Australian Crosswords

One of the things my old neighbour asked me about was what he called “order of operation”, that is the sequence a solver takes when processing a wordplay. His main question related to whether a clue that flowed left to right with no assumed word groupings (imagined brackets) was superior to a clue where assumptions needed to be made. Here’s an example of each from last week’s crossword: 1) 19-across Call about right to join card game (8,6).  2) 12-across Bond managed by head of taxation in suspicious circumstances (8). The first one can be taken from left to right processing exactly as is stated in the clue; the second one requires the solver to join two elements and put them inside another. The second one has another parsing possible, so the solver must work out which one is in effect. As a setter and solver, I see the work needed to be done by the solver here to be part of the game, same as working out, for example, whether a word is part of a device or fodder, and what word form a particular word takes. When I’m setting, any assumptions will involve groups of words, but the order will always be left to right unless the wordplay contains positional indicators that say otherwise. I might include punctuation to mislead, but I won’t leave punctuation out that potentially changes the order in which indicators operate. That is, an operating adjective will appear ahead of its fodder, not behind it with an implied comma (as is commonly seen in modern-day cryptics). Clues like A B in, where what is really meant is A with B in, will never appear in a Stickler. I think this is where order of operation can create convoluted clues: a combination of implied bracketed wordplay and indicators operating out of order. Clear as mud? So, which is superior, 1) or 2)? In this case, I see them as basically both the same, and although 1) might be seen as being easier, 2) certainly doesn’t present many problems.

A couple of weeks back I have to admit a wry smile came across my face when I read a quick comment by Steve Ball:
“1-ac had me stumped for ages (that “in”) as did 27-ac. Some slapping of the forehead followed.”
This was from The Stickler Weekly 163: Area in front of courthouse featured in show (8) [IN + (C)OURTHOUSE] inside PROVE, giving PROVINCE.
The “in” that caused Steve trouble is strategically positioned to potentially trip up solvers as it is commonly used as a linking word. That is, Definition in Wordplay. There are a number of linking words like this, most of them short: BY, FROM, IS etc. I have a special fondness for short words that normally provide sentence structure and not much else in everyday language, as these are often ignored by solvers as a matter of course. We are conditioned to pick up key elements of sentences and to overlook the inconsequential words even though, as solvers, we know great care must be taken with every element of a clue. Little words such as AT, TO, IS, AN, ON, OF, OR, IN and SO often appear in ordinary words, in fact, these ones appear as whole words in more than 20 words in this paragraph alone (up to this point). For this reason, I intentionally hunt them out and try to use them (often “in the clear”) in my clues. The more a clue looks like ordinary language, the better chance a solver will read it as ordinary language, and the more chance a vital piece will be initially overlooked. I like economy, so all components should have a role, and generally I won’t use a linking word unless I really have to. Always check the clue help as sometimes where I’ve used common little words that look insignificant, but actually have a role, I’ll flag that “nothing is wasted” in the clue hint for that clue.

I’m going to try and clear up a couple of things this week. There were some other things, and I’ll happily talk about those as part of this solution post. Just add a reply below.
First, CUT = BURN from Stickler Weekly 163. I have to admit I found only a few references where the two terms, essentially meaning to create a disk containing music or data, are treated as equal. None of major dictionary references specifically equated the two, however there was this entry in the  Chambers Thesaurus (which I think was the one I relied on):
cut v, n
verb
…
9 cut a recording
record, make, tape, tape-record, videotape, burn

(In case you were wondering, the colours used match those in my Chambers Thesaurus software through WordWeb)

Upon further review it seems that this is one of those occasions where one term may be used to replace the other in almost all cases, that is, it is probably ok to say “cut” where “burn” is used (in context) but not the other way round.
In highsight, I don’t believe they have absolute equation and therefore the original clue is faulty.
The second thing I want to clear up is equation of “recognised” (note, not “(something that) is recognised”) and “standard” in the answer to 1 across in this crossword. One of the many tricks crossword setters employ is the use of “word form shift”, that is a word appears to have one word form in the clue (the clue is constructed in sentence form with normal nouns, adjectives etc) but in reality a different word form is used when finding the answer. A word that appears to be a noun actually must be viewed as an adjective, and one that appears to be a verb is actually a noun, and so on. This trickery is all fine as long as the word in the clue doesn’t have words around it that make it a particular class of word. For example, if a clue contained “to run”, and “to” had no role in the clue, then “run” has to be a verb. In the clue in question, “is” is an linking word, and although “recognised” looks to be verbal in nature, it’s actually being used as an adjective, and translates to the adjective “standard”. Thus: “Stickler’s cryptic clueing always uses recognised/standard devices”.
Now, something very important: if the equation doesn’t seem right by applying what appears to be a particular nature of a word, then you are probably missing something and there’s a need to dig a little deeper. Not always that easy, like in this case, as “recognised” doesn’t stand out obviously as an adjective, but worth exploring to feel comfortable with the parsing of a clue. Be assured that with any Stickler cryptic clue, there will ALWAYS be a direct relationship between clue part and answer, and at no time will I require solvers to make assumptions or insert missing components to make things work. It’s simple, if it doesn’t quite work you’ve missed something or I’ve made a flat-out mistake. I can’t say this is the case for all setters, but in general I would call it a rule.