Lots of puzzles do stuff like this. I remember a Sunday puzzle where the answer had to be seen relative to another one - below, above. Puzzles in the better magazines sometimes use these tricks also.
It seems to me that these are half steps to cryptic type clues, some parts of which use the same kind of wordplay.
I have an S&S book of old style crosswords, which are full of obscure words. The new ones are a lot more interesting and fun to do. My mother in law used to do the old type with a dictionary near at hand. You don’t need one with the new kind so long as you have a good supply of crossword words and a supple mind.
One would think, perhaps, but cryptics are a step or two beyond this. I simply cannot figure out cryptics. I’ve tried, I’ve read the online guides to the types of clues used, and yet I don’t think I have ever even solved a single cryptic clue. It’s just a whole different kind of thinking to me, beyond the simple flow-er/flower type of wordplay.
“Number” is probably my favourite of these little trick definitions. The most difficult one I remember seeing is “supply”, to mean “in a supple manner” rather than “provide”. I think the answer was “lithely”. Dictionaries do list “supply” and “supplely” as adverbial forms of “supple”, so I guess it’s valid.
Yeah, only a half step, since these clues don’t involve anagrams and containers and a bunch of other cryptic conventions.
If you want to start on them, I’d advise the New Yorker book of cryptics. They are fairly small and simple. I got my daughter started on these when they were running in the New Yorker. For the first few puzzles, read the answers which usually explain the wordplay, and then reread the directions again. It takes a while, but you’ll get there.
I’d guess Isaac Asimov (Mauve). The main character in Gerrold and Niven’s The Flying Sorcerers was called “As a Shade of Purple Gray.” That book was full of puns on sf authors names.
I’ll give it a shot. Really, I feel like a total moron doing cryptics. I’ve gone through the online guides that explain all the types of clues and the “code words” that flag if something might be an anagram or whatnot, and I’ve read through the answers and understood them, but then, when left to my own devices, I have the cryptic solving skills of an addlepated goat.
Great. I think they were designed to appeal to people new at cryptics. Small does not mean easy - I bought my daughter a book of mini-cryptics, by Henry Hook. I found it when we were cleaning out her room. She had some of the first one and then gave up. No wonder - they are small but tough. Stay away from English cryptics. I think you need to have grown up in England to do them well - too much local knowledge, like football teams, required.
Henry Hook is a godlike figure to a certain subsection of the crossword incrowd – I don’t get it. I find all of his puzzles damn close to unsolvable, in part because his answer words are obscure. Cryptics are hard enough when you recognize the word or phrase once you’ve got it. (I’ve got the same minibook, BTW, and with about 20 years’ experience solving cryptics have fully completed fewer than a quarter of the puzzles in it.)
