I wasn’t sure which forum to put this in, CS or here, but anyway…
My parents have always be able to do cryptic crosswords, and when I’d look at them they’d make no sense to me.
I’ve recently started to learn how to understand/do them, and I attempt the independent crossword each day. I can usually get a reasonable amount of words, but I’ll need to enlist my parents if I want to complete it, or I wait until the next day and work out why the solution is the solution.
Practice makes perfect, and I’m getting better (slowly). How long did it take you before you could complete one (if you can…)?
Also, which newspaper do you think has the best? I know that the independent isn’t brilliant, at least not for a beginner. I can’t even start the times’, but I can have a good go with the guardian’s. The telegraph’s is the easiest, but I can’t bring myself to buy the paper!
So…your opinions on the crosswords and what makes them good/bad, please.
Maybe it’s just snobbery on my part, but the broadsheet ones tend to be better than the tabloids’ (if they have one at all). The only other advice I can give is to try and get a local paper. Some cryptic clues use local references and slang. I grew up with the Sydney Morning Herald one, which usually takes me somewhere between ten minutes and an hour to complete. I find the American ones totally inpenetrable, but I can usually have a good crack at the British ones. The Guardian(UK) has a brilliant crossword. An English workmate and I would do the Sydney Morning Herald one independently of each other every day, and then we’d have a copy of the Guardian, and it would take us several days between us. We’d get frustrated, put it down, come back the next day, and curse the subtle genius of the compiler, because he was always right!
My dad has been doing them since long before I was born, so I grew up around the things, but couldn’t fathom them as a kid (my dad liked to show off, and to this day he still can often do them as fast as he can write in the answers). One day when I was about fifteen, I thought ‘bugger this, I’m not going to let him get the better of me’, so I sat down and had a go. I did half of the first one I tried, and after that I got better pretty quickly.
Some papers offer a ‘two-speed’ crossword with a set of cryptic clues and a set of conventional clues leading to the same answers. This can be useful for learning.
The beauty of the things is that they actually are easier than conventional crosswords in many ways:
the clues are self checking. A three letter word for an item of cookware starting with P could be ‘pot’ or ‘pan’ in a conventional crossword, and you have to wait for another letter to slip in before you can do it. In a cryptic, you won’t have to guess.
you can correctly answer with a word you’ve never heard of, by working it out (and you’re learning stuff as well).
you can usually tackle a clue more than one way.
So they can be easier once you know the tricks, but don’t tell people that, because it’s great for impressing folks who don’t know.
A bad cryptic crossword, IMHO, has too many straightforward anagrams. A good one has whimsical, lateral clues. I expect to have at least one chuckle from a decent cryptic.
Actually, even beyond individual papers’ styles, you’ll find individual compilers will have their own way of doing things, and you’ll start to get favourites. Do the same guy’s work often enough, and you’ll begin to get into his mind. There was a guy in the Guardian who was aparently submitting the things from prison. He was truly an evil genius.
I think the crosswords in the ‘true’ tabloids are straightforward and usually referring to celebrity scandals rather than clever word play.
The guardian, the independent and the times are all now published in ‘tabloid’ (or berliner) form, choosing to call themselves compact. Tabloid refers to the size of the paper, though, so I think it’s easiest to refer to the old tabloids as comics instead. And call the real newspapers newspapers. Just my thought…
Back to the subject, though, the guardian I find the most satisfying if I can get the answers. I agree that it’s witty and clever, I wonder what’s more satisfying; completing the crossword or compiling it.
I think the times is agreed to be the hardest by many, and I dont bother trying it. My parents have a books with the back-copies, and I aim to get a copy myself one day (and be able to do it).
That’s true. I forgot the British broadsheets were starting to do that. You can still go camping in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Times is tricky, to be sure. I don’t know that it’s harder than the Guardian, but it’s certainly not as satisfying. Not to me, anyway. The extremes aside (ridiculously easy=boring, impossibly hard=frustrating), I don’t mind the difficulty level going up, but if it does, you need more reward. The reward is getting a laugh, or getting a sense of admiration towards the compiler for a particularly clever clue. For mine, the Guardian delivers that more than the Times.
I’ve never seen it verified either. I hope it’s true. I often wondered, what with all the censoring of mail in prisons, what the flaming hell the wardens made of a set of cryptic clues, and what sort of evil code he was inserting in them?
Just started to do my first online cryptic after subscribing to the guardian. I like it when an answer makes you smile/laugh rather than just feeling satisfied.
Embarrassed about fighting for prize (6)
You’ll probably get it faster than I did but just incase…here’s how my head worked around it.
[spoiler]I thought ‘for prize’ means I’m obviously looking for a six-letter word for prize and I knew it ended in ‘d’.
Reward? Maybe…lets see if it fits.
So how would that work, I thought…fighting? Must be war! But embarrassed? Er…RED![/spoiler]
Definately made me feel excited once I’d realised I’d got it.
My local has the Telegraph, so I’ve gotten familiar with that one. And it’s rather boring, because all the puzzles are the same as one another. There’s never the off-the-wall solutions that the Guardian setters have, and certainly not the genius of Araucaria. He managed to create this anagram in a Christmas crossword:
Solution:“While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground”
