How do cryptic clues work

You may find cryptics initially unappealing, their contorting clues too chewy. Call on a relative or a friend, pace around the room, but stick with it: wringing sense out of even one cryptic clue is deeply gratifying, and just might leave you wanting seconds. View Iframe URL. In hidden-word clues, the answer is a sequence of letters inside the clue. Remember that the straight part is always at the beginning or end of the clue. Instead of a straight part and a cryptic part, double definition clues have, essentially, two straight parts: two different definitions of the same answer word.

Full stops, colons, brackets, commas and capitalisations and the like should not be taken notice of. That said, you do need to pay attention when you see exclamation marks or question marks. A question mark often means that you have a clue which demands particular lateral thought, or a quirky interpretation of the words.

At the same time, a pun may be involved. An exclamation mark may denote that something needs particular attention. Finally, do pay attention to every word in the clue, since the setter has placed each one there to have some significance, even if you may find some which are there just so that the clue makes sense grammatically.

That also means paying attention to different tenses. So if definition terminates in —ing or —ed, or is a plural, the chances are that the solution will take the same form.

Be patient and persevere, and you will gradually find that you can complete more and more clues and more and more puzzles unaided. All Rights Reserved. Optimisation by SEO Sheffield. The Crossword Solver is designed to help users to find the missing answers to their crossword puzzles. The system can solve single or multiple word clues and can deal with many plurals.

For example, HOOD can mean "gangster" or "a cover for the head. Here is another clue of this type for you to solve: "Trim a tree 6. A clue may show you what the letters of the answer would look like when scrambled, also giving a signal word such as "mixed," "aimless," or "fractured.

Look for signals such as "caught in," "buried in," "part of," and "housed by. There are essentially two things you need to keep in mind. First, setters who are worth their salt must, when starting to write clues for a given puzzle, regard their undertaking as a battle of wits that they should be prepared to lose!

The answer? What different kinds of clue are there? Others include the following, and they are best explained using examples:. Are some cryptic crosswords more difficult than others? Often, more solver-friendly puzzles are quite heavy in cryptic definitions and have clearly marked anagrams. And see below there are helpful websites you can visit, where bloggers beginners themselves, once, remember! Of course it helps if you have a reasonable vocabulary and are blessed with being a good speller, but both of these improve with the very activity of learning to solve.