2) Homonyms. Words that sound like each other but with different spelling. Examples include there and their, right and write, roes, rows and rose I think you get the point. Look for the indicator such as ‘sounds like’, ‘on the radio’, ‘broadcast’, ‘in speech’ etc which pretty much give the game away.  A typical example might be:

‘Looked for a certain type we hear (6) the ‘we hear’ tells us we are looking for a homonym of ‘ a certain type’ that sounds like a word for ‘looked for’. No prizes for ‘sought’ (sort).

This may not be the place to have a mild rant but increasingly I see in crosswords the words ‘as Spooner might say’, or ‘Spooner said’ to indicate a Spoonerism. I hate these as I consider they have no merit whatsoever. I know they can be very clever and I can admire them, but I prefer to admire them at a distance. Now, when I scan the clues of a crossword if I see a clue of that type then I don’t bother with it at all. Another sort of clue that is very clever but extremely irritating are those that use the plural of one word to indicate the repitition of another. This was an example I saw recently, ‘Russian writer turns to the left’ (5). The answer was GOGOL, a Russian novelist and the derivation was ‘turns’ i.e a turn is a go therefore turns plural equals, not goes, but go go: follow this with L for left (to the left) and you get GOGOL. I don’t know what you think but I don’t like this either. A grumpy old man? Me?

3) Hidden clues or rather hidden answers in clues can also be very clever. Clever but also usually easy to spot as the indicator tends to give the game away on a first or second reading. Words such as ‘part of ‘ or ‘in part’, ‘included’ or ‘found in’ are all regularly used for this type of clue. Setters camouflage these clues, sometimes, very effectively by, for example, making the sought after word bridge two words, sometimes with a connector making it even harder, (Distance separating Spain and China? = SpaIN and CHina). The word looked for may also be pronounced differently from that seen in the clue leading to further difficulty for the solver (not much though!) as in ASTI used in TASTING or TASTIER rather than in NASTIER.

There’s not much more to be said for this type of clue, personally I don’t like it much, it seems like a cop-out somehow, but then, what do I know?

4) Charade

A charade clue is when the answer is split up into component parts that run together to form the solution. This need not be the case but if not then indication is needed.  Lets take a couple of examples.

‘Burn fuel already burnt (8)’ = CHAR (burn) COAL (fuel) fuel (doing double duty, already burnt.

‘Fool goes to church with horseman’s aid (6)’, = TWIT (fool) going to CHurch (standard abbreviation Ordnance Survey maps) = TWITCH (a stick with a loop of twine at one end which is twisted around a horse’s snout to ‘encourage’ him to do what the handler wants!)

As you can see there is nothing too extreme, of course, the setter is going to disguise this with his wordplay, you’d expect nothing less!

Next time we’ ll look at Reversal and Subtraction clues.

Caedmon’s crosswords are of the type known as ‘cryptic’.  Cryptic crosswords differ from other types by actually giving you more, sometimes much more, information than other crosswords. Take an example. In a standard (sometimes called ‘quick’, ‘coffee-time’ or the rather more honest ‘concise’) crossword you are given a definition, sometimes just one word! Let’s say we are given the clue ‘writer’ and the further information that the answer has six letters. Where do we go from here? The answer could be ‘author’ or the more archaic ‘penman’ or even scribe. Or, hang on, maybe they want the name of an author! Ah well, could be Austen then, or Milton, Koontz, Atwood or myriad others. No challenge really, mere guesswork. But a cryptic crossword gives you much more to work with. Most clues will have three components. The first, and most obvious component is the definition. Secondly we have the subsidiary indicator usually referred to as the wordplay and finally, not always present, the fodder.

No:1 The Anagram

The definition must describe the word that the solver is seeking BUT the setter starts his Machiavellian tricks here because he or she is not going to provide straightforward definitions. Look at this clue. ‘Patient wife can be such a caution (3,5)’. Where do we start. The clue reads quite nicely this is known as the surface, nothing stands out as anomalous or particularly jarring. Granted it’s not a sentence you hear much down at the King’s Head on a Saturday night . We need to know which part of the clue is the definition so we can start the solving process. Is it ‘patient’? or ‘patient wife’? or is it ‘caution’? or even ‘such a caution’? The definition usually comes at the beginning or end of the clue so let’s look at both. Patient can mean a case as in a medical variety, it can also mean tolerant; mmm ‘tolerant’ has eight letters but the clue says the answer has two words three letters and five. Not that then. Let’s look at ‘caution’ – wary, watchful? Good but not right. Can anything else in the clue give us an indication? Well yes, see those words ‘can be’? A clear indicator that an anagram is needed! Anagram of what? Patient wife has eleven letters unless we use the word ‘wife’ to stand for the letter W. Such abbreviations are common in cryptic crosswords as we will see later so now we want to rearrange the letters PATIENTW to form a two phrase that means or could denote ‘caution’. It doesn’t take much thought to come up ‘wet paint’ does it? And there you are, the clue is solved we’re on our way. So let’s look at the clue again to dissect it. ‘Patient wife can be such a caution (3,5). The definition ‘caution’ in this case preceded by ‘such a’ because the answer is a type of caution. Patient w(ife) is the anagram fodder and ‘can be’ is the anagram indicator.

Let’s have a further look at anagrams: In a clue look for the anagram indicator. It could be practically anything that suggests a transformation or change or some upheaval, Some common indicators are ‘could be’, ‘might be’, ‘as arranged’, ‘broken’, ‘wrong’, ‘in chaos’ anything that implies disorder in fact. There are some stunning and clever anagrams such as  SCHOOLMASTER and THE CLASSROOM and FOR THE EVIL THAT MEN DO and DOTH LIVE ON AFTER THEM (the latter created by Rick Rothstein) but clever as they are they are useless, and even worse, unfair without the anagram indicator.

Let’s have another example: ‘One leaves Lorna Doone stranded in Florida’ Well it reads all right (the ‘surface’) makes a coherent sentence (if you’re not Lorna Doone, that is!) but here we have to do something a little different. One, i.e. the letters O,N and E are removed from LORNA DOONE leaving LORNA DO as anagram fodder (stranded is the indicator) which make ORLANDO, a place in Florida. These are known, somewhat unsurprisingly as ‘subtraction anagrams’.  Sometimes anagrams can make a clue easier to solve but quite often they can make a clue that much harder, and therefore more entertaining when solved, especially when the anagram is difficult to spot. DYNAMO and MONDAY  or ELEVEN PLUS TWO and TWELVE PLUS ONE. That last one is my all time favourite but I have never yet been able to put it into a clue.

One other thing; in 99 cases out of 100 any punctuation in a crossword clue is there to deceive you. Beware, though, the one per cent!.

Next time we’ll look at Homonyms, Hidden and Charades! (Can’t wait!)