Australian Crosswords

Devices are employed by setters to create the wordplay parts of clues. I like the term “device”, but as there’s no formal cryptic crossword glossary, other setters may use a different word for the same thing. The most common devices setters use are anagram, hidden, container and its contents, charade, sounds like, truncation, subtraction and alternate letters. A clue’s wordplay may be made up totally of one of these or a mixture of them. A one-device clue, with the possible exception of a charade, should, in theory, be easier to solve than a mixed-device clue as there’s less for the solver to grapple with. Charades are often devoid of indicators which can make them hard to decipher, where the rest will have tell-tale indicators that solvers are looking for.
There are other devices, of course, like overlapping, letter shifting & switching and &lit that come up less often than the rest. These tend to be as a result of opportunity rather than by design as the answer word must suit the device for a clue to work. This is true in all cases but some devices are more versatile than others.
I used a device in this puzzle that I haven’t mentioned and that I don’t use often as its indicators leave no doubt (like with the boring Spoonerism) what a solver must do: it’s the reverse wordplay. In 15-across, “Shot lodged in back of podium? Quite the contrary (6)”, “Quite the contrary” indicates that what precedes it must be taken in the opposite way. This still leaves a small quandary: do we reverse the container and its contents components or do we just take the “front of podium” rather than the “back of podium”? Either is valid but only one results in a word that matches the definition.

For a setter, not all words are equal when it comes time to insert them into a grid. New or amateur setters often make life hard for themselves by inserting any word that fits into a given slot, rather than backtracking a little to make sure all the words selected aren’t too difficult to clue. So what makes words difficult to clue and how can they be avoided? The same short words turn up in grids all the time, so coming up with new clues for these can be challenging after the first few times. Proper nouns are notoriously troublesome as many names contain few vowels and may be foreign and not easy to break down cryptically. They also qualify under the next category, which is minimal definitions. If a word or phrase has just one definition (as in diseases), clueing it will be challenging as disguise between wordplay and definition will be almost impossible. Lastly, words with very few vowels or an overabundance of consonants will cause trouble especially if you employ the no definition/wordplay etymology crossover rule that I try to stick to. Clueing options will be limited.
How do I avoid these difficult words? The software I use, Crossword Compiler, has an add-on called the Professional Grid Filler which lets me pick words for the grid one by one. Better than that, I can look up any electronic reference directly and make an informed decision on suitability. I also use what I call the anagram technique, where I test the target word in CC’s anagram function to see how “good” it is. Very few anagrams, or words contained within the target word, means it doesn’t break down well, and I probably won’t pick it. Lastly, I try and formulate a clue or a clue structure for every word before entering it into the grid. That way I get a feel for how hard it will be to clue and the clueing process gets a head start.

Feedback is a really good tool for anyone supplying a service or product to improve what they offer. Good feedback provides encouragement and reinforces what someone does well. Negative feedback can force changes so that more of the public are happy with what’s provided. In our increasingly busy world, we tend to focus on the negative feedback because we have a vested interest, and time is too short to pat anyone on the back for what we consider as “doing their job”. The crossword setting business is a little different, but not much. In the 15 years I wrote The Stickler, I had just a handful of letters and emails, with the majority pointing out mistakes or things that solvers thought weren’t right. In some cases I received malicious feedback from people wanting to undermine my work by providing general criticism with no examples or a foundation for their beef. It’s disappointing not to get more feedback, but I believe no news is good news, so lack of feedback probably means I’m doing OK.