Post an original Cryptic Crossword clue

The Game Room
21

Glad we got some life to this thread finally. Since I am in good company, I am going to ask and state a few things.

Reminder, my OP stated " - I’m not even that great at solving them. But I absolutely love it when I KNOW I got a clue right. "

With that in mind, Help me out with the rest of this post.

On my Second clue:

I believe I stated early on that I am not good with Cryptics. At the time I answered, the thread was going nowhere fast. No extraneous information does sound familiar, now that you mention it. I was trying to make the clue more complete, in the sense of a self contained sentence. :smack:

How in the world do you get better at Cryptics?! :confused: I mean it seems as if it is some secret society that you can only be born into. I apparently just threw a rock in through a window of the club house, and cut my wrist on the glass. :mad:

After the admitedly lame clue the opener was, I tried to do something better. How is my “Repress” any worse than “Swimming” ?!

On “Great Lakes / Calvin Klein”

I got the part with the Great Lakes. I even had the part with Calvin Klein.

But

[Spoiler] Swimming implies an Anagram? Yeah. That’s real obvious. – However in spite of that, I *was *trying it. All I could think was Sumac, or Oak – I was anagraming with what I had, which wasnt much. I don’t think I had the l in the mix. :smack:

This gets at my question I asked, about where the clue split was at.[/spoiler]

22

exterminator

23

If you take the answer (you are correct), and you look at what they tumble into, you can see why the tumble was small.

Collective comes in, because the answer is more than one item.

24

I’m guessing that the whole clue means “poisonous plants”, and the word contains G, L (perhaps twice), C, and K, but I’m not coming up with anything - am I on the right lines?

ETA: nice work, Sternvogel - now I see where I was going wrong, I understood why it was right as soon as read your answer.

Exterminator?

I agree with your answer and your analysis :).

I’ve composed a couple of small cryptic crosswords myself, one using the words and grid from a quick crossword but working out new cryptic clues, and the other by building the grid from scratch. I could try to dig them out and post them if anyone’s interested.

25

I think the idea is that the letters L, C, and K are “swimming” (i.e. mixed-up within) the letters H, E, M, O, S - or vice versa. It’s just one of the many examples of clue-writer’s code, admittedly a fairly tenuous one. You only reallt pick these up gradually (absent consulting a reference book or experienced solver), by doing lots of the damn things :). For some people, that’s part of the fun.

I still struggle with difficult clues, especially ones that rely on this “code” - I tend to rely quite heavily on letter clues in the grid, which makes starting a crossword quite difficult for me!

26

Practice. Years of it. Seriously. And that’s just for getting good at solving them – I’ve stated every time the question has come up that though I’ve been solving these for 25 years or so, I couldn’t write a good cryptic clue if my life depended on it.

Each word should serve a function in the clue – one of the functions that needs to be served is to indicate the type of word play involved. “Swimming” serves to indicate an anagram – a mixing of letters. In the Jim Carrey clue, you need something to indicate that the answer is “hidden,” or sometimes “held,” within the clue. I thought you were using “repress” to do that, and saying it doesn’t work very well.

27

IPhone

no pie + h

And those of you who have guessed at the robot one are correct.

And here’s another one:

Rhenium, tungsten, argon, and cadmium finally combine yielding pay-off. (6)

28

Answer:

CHICAGO

Explanation:

[spoiler]Smart (as in “stylish”) – CHIC
Since (as in “one year since”) – AGO

Cecil’s here – CHICAGO, home of the Chicago Reader, Cecil Adams’s home paper[/spoiler]

29

I understand the collective. I though “cookware collective” was a fine definition.

However, typically you don’t anagram the definition portion, you anagram the other half. Your clue implies that “cookware collective” or “collective” are what are being anagrammed, but they’re not. It’s post that is taking the tumble and becoming pots.

And the “after hitting” is extraneous, IMO. It would be better to have just said takes a small tumble into post. Especially since “after” is a locational clue in these things. (Granted “into” frequently signals container wordplay or hidden words, but the simpler you can make your sentence, the better.)

Also “takes a tumble” and “takes a small tumble” are the same thing in how you intend to use them, so you can leave the small out. An anagram is an anagram. Additionally “takes” implies container wordplay, so someone could be thrown off by “takes a small”. Now, admittedly, “takes a tumble” itself could imply container wordplay, but frequently clues have multiple wordplay implications, and that’s part of the game. The difference is, when the actual puzzling is complete, there should be as little extraneous meaning as possible.

Even better, you can just forget the passive sense and just use “tumbles”. It makes for a more streamlined and less awkward sounding clue.

Your clue could be reworded as “Cookware collective tumbles into pillar.” The answer is “post”. Same idea you were going for, but more compact and to the point and the defintion is distinctly unaltered. (Pillar = post).

But the way you get better at them is to practice. That’s the key. I used to these things all the time in my teens when I had a subscription to GAMES. (When I went off to college I let my subscription lapse and haven’t actually gotten a subscription since. I need to start it again one of these days. It’s been roughly 15 years since I had a subscription.)

When I first did them I was lucky if I could get even half of the clues answered. Now, when I occasionally pick one up, I can typically finish with only 3 or less unsolved and sometimes even completely finish.

30

:smack:

I couldn’t figure that one out at all. Makes perfect sense now.

31

Reward. Too easy for those of us who know our periodic table!

32

First attempt at one of these:

"Enjoyment of bluegrass offends the nose."

Hope that fits the requirements - happy to receive any suggestions for improvement!

33

You need to include the length of the answer.

Oh and Dead Cat is correct.

[spoiler]

FTR, I had to look at the periodic table to come up with that. I’ve always liked periodic table clues since there are a lot of words you can make from them (partially or wholly). It’s pretty much also guarantees that you can figure out part of the clue.[/spoiler]

34

Oops!

Try again:

“Enjoyment of bluegrass offends the nose.” (5)

35

How does cadmium work into that answer?

36

Except that my answer was “pots” not “post” in an actual crossword that would pose a big difference.

Does no one else see that your clue makes it a million times harder? Am I the only one here?

And even with that, I said the OP was extremely easy.

37

“cadmium finally” = the letter d

38

Right, but my point was the wordplay clues should apply to the actual worplay parts. The definition is straightforward. You get the defined answer from the wordplay. You don’t wordplay the defined answer into your clue. Your way as written was backwards.

Oh, it makes it harder no doubt. But you could replace “collective cookware” with “pots” if you wanted to make it easier for my way. Or put tumble next to post for what you were trying to accomplish. You do find the words to be anagrammed frequently spelled out in the clue itself, though, usually those arise from longer answers and inolve multiple words to anagram.

I know, I had no issues with it being easy.

39

Answer for mine (if anyone’s interested)!

[spoiler]Clue: Enjoyment of bluegrass offends the nose (5)
Answer: Funky

Enjoyment = “fun”
Bluegrass = “KY” (Kentucky is the “bluegrass state”?)
Offends the nose = one meaning of “funky” is offensively malodorous

I was toying with the idea that bluegrass music is also kinda funky, but I think that’s stretching it a bit as funk and bluegrass are actually quite different.[/spoiler]

40

I actually didn’t find the OP’s clue that easy, because all the extraneous stuff made me wonder if there was something else going on. Hoopy Frood’s suggested modification is better but, like the Great Lakes clue it employs a so-called indirect anagram, where the material to be anagrammed is not actally present in the clue. This is generally frowned upon because it makes clues very hard to solve - there are just too many possible things that you could be supposed to make an anagram of. I imagine that Sternvogel guessed HEMLOCKS and worked backwards from that.