Australian Crosswords

Solvers may be totally capable of solving a crossword but not necessarily be able to explain their results. I believe it’s the haphazard way that most people learn about solving cryptic crosswords that creates an imperfect methodology, one that only gets found out when put to the test by someone new to the cryptic world. It’s imperfect because its been built up over time with inconsistent input from others and loads of assumptions that seem to stand repeated testing. As the average solver tends to cut their teeth on the same crossword every day or week, their view of the cryptic world is shaped to such an extent that moving beyond their first regular crossword may not be possible. It so much depends on the quality of the starting crossword – if it’s well-written then solving harder, well-written cryptics won’t be a giant leap as the fundamentals learnt at the early stage still apply – if it’s poorly-written such that not much has to be understood to find answers, then it’s unlikely the solver will be able to progress without significant help.
I was reminded last week that some things we take for granted, like how a sounds-like clue works, are in fact not as well understood as they should be. This probably comes about simply because a proper explanation was never given, just a couple of examples, leading to an incomplete picture of what’s really happening. In most cases sounds-like clues end up with two terms that sound alike, but how the indicator is applied is in most cases irrelevant as the length of the answer and the intersecting letters dictate what’s entered. In this Stickler Weekly’s 26-down, “TWO” and “TOO” had to be assessed and only one is right according to the structure of the clue. As “outspoken” can only act on “overly”, this must be the wordplay, and the rest (“Pair”) must be the definition leading to “TWO” as the only viable answer.

Most of my crossword career has been dedicated to producing top-quality cryptic crosswords, always remembering that the solver is much more important than me. To this end, and with the help of the right web tools that allow solvers to pick the clues they want help for, I created Clue Hints for the daily Stickler and Australian Financial Review crosswords starting in September 2011. This has been continued for the Stickler Weekly. The last thing I want is for solvers to feel helpless and give up and new solvers especially need to be encouraged. As far as I know, no other setter in the world offers such help for active crosswords and I hope the clue hints and worked solutions ultimately extend the life of the cryptic crossword in Australia. I know a number of U3A and other crossword groups use these crosswords, clue help and solutions to increase their understanding and learn about the art of crossword solving.
The cryptic “extras” come at no charge and I can assure you I’ve never received any extra money from the papers for doing this. It all takes time so I don’t supply help for all clues, just those I consider may be trickier than others – there’s the invitation to ask for help on any clue where I may have misjudged the difficulty and not included a hint. Over time I’ve developed shortcuts that you don’t see to make producing the clue hints easier, but I still can’t do it for every clue – but the offer is always there of course.

Some weeks ago, a NZ setter, David Tossman, wrote on his weekly blog about purging “anachronisms” from his setter’s toolset. (David writes a cryptic for The Listener in NZ and his blog format for solutions inspired my weekly ramblings). David was responding to one of the SMH/AGE setters, LR, who had tweeted on the subject, offering up a number of possible deletions such as Model=T Daughter=D Son=S Sailor=AB. In my mind none of these fall into the anachronistic category as it’s not the length of time they’ve been in use that matters, it’s their current relevance or standing that’s important. Apart from the early days when it was about style rather than substance for me, I haven’t used “Model = T” simply because it doesn’t (Ford model = T, maybe), however, I think as a piece of history it has a permanent place in our language and therefore in our cryptics; “Daughter=D”, “Son=S” etc fall into a different category, one of abbreviations, and have the same usage now as when genealogists first coined them. They are not out of date, however, a setter should ask how relevant they are in general and use or not use them accordingly. My mum once asked me why I used the first letters of words without indication: my reply was that they were “valid” abbreviations – obviously not valid in my mum’s eyes and therefore not useful in helping her solve. Abbreviations need to be more than justifiable or long-used in cryptics, they need to be appropriate and recognisable to the solving audience. “Sailor=AB” is a current classification in the shipping world and deserves its place, but as with a lot of cryptic cliches, should be used sparingly. To me true anachronisms are those with a limited life like “CHE” for revolutionary and “DI” for princess – these are fine when current or recent, but lose their meaning without some kind of qualification if used later on. They always have a historical standing and can be referred to as such (old/Chilean revolutionary or “princess once”, for example), but their prime time has gone.
A setter is very reluctant to remove anything from their armoury simply because it gives them less to work with, and an average setter will just keep on using the same old stuff without really thinking it through. For experienced solvers this isn’t a problem as they have seen it all, but new solvers will see some of this crosswordese as a stumbling block to long-term solving.