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Robbie Langton says...
Starting Point - what is “Cryptic”? I’ve always been fascinated by words and crosswords, although I certainly can’t claim to be any good at doing them. I was completely mystified myself about how the “cryptic” variety worked until I was given an insight by helping a friend, David Shrubbs, to finish off the ones his mother had started. I think most people do need some help at first, because the clues are completely baffling otherwise. Once you gain some insight into the mindset of those evil magicians, the compilers, things fall into place and you are fighting them on level ground at least. Then, more recently, I was doing a crossword and a highly intelligent friend with a very satisfactory vocabulary but no knowledge of how cryptic clues worked became interested and tried to help me. The situation wasn’t appropriate for me to be able to give him any kind of formal instruction then, and he left not much the wiser and feeling frustrated. I thought I would write something down to help him, and then I realised that it would be better to produce something more general and that could be put up on the web where it may possibly help other people. That is the origin of this website, which is dedicated to Daniel Nix and to the memory of Mrs Shrubbs.
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