ARE is the metric unit of area, and tract is used as in tract of land, so you have A touching ARE.
Clever, but I can’t quite make it work. “Article” would be “a” (the indefinite article), so “A touching article” should be “aa”. You have to force one of the "a"s to stand for “area”, and then take “are” as the unit of area, to make it work. It’d be like cluing “m” as “l”, because the meter is the unit of length. Except worse, because the are is a far more obscure unit than the meter.
More likely that “touching” is meant to mean “re”, as originally said.
I don’t think that is the essential difference. It is the style of clue that differentiates a cryptic crossword.
Many papers used to print two different crosswords every day. One was a cryptic where the clues were word puzzles like those in this thread. The other was more straightforward clues.
For example The Guardian’s Saturday crosswords:
Some papers prided themselves on only having a cryptic. Some had no cryptic at all just one or more plain text ones. One, I can’t recall which, had the same puzzle with both cryptic and plain text clues for the same solution. It is a long time since I have bought a physical newspaper though.
And each of those clues is a familiar one to anyone who has done thousands of cryptics.
As said above, it is a very specific type of crossword puzzle with a specific type of cluing.
I kick general ass on New York Times crossword puzzles. Cryptics frustrate the living shit out of me. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life gotten more than one or two clues in a cryptic. Yes, I’ve gone over all the guides that explain the various types of clues and the words in the clue that tip off what type of clue it is, and I thought I understood in theory, but in practice, my brain just freezes. It’s not a style of crossword I can do.
I’m sure if I did a few dozen of them with the answers in hand, I’d eventually figure out the patterns and internalize the clue types, but they frustrate me so that I’ve never bothered.
I mean, just read the clues and answers in this thread. You do not get that type of wordplay in American-style crosswords.
OK, that speedy crossword from The Guardian just isn’t a very good puzzle. The mark of a good puzzle is that you can unambiguously tell when you’ve figured it out. Cryptics get that effect from the double clues, and American crosswords get that effect from all of the squares being checked, but when you’ve got American-style clues on a British-style grid, well, why bother?
The American style of having all letters cross-referenced by another clue, while allowing many possible answers not all of which fit on cross, allows for shenanigans like this one: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/clinton-1996-election-nyt-crossword-gif/
British cryptics (hopefully) only have one possible answer because of the wordplay used. Sometimes things like that will be found in American puzzles, but you’ll have a lot more chances at getting help from the other clues. There are very few times when doing a crossword that I’ve been unable to fill in a single letter because I have no clue how to match either clue. Sometimes I get one clue entirely from the crosses and don’t understand it at all.
I would think that given a sufficiently clever puzzlemaker, you could have multiple answers for a clue. I don’t see why it can’t be done with a cryptic. If anything, it seems like it should be easier to do with a cryptic. That NYTimes example is particularly famous because it’s pretty much the only puzzle ever made like that. (There may be one or two other examples, but they’re exceptional.) I can’t imagine the work it took to figure that out.
Of course, American puzzles do lead to annoyances like “God of war (4), _ _ _ S” , or “Russian aristocrat (4), _ _ A R”. Eventually you’ll get a crossing word and be able to finish it, but meanwhile you’ve got a clue that for all practical purposes you know, but can’t enter yet.
See, I don’t think that’s a bug, I think that’s a feature. I like those sorts of clues with ambiguous answers. That’s part of the fun. You could certainly disambiguate with Roman god of war or Greek god of war, but where’s the fun in that? That’s a shit clue because it’s too literal and only invites one possible answer. I mean, there should be a sprinkling of clues where there is only one good answer, mixed in with clues (especially the boring 4-letter ones like this) that have multiple possibilities.
I don’t mind clever ambiguity, where, when you finally get the answer, you say “Oh, that’s what they meant, I see now”. I just dislike this bland ambiguity, where no matter what the answer is, you’re not going to be surprised.
Ah, I see what you mean. I still don’t mind it so much, as it at least makes you work a little for the clue, but clever ambiguity is usually preferred. Though I do like holding two possible answers in mind to try to figure out the orthogonal clues and figure out which one fits. To me, this sort of multiple answer clue is actually fun for that reason. I don’t have to be surprised by every clue. There’s always a certain percentage of “gimmes,” a certain percentage of “multiple possible answers,” and then a bunch of more playful and thematic clues. The balance between all of these is what makes certain types of American crosswords fun for me, and certain types boring.