We don’t like to talk about those people, with their popped collars and backwards caps.
This seems like a good place to ask-
A few years back, there was a commercial for a game in the Grand Theft Auto series that was narrated by a cockney who used some rhyming slang. I know from threads on this board that “Fancy a butcher?” means “Want a look?” Butcher’s hook rhymes with look. I never did find out what “A little bit of how’s your father” meant.
On another vein, sometimes there are clues in the British cryptics that don’t quite follow the standard rules. For example, from the London Times:
Clue: One can take far too much interest in his business (4,5)
Answer: LOAN SHARK
It seems to me there is no separate wordplay involved at all, it is simply a pun. It would be at home in a sophisticated non-cryptic puzzle, like in the New York Times.
I saw a description once of a particular type of cryptic clue called “&lit.”, meaning (I think) that the clue works as both wordplay and a literal description at the same time. One that I saw recently:
A wet fluid, right? (5)
WATER
I can see the literal interpretation of LOAN SHARK. Does the same clue have a wordplay interpretation? If there is, I don’t see it.
Exactly. As far as I see, the entire clue is a literal, though punny, definition. There is no wordplay. I’ve seen this only on British crosswords. American cryptics never do this.
See this is why I suck at these. For the fluid, I don’t get what wordplay there is. So this is a non two halves clue or what? All I see is a literal answer and I just don’t get how we know that’s the right one given the clue, or why it particularly fits that clue. I’m obviously missing something, and almost every time I see clue and answer pairs I can’t figure out the logic. I just feel like a total moron when I try a cryptic, even with the answer key:
The entire clue works as both a definition and a wordplay clue (“A wet” fluid = WATE; right = R).
The convention in at least some American cryptics is to use an exclamation point for clues like these. (“A wet fluid, right!”)
A WET is fluid. As in anagram it. WATE
right = R.
So we have WATE + R
And rather than delete my simulpost, I’ll confirm what Thudlow Boink said that American style cryptics typically use exclamation points to mark an &lit clue.
Oh, and just like regular crosswords, a question mark generally implies a pun in the solution. Though it typically will also indicate that the definition is the second part of the clue.
This is a good example of &lit. However, my case (LOAN SHARK) is not &lit, I think.
&lit means the same wording is both literal and wordplay. In my example, there is no wordplay at all. So I’m not sure what kind of clue it is.
There’s no wordplay, it’s just an oblique/cryptic definition. They’re fairly rare - you’ll often solve crosswords that don’t have any - but they do come up. As this and the &lit types show, “Definition plus wordplay” is a guideline rather than a rule.
The other non-wordplay type of clue is the double (or triple, or quadruple) definition e.g.:
Quits flat (4)
would be EVEN.
More examples here: Cryptic crosswords for beginners: Double definitions | Crosswords | The Guardian
including the magnificent
Offer sensitive carer money (6)
for which the solution is in the link.
I would maintain that the requirement for double clueing is a rule, just one that’s sometimes broken. One inherent feature of crosswords, of either type, is that they’re completely confirmable. In American crosswords, this confirmability comes from every square being checked (that is, part of both an across and a down answer). In cryptics, it comes from every clue containing two clues.
And yes, there are also childrens’ crosswords, which consist mostly of empty space, and have long words that only cross at a few letters each. They’re also vastly inferior as puzzles, and are suited only as cereal-box decoration or filler-practice for vocabulary words.
Where this falls down is that in cryptics, every clue does not contain two clues. “Cryptic defintion” clues have a long history and are well accepted as part of the setters bag of tricks. There is no unfairness, rule-breaking, skullduggery or bad form involved in using them.
“How on earth do these things work?” is a reasonable question when faced with a cryptic clue. The answer goes “Well, half of it is a definition of the answer, and the other half is a little recipe for the letters in the answer,” because that’s how the things are always structured.
Except, of course, when they’re not.
Since the earliest days, setters have also deployed another trick: describing the answer in a way that is very easy to misread. The cryptic definition is pretty much a joke, and many of the most-quoted clues work in this way. Here are a couple, which have been attributed to Adrian Bell, the first Times setter.
This cylinder is jammed (5,4)
Die of cold (3,4)
Confirmability in these instances comes from their being no other answer that would meet such an allusive definition.
I think this is a difference between cryptics published in the US (where they are considered rule-breaking) and in the UK. To me, they sure seem bad form and unfair.
The link demanded I register before seeing the page.
However, I did figure out the clue, and it’s pretty good.
Yep, this is why I prefer non cryptics where I just have to know a few obscure words and pro golfers.
(and they barely cross! So you can’t use the acrosses to help figure out the downs! If you don’t know/can’t find the answer, you just don’t know! They’re demoralizing.)
Is “wate” a common cryptic crossword word? Am I supposed to know “wate”?
Ah, “cryptic definition”. That’s a type of clue I’d never heard of before. As others have said, it doesn’t seem to appear in American cryptics which is where I learned to solve them.
The clue is simple telling you that the letters in A WET are “fluid”, thus not in order. Like a rebus you have to add the parts to get a whole.
Yeah, apparently you need to turn off your ‘crossword brain’ and turn on your ‘cryptic brain’ - there doesn’t seem to be much (if any) overlap behind the clue styles.
I got that one with the explanation after stating it for a minute, realizing “fluid” is the clue that it’s an anagram, but how is “quite flat” EVEN? Or is that an example of just a straight definition and nothing else? (Which I don’t expect in a cryptic.) I’m so confused.
Not “quite flat”—“quits flat.”
I assume “quits” as in “Let’s call it quits” means “even”; and “flat” also means “even.”