Australian Crosswords

A while back I mentioned the son of a former neighbour who contacted me asking for advice regarding setting cryptics. He is now in his late 20s and was looking to learn more about the art of setting after solving a local cryptic for many years. He had created a number of cryptics for review and also wanted to correspond about common cryptic crossword issues. Some of these issues I have used as a basis for some of these cryptic spiels. I recommended two books:
Crosswords (Teach yourself books) by Alec Robins and Chambers Crossword Manual by Don Manley, both of which he has now digested and come to this conclusion:
“I revisited the clues I sent you last year, with an eye out for syntactically correct wordplay, and quickly identified about two thirds of them as invalid or at least controversial.”
There’s a couple of lessons here. It’s different when you are on the receiving end. All you have to do is find the answer: when you are a setter you have to construct clues that lead the solver to the answer, and that means fully understanding how clues work, and what’s considered acceptable and not. (I’m always surprised when solvers have a go at setting and they use something in a clue that they have never seen used before in their go-to crossword – why would they do that?) It’s crucial for anyone who wants to set to learn how to do so by reading books, talking to setters and studying the best crosswords out there. Learning to set by solving a lot simply doesn’t work. Not all crosswords are created equal. Don’t assume that because your amateur crossword is similiar to the one in a local paper that it will be acceptable everywhere – all the more reason to spread your solving wings and use best parts from many different cryptics to create your own style.

English can be a frustrating language, what with its multiple ways of expressing the same thing, many meanings and word forms for the same “word”, and countless variations of spelling and pronounciations. Of course, it’s most of these things that allow cryptic crosswords to exist – without synonyms crosswords simply wouldn’t have been invented. I especially like pure “luck”, when words are joined to make a completely unrelated word (like A BAND ON) or when one word is put inside another creating a magic new word. Such is the case in this crossword with 1-down, where FLESH gets put inside RIOT giving RIFLE-SHOT. It’s a joy when something like this is spotted, because it doesn’t happen that often and I know a straightforward clue construction is in the offing.

Recently a friend contacted me wishing to reconnect with cryptic crosswords. He’s in his 40s and has dabbled with cryptics for extensive periods during parts of his life, but a stint overseas took him away from those he used to enjoy solving with. A renewed focus led him to me, as he searched the internet for help on Australian cryptics.
We met for coffee and discussed some recent Stickler Weeklys after going back to basics about clue structure the importance of identifying the definition by spotting likely wordplay elements. During our discussion I said something about setting that I don’t think I had realised before: “A setter generally looks for the simplest construction when making a clue, that is, the most obvious construction to the solver is probably the right one”. There are numerous ways to make clues hard, but intentionally making clues convoluted is not usually an option a setter takes. A solver’s first instinct on how a clue works is probably the right one, and if that doesn’t pan out, the second one is almost always going to get the job done. An experienced solver is one that has learnt the most likely way to work out a clue.
Inexperienced solvers tend to overthink things as the average clue can contain a multitude of solving possibilities, but, as the setter tends to follow the easiest construction path, they can be sure the most likely construction is probably the right one. A setter can exploit this, of course, but in subtle ways, not in ways that make a clue unnecessarily difficult.