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn? No fits there. Other words for “hymn book”? With S as second letter? “Psalter” soon came to mind. Then came the “aha!” moment. Season - to salt - verb not noun, which would have been defined as “seasoning”. What about the rest? Well, “salt” is clearly inside, but inside what? P and ER - “per” as in “per capita”, “per person” - “for each (person)”! A word meaning “for each” with a word meaning “to season” inside which together make up a word meaning a kind of hymn book. (A “psalter” is a book of psalms, but psalms are hymns, so...) Rather lovely, I think you’ll agree - particularly if you were an experienced enough doer of crosswords to fall initially for the A&M red herring. Then there was the “salt” as a verb red herring and the somewhat odd definition of the whole word. Enough scarlet fish to start a canning factory, in fact. Pretty good going! O.K. - we’ve seen a fair few clues now, so how do we go about tackling a whole crossword? The next page deals with our tactical approach to that...
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