Then we look at the rest of the clue to see what help that will give us. They soon become familiar.ĭo you follow how we look at the clue PERFORM WHEN THE CAT FALLS (3)? We think about the first or the last word as the meaning of the whole clue.
There are about twelve different types of fingerposts, but don't be alarmed by the number. They show which method you should use in order to get the right answer. Scrabble players are forming anagrams from the letters they pick up.įingerposts point to different forms of clues. FALLS is a fingerpost to an anagram.Īn anagram occurs when given letters are reassembled into another word or phrase. The rest of the clue proves you are right. A cryptic clue might read: PERFORM WHEN THE CAT FALLS (3). A straight crossword would have the clue: PERFORM (3). The rest of the clue gives you hints for the letters forming it. Look at the cryptic clue as a number of hints adding up to the answer in the crossword.Ĭommonly, the first or the last words in the clue provide the meaning of the whole answer. You are given more information to help you. In cryptics, you can often prove that your answer is correct. Solving cryptics can be more satisfying than solving clues in straight crosswords. This may be difficult at first but you do get a bonus. You have to get into the habit of looking at the clue in sections, word by word. No matter how pretty the phrase, it is just a string of words which give clues to the answer. Remember that nearly all cryptic clues must be looked at in sections. Only occasionally can you read the clue as a whole. It is more often a phrase or a sentence which makes some sort of sense in its own right. The cryptic clue rarely contains only one word. The second is to become familiar with cryptic jargon.
The first thing you have to learn is a new way of looking at clues. New York” to let students know that it was time to go home and stop wasting their parents’ tuition money.If you are a newcomer to cryptic crosswords you will find there are two major differences between them and the straight crossword. When I was in college in upstate New York, if you stuck around long enough on a Saturday night to close the bar (not that I would know, Your Honor), the establishment would dim the lights and play “New York,
#Cryptic byword how to
That is secreted by the sebaceous glands of wooly animals, and CORACLE, a “Small boat made of wickerwork.” If you’re short on wicker boats, here’s an article on how to build your own, New words of the day include LANOSE, which is clued as “Wooly,” and which I reckon is a relative of the word lanolin, the waxy substance Were contained in two excellent entries, and the section filled well too. But what really dazzled me was that those circles That gives us the familiar phrase KNEW BY HEART. The circles in 3 and 33 Down spell out KNEW and HEART, and they’re next to, or BY each other. DiPietro might have been able to line up his “theme” entries and still be able to fill around them. Don’t neglect the regular solve, though: there is a lot of fun stuff in here, including RENT MONEY, CIGAR STAND, NEW YORK NEW YORK, STRAINED PEAS (yuck! Still,Īnd we get an extra bit of fun when the puzzle is solved: take the time to wonder at how Mr. Speaking of standing BY someone, Joe DiPietro has made a puzzle where familiar phrases that consist of “_ BY _”Īre revealed in the circled squares of his grid. Keats respectfully declined the offer and sought his own treatment. Percy Bysshe Shelley was a mentor to fellow poet John Keats, and when Keats fell ill with tuberculosis, Shelley offered to tend to or stand BY him. Now that we’ve gotten the culture out of the way, I need some sort of segue to get from this sad opening to Joe DiPietro’s “Bywords” puzzle. The sentiment at the top of today’s post is the opening of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “ADONAIS: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats,” and is our foray into culture for the day. SUNDAY’S PUZZLE - Sorry to start off with such a weepy quote, but I thought it would be helpful to put the clue for 11 Down, “Whom Shelley wept for,” intoĬontext. Premium Crosswords is available through subscription only.
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