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But now, a new generation of puzzlers is emerging thanks to a new online puzzle platform, Minute Cryptic , which teaches people how to solve cryptic crosswords with daily clues, supported by step-by-step help.
Angas Tiernan, the creator of the app says the difficulty for most people is that cryptics seem inaccessible; no one teaches you and you don’t know where to start.
Angas Tiernan is the brains behind Minute Cryptic.
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“We’re just lowering the barriers to entry… Here’s a clue that you can access for free on the website every day. You don’t have to have any kind of newspaper subscription. And then we explain every clue.”
Each clue offers hints for how to solve it, and is accompanied by a short video where Tiernan explains the techniques and tricks.
For Minute Cryptic, what first started as short form videos on social media, has developed into a YouTube channel , a book, and an app with around 180,000 daily users.
How do cryptic crosswords work?
The surface level meaning of the clue may tempt you to guess the answer, but this is a misdirection.
The key is to ignore the surface meaning and look more closely at the segments making up the clue.
Every clue has two parts – the definition of the word you’re looking for, and the wordplay – the tricky bit involving language tricks and letter play.
The first tip; the definition will always be at the start or the end of the clue. It might not always be obvious which word (or words) it will be – but that’s part of the puzzle.
Word play is signalled by an ‘indicator’ – a phrase or word which hints at what you need to do with the other words or letters (the ‘fodder’), to get the answer.
There is no set list of words that signal it’s an indicator, you just need to be able to think creatively about what the clue setter might be hinting at.
While not a complete list, here are some of the most common indicators you’ll see in cryptic crosswords:
Anagrams
Words that hint at an anagram will suggest movement, being mixed up, drunk, confused, or destroyed.
Peak of linen cap crumpled (8)
Crumpled is our anagram indicator, as it suggests something out of order. The fodder are the letters of ‘linen cap’, and the definition is peak – making our answer ‘pinnacle’.
Hidden Words
The answer will be hiding in plain sight, and will be signalled by words that suggest revealing, containing, or being a part of something. Look for words like conceals, displays, within, absorbed, some, bit of.
Set up in silent rapture (6)
‘In’ suggests a hidden word being in the fodder silent rapture, where we can see the word ‘entrap’ – a type of set-up.
Reversals
These clues will tell you to read the letters backwards, and can be hinted at by quite obvious words (back, returned) or more figurative ideas (mirror, rolling, boomerangs). Clues that are vertical in a crossword might also use ideas that suggest upwards movement (lifted, turning up, raised).
Pansback for a photograph (4)
In this clue, ‘back’ tells us to reverse the word ‘pans’, giving us ‘snap’, another word for a photograph.
Homophones
If you see words relating to sound, speech or hearing, it may be alerting you to a homophone, so you’ll need to find a word that sounds the same to one in the clue. These might be words such as call, listening to, told, utterly, reported, mentioned, apparently.
Yacht canvas for sale, I hear (4)
‘I hear’ is indicating we need a word that sounds like sale, leading us to the answer ‘sail’ – a type of yacht canvas.
Selectors
These tell you to select specific letters from the clue. Words like head or tail might tell you to select the first or last letter of a word, or something like heart suggests the inside of the word. Another possibility might be to take every second letter of a word, usually signalled by words such as odd, even, alternate.
Slim odds of solving that! (6)
If you take the odd letters of the fodder (solving that), you’ll spell ‘slight’, a synonym for slim.
Containers
These are clues which want you to put some letters into another word (hinted by words such as in, into, within, consumed, absorbed), or to wrap letters around a word (words like about, around, outside, embracing, wearing.) These clues are often combined with other indicators
One goes into debt flying private jet? (5)
To solve this one, we need to replace the word one with a common substitute – the letter i. This goes into the word ‘debt’ which is ‘flying’ (movement suggests an anagram). Mix up the letters and you have… ‘bidet’, a type of private jet (of water).
Substitutions
These are a slightly trickier element of cryptic crosswords, as there are no indicator or signal words to tell you to substitute – this is just part of the trial and error of cryptic crosswords. You might be looking for a synonym, or an abbreviation.
Of course there are common abbreviations such as female/male (f/m); page (p); north/south/east/west (n/s/e/w), but also think about the phonetic alphabet, symbols on the periodic table or if you see any numbers, try its equivalent in Roman numerals.
An enduring popularity
Aucklander Kate Fraser is part of a younger cohort who discovered cryptic crosswords through Minute Cryptic.
“I started when I was on maternity leave, and had a lot of time sitting around while breastfeeding, so it was a great way to learn, one clue at a time,” she says.
“My mum tried to teach me years ago, but with newspaper crosswords, you can’t learn if you don’t know what to look for.”
“What I like is that you don’t have to have heaps of general knowledge like other crosswords, and it’s just a little puzzle to unravel.”
Minute Cryptic’s Tiernan agrees. “There’s a reason people have been obsessed with them for a hundred years.”
He says they feel similar to a plot twist or a joke. “If you’re watching a movie and there’s a twist at the end, the best twist will make you go ‘oh, the signs were there all along’ and then there’s just a moment where it comes together and everything shifts.”
The same with jokes. “It’s like it comes from left field…You get this surprise moment where all the words that have been constructed just click together in a way that your brain wasn’t expecting.”
“You can just get a little mystery to solve every day.”